Never forgetting past, present horrors

Veronica Diaz

On Sunday, Aug. 20, 2023, the Keene Valley Congregational Church hosted a presentation on the history of antisemitism and the impact of its recent rise in the U.S. and internationally. The presentation featured Sue Semegram, president of Lake Placid’s Temple; Rabbi David Joslin of Beth Israel in Plattsburgh; Tom Glaser, a family member of Holocaust Survivors who shared a short video, Surviving Evil, and Karen Glass, a gentile married to a Jewish man.

A month later, Hamas led a surprise attack on Israel that killed 1,200 civilians, took 250 hostages, and raped and brutalized many others. Today, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, over 45,000 Palestinians have been killed, and nearly 90,000 structures have been damaged and destroyed. In the US, there have been mass protests against Israel’s conduct of the war, protests that have caused many Jews to be fearful for their safety and well-being.

This past May, the Guardian posted a poem titled, “Because of who we are,” which makes the point that the protesters didn’t come out in such numbers, or hardly at all, for the millions slaughtered in Myanmar, killed in Rwanda or the Congo, ethnic cleansing in Armenia, treatment of the Uyghurs in China, and mass killings in Darfur. What Jewish people in this country have experienced is their children in college being screamed at, shunned, spat upon, and at times beaten up, as well as many Jewish businesses boycotted.

Hard is that many American Jews have supported protests against Netanyahu in Israel, been major supporters of many progressive causes in the United States, and are major investors in higher education, including such colleges as Berkeley, Columbia, MIT, Yale, and elsewhere. They are also mindful that this country did not open its doors to Jewish refugees fleeing Nazism in the years leading up to, during, and initially following WWII.

I was in Washington, DC, for a summit on Neuroarts, the transdisciplinary study of how the arts and aesthetic experiences measurably change the body, brain, and behavior. I decided that this might be a good time to visit the United States Holocaust Museum. I’m glad I did, especially now during the Christian season of Advent and the days leading up to Christmas and Hanukkah.

Couple looking at a bin of shoes

The Holocaust Museum uses artifacts, film, the spoken and written word, and visual imagery to communicate a message, a tough one to experience: the savage inhumanity that people can inflict on others. That kind of savagery was displayed in early December Plattsburg when a man allegedly beat a woman and her daughter to death, leaving their bodies stuffed into trash bags outside their home; a brutality that people of Plattsburgh and Willsboro, where the women are from, are struggling to comprehend.

The Holocaust resulted in the death of approximately two-thirds of all Jews living in Europe, with six million killed between 1941 and 1945. In addition, people living with mental and physical handicaps, gypsies, gays, blacks, and others were also put to death as well as many prisoners of war. The roots of the Holocaust include the long history of antisemitism, growing support for eugenics and nationalism, and the outcomes of WWI, which saddled Germany with an out-of-control inflation and a hatred for those who they felt they had treated them unjustly.

Eugenics is a set of practices designed to improve the genetics of a population, such as marrying and having children within a race. For Hitler and his followers, it also meant eliminating those with traits and practices they deemed undesirable.

Such beliefs were not only held in Germany but, as the exhibit illustrated, also influenced US immigration policies. In 1924, the US Congress established the National Origins Act, which gave preference to immigrants from Northern and Western European countries. The Act was specifically designed to block immigration by Jews, Italians, and Slavs. Jews seeking to leave Germany, pre-war and early in WWII, were forced to abandon most of their assets, while the US required that they not become an economic burden after they arrived, which meant they had, as a minimum, to find a US Sponsor.

Further, the US State Department would not allow Immigration officials to fill the quota of immigrants allowed by law. Initially, only modest numbers were permitted in. In the US, there was a growing fear that immigrants would take away jobs, though most immigrants took on jobs that few Americans desired. In Germany, there was a growing belief, fanned by Hitler, that Jews and others he deemed undesirable were also taking away jobs and stealing assets from “good” Germans.

Arianna Myers and Lilly Siemonsma.

I was moved to learn how the Danish people refused to turn over citizens of Jewish heritage to the Nazis and did so right up to September 28, 1943, when the German diplomat Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz informed the Danes of the SS plans to deport Danish Jews. The Danes responded by doing everything they could to muck up transportation while they secreted most of the Jews to safety in Neutral Sweden. Another uplifting display was a list of the thousands of Europeans, including Germans, who risked their lives to hide Jews and other undesirables from the Nazis throughout the war.

“Seeing the exhibit was very emotional,” said Lilly Siemonsma. “When I learned to what a degree our nation blocked Jewish residents from fleeing Hitler, I felt very angry; I couldn’t believe that knowing what the Jewish people were going through, we wouldn’t allow them to come to America, nor even after when we witnessed the death camps.”

“Seeing how the German doctors and nurses went along with putting to death the children psychiatric hospitals hit me hard, that and seeing all the shoes left behind,” said Arianna Myers.

“I was uplifted by the number of people who put their lives at risk to take Jews in,” said Siemonsma.

“I couldn’t believe how many people just followed along; it seems unthinkable,” said Veronica Diaz.

On Friday, Dec. 20, a candlelight vigil was held in Willsboro for the two women who died in Plattsburg. Reverends Paul White and Ric Feeney said that the best way to combat anger and hate is to love each other fiercely. They implored us to see through any perceived differences because we all have way more in common, and for our society and world to survive, we need to come together. A woman in the crowd said that the mother, Karen Lindsay, would want us to remember her not by how she died, but with laughter and joy, the values she and her daughter held dear and manifested to others.

Reverends Feeney and White said that we need to stop blaming the other and that hate keeps us from achieving the kind of life we all desire. They reminded us that Jesus came into our world at the darkest time of the year, in a time of great fear of the other, turmoil, and violence, as that’s when God’s message of love was most needed.