Daily Excerpt: One Family: Indivisible (Greenebaum) - Holocaust and Hate

 



The following excerpt comes from One Family: Indivisible (Greenebaum)


One thing I always felt as a child was safe. My parents and indeed my grandparents and my sister all helped to make me feel warm, loved, and totally secure. That all disappeared at dinner one evening in one, horrible, life-changing moment. I’m guessing I was about six, maybe seven — whatever the age is when a child’s mind begins to register what people are actually talking about.

            Something may have happened in the news that day. But for whatever reason, the Holocaust was discussed at dinner. I’m sure the topic must have come up before, but this was the first time that it registered. With all children, I think you can tell them things when they are quite young and those things simply don’t compute. Then one day it suddenly makes sense. For me, this was that day. Six million Jews, exterminated. Two out of three in Europe (where’s Europe?). One out of three on the planet! Gone. Murdered. Stepped on like so many ants. And I’m Jewish. I’m Jewish!

            To be honest, at that age, six million was just a number — it was a big number to be sure, but only a number. But my immediate family was my father, my mother, and my sister. One out of three Jews murdered meant one of them — gone. Two out of three meant that only one would be left alive. That I could comprehend.

            It was devastating. The terror of the Holocaust was made clear. One out of three on Earth, two out of three in Europe murdered for the “crime” of being Jewish. I don’t know how to describe this other than to say that completely, to my roots, I was terrified as I have never been terrified before or since.

            I not only knew that I was Jewish, but also that all my neighbors were Jewish (though why this was I didn’t learn for years). I was not yet old enough to know what being “Jewish” meant, but whatever it meant, whatever being Jewish was, I was Jewish. This was clear. I was Jewish. One out of three people like me, whatever “like me” meant, had been gassed, or shot, or hung, or tortured and starved to death. One out of three. My father, my mother or my sister. One out of three!! How could this happen? I asked.

            It happened because some people hate Jews.

            Why?? What did we do to them?

            Nothing.

            Is there something bad about being Jewish?

            No.

            Then why?

            Some people, particularly Christians, hate Jews. A Christian bigshot[1] helped to make it possible.

            But that was across the ocean (as in Europe). We lived in the United States. And the war was over.

            “Then we’re safe?” From Hitler, yes, Dad told us. But there are people in the United States, again, mostly Christians, even in our city, who hate Jews and want to hurt them. It’s called anti-Semitism.

            I think that this was when it first registered that there had been things like pogroms, where Jews had been tortured and murdered, and ghettos where Jews were enclosed to keep them separate from “civil” society. Maybe Dad explained these to me to explain what “anti-Semitism” meant.

            It was shattering. I don’t know if I can possibly convey just how shattering it was. I don’t think I fully understood death yet. But it wasn’t death so much as realizing that there were people who hated me, hated me, wanted to kill me sight unseen, never having met me. They didn’t know me, but they hated me. And they always would, no matter what I said or did.

            That night, that moment, everything changed. My world was no longer safe. They hated me. They hated my parents. They hated my sister. They hated Nana and Grandma Helen. How many Christians were there? Did they all hate me? What was I to do? What did it mean? What if America produced a Hitler?

            But then Mom talked to me. I don’t remember if she said this at the dinner table or not. Perhaps, seeing how distraught I was after dinner, she talked to me alone. I don’t remember. But I will never forget what she said.

            She looked straight at me. I knew that whatever she was going to tell me would be important.

            “Do you like that some people hate you?” Mom asked me.

            “No,” I whispered.

            “Do you like what it feels like to be hated?”

            “No.”

            “Then don’t ever hate.”

            I will carry that moment with me as long as I live. Mom’s words became central to my life. As time passed, it also pounded at my mind that the Holocaust had happened in Europe, not the United States, and I was born afterwards, albeit only a few years. Yet, learning that because I was Jewish some people hated me and that the world was not safe for Jews had a profound impact on me.

            As I grew, I began to ponder what it must be like for a black child that very first time that she or he comprehends that slavery happened here — not in Europe, it happened here. And that after slavery was outlawed, Jim Crow happened here — not in Europe, it happened here. And that racism is still alive and well in the United States. Some people despise, fear and even hate people of color, all people of color, without ever having met them. What a wrenching, devastating effect that must have. How can it be anything but life-changing?

            I cannot know and do not pretend to know what it is like, especially in that first moment, for a black child to realize that his or her life isn’t safe in America — that too many, many too many in this “land of the free” consider people of color to be “other.” But I do feel I have at least an inkling of what it must be like, and it makes me shudder.


Eric Hoffer Award finalist
American Bookfest Best Books Award finalist

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