Karen Treiger's Blog, page 4
July 23, 2020
Repost of Jedwabne and Jim Crow South
[image error]
Isabel Wilkerson wrote an article in the July 5, 2020 New York Times Magazine entitled: America’s Enduring Racial Caste System. Reading this important article reminded me of the book by Ms. Wilkerson that I read a few years ago: The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration. On December 4, 2016, I wrote a blog post titled Jedwabne and The Jim Crow South. I looked back at what I wrote and am moved to repost this because of it’s relevance for today.
JEDWABNE AND THE JIM CROW SOUTH
[image error]
If the opportunity to oppress or murder another human being arises and the financial incentives are clear, will most of us oppress and murder others? Are we all hard wired, given the right set of circumstances, to engage in such base animalistic behavior? This is the question I must ask after reading two books:
Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community of Jedwabne, Poland, by Jan Gross; and
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, By Isabel Wilkerson
Neighbors, a book by Jan Gross describes the Poles in Jedwabne torturing and killing the entire Jewish population (1,600 human beings). Most were forced into a barn and burned alive. In The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson tells of life in the Jim Crow South and how, starting from WWI, many African Americans moved northward to escape a life of poverty, terror and murder. I see two different places: Poland and the U.S. South and two different sets of peoples: Poles and Jews and Southern American Whites and African Americans. But the refrain is the same. One people decides that they are superior to the other and that the “other” is subhuman and does not deserve to live and has no rights.
Whites in the American South built their entire economy and life based on the enslavement of Africans. In 1861, Alexander Hamilton Stephens, the Vice President of the Confederacy, announced the “the great truth” — “that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery – subordination to the superior race – is his natural and normal condition.” The new South was the first government, Stephens continued, “in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.” (Wilkerson at 59)
After the American Civil War, the white population could no longer call the Africans slaves and sell them at auction, but they could still treat them like slaves. The Jim Crow laws of the southern States forced an almost complete separation between the two groups. The freed slaves had to step off the sidewalk when a white person came by and they had to step out of line and wait at the ticket counter, the ice cream parlor, or anywhere else if a white person arrived. African Americans in Jim Crow south were likely to be beaten or murdered by a white man or a mob of white men if they felt that he stepped out of line in the slightest way. Just looking at a white woman could get a man lynched.
Wilkerson tells of many occasions in the American South where whites persecuted, tortured and murdered African Americans. But one incident she describes reminds me of Jedwabne and so many other “events” during the Holocaust, that I have been reassessing my assumptions about the basic goodness of our species.
This happened in Florida panhandle town of Marianna, Florida, in the fall of 1934:
“That October, a twenty-three year old colored farmhand named Claude Neal was accused of the rape and the murder of a twenty-year old white woman named Lola Cannidy. Neal had grown up across the road from Lola Cannidy’s family. He was arrested and signed a written confession that historians have since called into question. But at the time, passions ran so high that a band of more than three hundred men armed with guns, knives, torches, and dynamite went searching for Neal in every jail within a seventy-five-mile radius of Marianna.” (Wilkerson at 60)
Because of the mob, the Sheriff moved him to a jail in Brewton, Alabama, fifty-five miles north. The mob found out where he was and “drove several hours . . . in a thirty car caravan. .. . They stormed the jail and took Neal, his limbs bound with a plow rope, back to Marianna.” (Id.)
The group announced the lynching would be at 8 pm that night. “The advance notice allowed word to spread by radio, teletype, and afternoon papers to the western time zones.
Well before the appointed hour, several thousand people had gathered at the lynching site. The crowd grew so large and unruly – people having been given sufficient forewarning to come in from other states – that [the organizers], fearing a riot, took Neal to the woods by the Chipola River to wait out the crowds and torture him before the execution.
There his captors took knives and castrated him in the woods. Then they made him eat the severed body parts ‘and say he liked it,’ a witness said. . . .
Around Neal’s neck, they tied a rope and pulled it over a limb to the point of his chocking before lowering him to take up the torture again. ‘Every now and then somebody would cut off a finger or toe,’ the witness said. Then the men used hot irons to burn him all over his body in a ritual that went on for several hours. . . . The crowd waiting in town never got to see Neal die. The [organizers] finally decided to just kill him in the woods. His nude body was then tied to the back of a car and dragged to the Cannidy house where men, women and children stabbed the corpse with sticks and knives.” (Wilkerson at 60-61)
Only a few years later, across the Atlantic, another set of human beings had similar feelings about a different subhuman group. On December 16, 1941, Dr. Buhler, the General Secretary of the General Government, which was the areas in Poland controlled by Nazis, stated:
“Jews must be removed as quickly as possible from the General Government, because it was there in particular that the Jew, as a carrier of epidemics, constituted a great danger, and at the same time, caused constant disorder in the economic structure of the country by his continuous black-market dealings. Furthermore, of the approximately two and a half million Jews under consideration, the majority were in any case unfit for work. . . . “ (Arad at 12-13).
General Gustav von Bechtolsheim, commander of the infantry division responsible for security in the Minsk area, provides another statement to consider: “Jews were ‘no longer humans in the European sense of the word,’ and thus ‘must be destroyed.” (Bloodlands at 206)
These statements echo pronouncements made by Hitler, Himmler and other Nazis. But what about the Poles of Jedwabne? The Poles and the Jews had been living (mostly) peaceably together in Jedwabne for hundreds of years. However, it appears that when the Germans attacked and took control of the Soviet areas of Poland on June 22, 1941, the inner Polish beast was unleashed. All at once it seemed acceptable to openly hate the Jew and to torture and murder them. And, by the way, after you torture and murder them, you can have all their money and belongings. With the 1,600 Jews making up one-half the population of Jedwabne before WWII, that was plenty of wealth to go around.
Gross quotes the testimony given by Szmul Wasersztajn before the Jewish Historical Commission in Bialystok on April 5, 1945:
“On Monday evening, June 23, 1941, Germans entered the town. And as early as the 25th local bandits, from the Polish population started an anti-Jewish pogrom. Two of those bandits, Borwoski (Borowiuk?) Wacek with his brother Mietek, walked from one Jewish dwelling to another together with other bandits playing accordion and flute to drown out the screams of Jewish women and children. I saw with my own eyes how those murderers killed Chajcia Wasersztajn, Jakub Kac, seventy-three year old, and Elianz Krawiecki.
Jakub Kac they stoned to death with bricks, Krawiecki they knifed and then plucked his eyes and cut off his tongue. He suffered terribly for twelve hours before he gave up his soul.” (Gross at 2-3)
July 10, 1941 is the day that the rest of Jedwabne’s Jews were burned alive. News had spread to surrounding towns that something was happening to the Jews of Jedwabne that day. Hundreds traveled from the surrounding towns to watch: “Beards of old Jews were burned, newborn babies were killed at their mothers’ breast, people were beaten murderously and forced to sing and dance.” Wasersztajn explained. “In the end they proceeded to the main action – the burning. The entire town was surrounded by guards so that nobody could escape; then Jews were ordered to line up in a column, four in a row, and the ninety-year old rabbi and the shochet [Kosher butcher] were ordered to sing and were chased into the barn. Hooligans bestially beat them up on the way. Near the gate a few hooligans were standing, playing various instruments in order to drown the screams of the horrified victims. Some tried to defend themselves, but they were defenseless. Bloodied and wounded, they were pushed into the barn. Then the barn was doused with kerosene and lit, and the bandits went around to search Jewish homes, to look for the remaining sick and children. The sick people they found they carried to the barn themselves, and as for the little children, they roped a few together by their legs and carried them on their backs, then put them on the pitchforks and threw them onto smoldering coals.
After the fire they used axes to knock golden teeth from still not entirely decomposed bodies and in other ways violated the corpses of the holy martyrs.” (Id. at 5-6)
Then there is Armenia (1910’s & 1920’s), Cambodia (1970’s), Rwanda (1990’s), Bosnia (1990’s) and more. You can see my problem.
In contrast, think of the Stys families and the millions and millions of good people on this earth. So, I really don’t know what to believe.
Sources:
Snyder, Timothy. Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. New York, NY. Basic Books. 2010.
Arad, Yitzhak, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps. Bloomington and Indianapolis. Indiana University Press. 1987.
Gross, Jan. Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community of Jedwabne, Poland. Princeton, NJ. Princeton University Press. 2012.
Wilkerson, Isabel. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration. Vintage Publishing. 2011.
Wikipedia. List of Genocides by Death Tolls:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genocides_by_death_toll
July 9, 2020
Why Fish Don’t Exist – Eugenics and the First President of Stanford
[image error]
I just finished listening to Lulu Miller’s memoir, Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss Love and the Hidden Order of Life. This book is educational, entertaining and thoughtful. In these pages, Miller takes a deep dive into her own life while teaching us all about David Star Jordan, a fish taxonomist who became the first President of Stanford University. Jordan was one of the loudest proponents of Eugenics in the United States – a true white supremacist.
A brief bio – David Star Jordan was born in 1851 in Gainesville, New York and was educated at Cornell University and received a medical degree from Indiana College. At the young age of 34 he was appointed as the President of Indiana State University. When Leland and Jane Stanford decided to create a university in Palo Alto (1891), they enticed Jordan away from Indiana with a large salary to become the President of this new university. He and his second wife, Jessie, moved across the country, settling into life at Stanford for the next 40 years.
[image error]
[Photo: David Starr Jordan]
I had heard of David Star Jordan before – on a Radio Lab episode about a lawyer who was trying to overturn Bell v. Buck, a Supreme Court decision written at the height of the Eugenics movement in the United States. Coining the famous phrase “three generations of imbeciles is enough,” this case sanctions forced sterilization. I wrote a blog post about it in August of 2019. According to this Radio Lab interview, this Supreme Court Case has never been overturned.
Eugenics is Greek for good birth and was coined by a British scientist, Francis Galton – cousin to Charles Darwin. This “scientific” theory took hold here in the US around the turn of the 20th century – well before Hitler picked it up and ran with it. The idea is this – we should actively select the best traits and breed humans to pass them along. Those with traits we do not want should be sterilized so they can’t pass their unwanted traits along to future generations. Guess which traits were the wanted ones – right those of well-educated, upper class white folks. In one of David Starr Jordan’s most famous speeches to his students at Stanford University is “The Republic will endure only as long as the human harvest is good.”
In her book, Miller devotes quite a bit of ink to the history of Eugenics and David Star Jordan. Jordan created organizations and fostered laws that allowed for the selection of the best human traits through compulsory sterilization. He was chair of the Committee on the Eugenics of the American Breeders Association, which advocated for forced deportations and sterilization. He also served on the horribly named Human Betterment Committee. All over our country colonies were created to house epileptics and “feeble-minded” people – to keep them from procreating and passing on their inferior genes. Those forced to live there included people of color, immigrants, promiscuous women, “morons,” “idiots” and “imbeciles.” Miller describes her visit to one such colony (no longer operational) created by Jordan and her interview with two women who were incarcerated there, one of whom was forcibly sterilized. The description of these women and the suffering is both moving and disturbing.
[image error]
I appreciate Miller’s writing about Jordan and the Eugenics movement in the United States because I believe that many don’t know of this dark chapter in our history and how this “science” influenced Hitler to murder the “unwanted” people. Before Hitler got going killing Jews, he and his team of doctors gassed 70,000 German children and adults who had physical or mental “deficiencies,” lest these bad traits continue their evolutionary march. I wrote about these early Nazi murders as they relate to the Church and as well as a powerful memorial to the T4 Euthanasia Program.
Speaking of memorials – there is a long overdue reckoning happening in our country around monuments and memorials to those who believed, as Jordan did, that people with white skin were better than the rest and we should actively shape our society to reflect this superiority. The Wikipedia article on David Starr Jordan includes a long list of buildings and schools named to honor this particularly well remembered racist. The psychology building at Stanford University is named the David Starr Jordan Hall. Just three months ago, in April, a request was made to rename the building. I found an article in the Stanford Daily discussing the issue. Then I found a by a student saying the University had decided to rename the building Michael Jordan Hall. Wonder how David would feel about that?
[image error]
Next week, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, you can hear more about Lulu Miller’s book and the Eugenics movement in my 60 second podcast, Gratitude in a Minute. You can listen on Alexa or your favorite podcast provider.
July 5, 2020
I Think I Have To Change My Name
[image error]
This whole “Karen” thing has just gone too far. Why did they have to pick my name to represent the most obnoxious white woman in the world.
It was my son Jack who first broke the news.
“Mom, you’re not going to like this – but your name has become associated with all angry, racist white woman who refuses to wear a mask and seea no racial inequities in our county.”
“You’re kidding,” I responded. “Is that a thing?”
“Yes, it really is.”
“Why does it have to be my name?”
He had no response.
Then my brother, Louis sent me this article in the Seattle Times about the Karen phenomena, noting that the male equivalent is now being referred to as Ken, which is our younger brother’s name. Guess our parents really knew how to pick ‘em.
Being the clueless, middle-aged, white woman that I am, I decided to look this up on Wikipedia. I learned that Karen’s defining characteristics are “entitlement, selfishness, a desire to complain” and that a Karen “demands the world exist according to her standards with little regard for others, and she is willing to risk or demean others to achieve her ends.” If you are a Karen, it seems that one of your favorite phrases is “I want to speak with the manager.” Oh, and she is also against vaccinations and has a bob haircut with blond highlights.
The article sent by my brother cites “one of the all-time Kareniest Karens” – Amy Cooper – the dog-owning, white woman who called the cops on Christian Cooper, the birdwatching man in Central Park.
Great – Amy Cooper is now associated with my name.
[image error]
The Atlantic recently had an article with comprehensive history of the Karen meme, titled: “How Karen became a Coronavirus Villain.”
“Amid the coronavirus pandemic,” the article explains, “’Karen’ has been adopted as a shorthand to call out a vocal minority of middle-aged white women who are opposed to social distancing, out of either ignorance or ruthless self-interest. It’s the latest evolution of a long-standing meme. In The New York Times last year, the writer Sarah Miller described Karens as “the policewomen of all human behavior,” using the example of a suburban white woman who calls the cops on kids’ pool parties. Karens have been mocked for being anti-vaccine and pro– “Can I speak to your manager?” They’re obsessed with banal consumer trends and their personal appearance, and typically criminally misguided, usually loudly and with extreme confidence.”
There is an Instagram account called “karensgoingwild.” It has videos of white woman doing and saying horrible things. For example one white woman spent her afternoon covering a Black Lives Matter graffiti in the road with black paint. It has so many horrible videos on the site. I couldn’t believe it.
While I get that these behaviors are horrific and obnoxious, why does it have to be my name? I had no say in my name – it was my parents choosing. Do I now have any way to stand up to this societal dissing of my name? I think that it may have gone too deep into the American media and psyche and I don’t see a way to unwind it.
I think I just have to change my name.
What’s better, Anna or Ethel?
June 23, 2020
Styś Family: Moral Rescuers; Children Rescuers
[image error]
[Photo: Styś and Goldberg families outside barn where Sam and Esther hid]
In her book Conscience & Courage; Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust, Eva Fogelman explains that most rescuers did not initiate the rescue. A friend, an acquaintance, a friend of a friend came and asked for help,” Fogelman explains. “This was the main channel to action. A direct, personal request provided an opportunity to act on individual intentions. Those who took responsibility were not hindered by how that help would endanger them and their family. All they thought about was that someone was in trouble. Of course they would help.” (Fogelman 61)
As Fogelman reviewed her 300 interviews, she categorized the rescuers into five (imperfect) categories:
moral – people who were prompted to rescue Jews by thoughts or feelings of conscience;
Judeophilic – people who felt a special relationship to individual Jews or who felt a closeness to the Jewish people as a whole;
network-people fueled by anti-Nazi ideology, joining others who were politically opposed to the Third Reich;
concerned professionalism – people such as doctors or social workers who held jobs in which healing was natural and logical extension; and
children who helped rescue Jews at the behest of their families. (Fogelman 159)
I am most interested in the categories of “moral” and “children,” because those are the ones that I believe relate to Sam and Esther’s story the most.
“Moral rescuers were people who,” Fogelman describes, “when asked why they risked their lives to save Jews, often answered, ‘How else should one react when a human life is endangered?’ Their concepts of right and wrong was so much a part of who they were and are, that it was as if I had asked them why they breathed.” (Fogelman 162) They realized that unless they acted, this person or people would die.
Moral rescuers, Fogelman continues, “typically launched their rescuing activity only after being asked to help or after an encounter with suffering and death that awakened their consciences.” Those moral rescuers that were also religious had a deep sense of what was right and wrong. “Religious values, including tolerance for people who were different,” Fogelman explains, “were unshakable and permanent in these rescuers.” (163)
I believe Helena Styś and the other adults in the family were moral rescuers. They were/are religious Catholics and they deeply understood right from wrong and believed that all humans are God’s children. Helena’s conscience was on alert because she had heard the horrors of what happened to the Jews of Stoczek. So, when Esther knocked on Helena’s door and received a direct asked for help, she realized that their lives were in danger and she could not refuse.
But she did not act alone. She got her sister-in-law, Wladyslawa, to be an accomplice to the illegal, clandestine activity. Both of them enlisted the help of their spouses and their children. The children were deeply involved. Eugeniusz described how he was the one, because he was so young, to take the pail of food to the pit in the forest and leave it for the hidden Jews. He would not arouse suspicion. Both Eugeniusz and Jan would go to the pit or the barn to “see how they were doing.” Janina, a teenager, became fast friends with Esther and developed a bond that lasted her whole life. When Wladyslawa was worried that German soldiers who were passing by would come and snoop around their property, she placed headbands on her young children with the words “TYPHUS” on them and sent the kids out to the yard to play. When the Germans would see these headbands, they would run the other direction. Remarkably, the children never told their friends about the hidden Jews – it was a deep family secret. They thought we were crazy when we asked why they never told their friends in school about the hidden Jews.
[Phtos: Lefto to Right: Janina; Jan; Eugeniusz]
Fogelman describes child rescuers as acting as a result of their parents’ actions. They did it because their parents told them to. But Fogelman’s interviews of child rescuers makes clear that these rescue actions “took over every aspect of family life. All other concerns were pushed aside. . . . No matter what troubles or problems a child might have, they appeared insignificant compared with those that faced Jews. Guilt, shame, and anger vied with the child’s feelings of love and pride. They empathized with the plight of the Jews while at the same time they resented them. They were angry at their parents for undertaking a humanitarian role in which they were forced to take part, while admiring them for their altruism.” (Fogelman 225)
I know, after speaking to Jan, Janina and Eugenuisz, that their actions of rescue are a deep and lasting part of their psyche. They told the stories to their children and their grandchildren. When I came with my family to visit in 2016, they gathered the extended family together to meet us. As our family sang versus of Psalm 30 to them as a way to say thank you, they all cried tears of pain and sorrow for what Sam and Esther lived through and for what their families lived through. The pain was real and raw, even so many years later.
Fogelman ends her book with a powerful statement about the legacy of rescuers and why it’s important to commemorate and remember them:
“Helping behavior is learned, and the gardens, statues, and the films are ways to keep rescuer’s stories vibrant and relevant for today. They are stories that show youngsters how, in the not so distant past, people came to other people’s aid. These are lessons children appreciate. These are adults who did not lecture or talk about helping. They acted. They said yes and opened their hearts. Hannah Senesh, a Hungarian-born poet, emissary from Palestine who was tortured to death by the Nazis for attempting to free other Jews by parachuting behind enemy lines, described best the essential importance of rescuers. It is a fitting final memorial to them. While these words appear in Senesh’s diary, they could have been written about the Righteous Among the Nations of the World:
‘There are stars whose radiance is visible on earth though they have long been extinct. There are people whose brilliance continues to light the world though they are no longer among the living. These lights are particularly bright when the night is dark. They light the way for Mankind.’” (312)
The lessons from Fogelman’s book speak to us today – as we ask ourselves, what can we do to help those in need? What will it take for us to “see” the evil in our society? Once we are awakened, what shall we do? When we are asked to help, can we say, no?
[image error]
June 22, 2020
Interview with Lou Diamond on Thrive Loud and Authors that Thrive – check it out
Here is a link to Thrive Loud podcast in which Lou Diamond conducts a wonderful interview with me. Thanks Lou.
Stay tuned – tomorrow I’ll post the third in the series on Holocaust rescuers.
Karen
June 19, 2020
“It’s Alright as Long as Its Just the Jews” – Removing the Blinders
[image error]
In Germany and other parts of Europe artificial social constructs, antisemitism, unrelenting propaganda, and fear led to the horrific result of the murder of six million Jews. Without drawing an equivalence, there are lessons we can learn as we mourn the murder of George Floyd and other African Americans and watch and/or participate in the protests against racial inequity and police brutality. These events call us to question the social constructs and propaganda that permeate our society. The lessons that Eva Fogelman teaches about when and how we fight against these messages and how we move from ignoring and not seeing, to seeing and acting, are immensely relevant today.
Fogelman explains that through an “elitist construction of social hierarchy” the Germans were able to stifle the natural empathy that might ordinarily be present. “Compassion for others,” she argues, “rests on the recognition that the one asking for help differs little from the one offering it. By making empathy with Jews difficult, Nazi propaganda became an integral part of the Final Solution. ‘It is all right as long it is only the Jews,’ the populace was encouraged to believe. ‘They don’t respond as we do.’” (Fogelman 46)
Fogelman also describes how people did not see the cruelty that was before their eyes. It was as if they had blinders on and could not see to the right or the left. She cites the work of the psychologist Daniel Goleman. In Viral Lies, Simple Truths Goleman describes “psychic obtuseness,” as a response to the danger of living under Nazi occupation. It was a form of “[s]elf-preservation [that] did not allow the reality of the Jews’ fate to become conscious; it would have been too painful, too dangerous, too terrifying.” [Id.] Bystanders focused all their energy on survival and protection of their family. Mistreatment and murder of Jews, who were not considered equals, Fogelman states, “became background noise.” (Fogelman 47)
[image error]
So how did some “see” what was going on and even more importantly, how did their awareness lead to action.
To reiterate the five-stage process enumerated by Bob Latane and John Darley:
Noticing that something is amiss;
Interpreting the situation as one in which people need help;
Assuming responsibility to offer that help;
Choosing a form of help;
Implementing that help.
It’s the first two stages in which the bystander removes the blinders. They may have a “transformative encounter.” This encounter is not just a moment of realization that Jews are being mistreated or even murdered. It is a moment in which the person is changed – they “see” what is going on and realize that someone really needs help. She sites the case of Oskar Schindler who, while horseback riding, watched as a long line of Jews being marched away. He saw a Nazis who discovered a woman hiding with her baby. The Nazi shot the woman in in the neck and took the whimpering child and bashed his head on the ground. “’Beyond this day,’ Schindler claimed, ‘no thinking person could fail to see what would happen. I was now resolved to do everything in my power to defeat the system.’” (Fogelman 54)
There were others who “saw” the horrors, even if they did not have a transformative experience. They saw because they may have suffered at the hands of the Nazis. Someone in their family may have been murdered, arrested, or beaten. Such personal suffering led them to see the suffering of others.
After these initial two stages, the bystander can assume responsibility, choose a form of help and act on the desire to help. This is not to make it sound easy. It was not. Fogelman cites Milgram’s obedience studies to show how hard it is to disobey authority. To become a rescuer, you were engaging in an illegal act and such behavior “ruined any chance of preserving a normal life.” (Fogelman 50) Rescuers asked, “Can I live with myself if I say no?”
Fogelman explains that most rescuers did not initiate the rescue. “A direct, personal request,” Fogelman describes, “provided an opportunity to act on individual intentions. Those who took responsibility were not hindered by how that help would endanger them and their family. All they thought about was that someone was in trouble. Of course they would help.” (61)
Once a rescuer decided he or she must help, there was no longer a choice. It was just what to do and how to implement (stages 4 and 5).
I see all these stages in the case of Styś family’s rescue of Esther, Moishe, and Chaim in September of 1942. The Styś family knew something was amiss – their farm was four kilometers from town, and they saw and heard what happened. Jan, then eleven years old, told his family what he saw out the window of his school. He saw the Nazis march the Jews to the cemetery and shoot them into a pit. As he retold this story to us, seventy-three years later, tears ran down his face. It was a transformative experience for this eleven- year-old boy and perhaps for his entire family.
[image error]
[Photo: Shlomo walking the path to Helena Styś‘s home]
When Esther, Chaim and Moishe showed up at Helena’s door asking for help – for food and to hide – this was a direct ask for assistance. Helena knew of the dangers, but she may have asked herself – “can I live with myself if I say no?” These people, who she knew from town, were in trouble. Of course she would help. The implementation involved two entire families – providing places to hide in their barns, food, opportunity to repair clothing, as well as friendship and psychological support. Janina, Helena’s daughter, described to us how she and Esther became friends. They would discuss many topics, from religion to mushroom soup.
Some in our country are taking off the blinders and looking at the social constructs. Perhaps some are having transformative experiences and perhaps others who have suffered see this as a personal call to action. We are living through challenging times and it can be hard to know what actions to take in the midst of a pandemic. But, I believe we have an opportunity to look at ourselves and our society in a new way and I believe that Fogelman’s study of rescuers during the Holocaust can help us articulate how we might move from bystander to activist.
Fogelman continues to deepen our understanding of the psychology of rescue by describing categories of rescuers. I found it fascinating to try placing the Styś family members in one of her categories. Stay tuned.
June 16, 2020
Why Do Some Help? Lessons from Eva Fogelman
[image error]
Esther Goldberg survived the round-up of Jews in September 1942 by hiding in an attic for three days. After her family, friends and neighbors were shot into pits at the Stoczek Jewish cemetery or taken to the nearby Death Camp – Treblinka – the town fell silent. Esther emerged, starving and scared. She knocked on her Polish neighbor’s doors, asking for help – some food and to hide. But she was turned away, time and again. She went a few kilometers out of town and knocked on Helena Styś’s door and asked for help. Helena did not turn away, afraid or disgusted. She saw a human being in need of help. She said, “yes, I will help you.”
I have often asked myself, what would I do if someone in danger came to my door and asked for help – especially when such behavior would place me and my children in danger. Why did Helena and the other Styś family members help? German propaganda and years of antisemitism in Poland did not make Jews the most appealing victims. But yet, the Styś families allowed Esther, Moishe and Chaim, and later, Sam, to hide in and around their property, brought them food, and even vodka, when they could. The whole family was involved, even the young children, Eugenuisz and Jan. When we had the honor to meet them, we asked them, “how was it you never told anyone the secret of the Jews hiding here?” They looked at us like we were crazy and said – “It was our family secret. We would never tell. It was dangerous.”
[Photos: Left – Eugenuisz Styś; Right – Jan Styś]
After reading articles and books on the subject of rescuers, I have been left with the idea that rescuers simply had a strong moral compass that did not go haywire during the war. But I wanted more. I wanted to understand why – what was it about these people that allowed them to stand up to the evil, when most did not. What would it take for me to be one of those people?
In a stroke of luck, a cousin of mine recently gave me Eva Fogelman’s book Conscience & Courage: Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust. This 1994 book provides a much deeper understanding of rescuers – who they were and why they did what they did. In a series of blog posts, I will share some of what I have learned. I hope you find it as fascinating as I do.
****
Anne Frank and her family hid in the secret attic that we all read about it in her famous diary. The home where she hid is now a museum in Amsterdam. The rescuer, Miep Gies (Miep van Santen in the diary), was interviewed by Fogelman. She echoed what many rescuers say about their actions during the war: “I am not a hero.”
“I stand at the end of the long, long line of good Dutch people who did what I did or more-much more-during those dark and terrible times years ago,” Miep continued, “I have never wanted special attention. I was only willing to do what was asked of me and what seemed necessary at the time.’” (Fogelman 6).
When a Danish fisherman, who ferried Jews to safety, was asked why he did it. He responded: “Someone came who needed help, we did not think about the risk.” (Fogelman 6-7)
Rescuers helped Jews even though they knew that it put themselves and their families in danger. The Germans passed a law on October 15, 1941 that called for the death penalty for Jews who left a ghetto without permission and for any non-Jew “who knowingly provide hiding places for Jews.” (Fogelman 30). The law went one step further – it required any non-Jew, who knew of someone breaking this law, to report it to the authorities or suffer the death penalty. Public executions of non-Jews, hanging alongside the Jews they helped, sent a strong message. The danger was made clear to all Poles, even those in the countryside. “Every Polish farmer was aware,” Fogelman writes, “that if he helped a Jew he risked his life as well as the lives of his wife and children.” (Id.)
Jan Styś told us about some neighbors who were hiding Jews in their attic. A Pole informed on them and the Germans killed the Jews and all the family members that were in the home. Only two family members survived, because they were not home at the time. When Jan told us this story, some 73 years after the event, his body was shaking as if the fear was ever present.
One of the insights that Fogelman provides is a description of Bob Latane and John Darley’s work on bystander intervention. Latane and Darley, social psychologists, describe a five-stage process “by which observers turn into active participants.”
Noticing that something is amiss;
Interpreting the situation as one in which people need help;
Assuming responsibility to offer that help;
Choosing a form of help;
Implementing that help.
In my next few blog post, I will elaborate on these stages and the lessons they can teach us today.
June 4, 2020
“Poster Child” for UW Writing Certificate Program – just released
Here is where it will be found on the UW website for the writing certificate program:
https://www.pce.uw.edu/certificates/writing
Thank you to UW for inviting me to be interviewed and thanks to Louie and Ty for working on the posted article and the video.
May 28, 2020
71st Anniversary of the Goldberg’s Arrival in NY – Golden Ticket in Hand
[image error]
[Photo: Esther and Fay at Foehrenwald DP Camp c. 1946]
Seventy-one years ago, today, Sam, Esther Goldberg arrived in New York with their four-year-old daughter Fay, to start a new life. Before they received visas to emigrate, they were in Displaced Persons’ Camp (DP Camp) in Germany for four years. They arrived at Foehrenwald in October of 1945. They lived there for approximately two years and then moved to Stuttgart because they thought they had a better chance of getting visas there.
Since the Corona virus has entered our world, I’ve been thinking more deeply about what the DP Camp might have been like and what a four year wait, in a kind of limbo, might have felt like. We have been “at home” for two and a half months, but yet, it feels like an eternity.
For the two years they lived in Foehrenwald, they shared a one-room living space with a single man. While Sam would go out of the camp to trade on the black market, Esther remained in the confines of the safe haven, caring for her young daughter, Fay. Each day was probably much like the one before – making sure they had food, “handlin” to make money, caring for their child, visiting with friends.
While I am not comparing our Corona virus “stay at home” time with their years in the DP Camp, I look at their experience with a new lens. They waited day after day, for four years, hoping to hear news of their emigration to the United States. They probably felt helpless because there was so little that they could do to achieve their goal. So much of it had to do with the United States emigration laws. Until Congress passed the Displaced Person’s Act in July of 1948 few survivors in DP Camps got visas. But this new law authorized visas for 200,000 displaced persons and 3,000 displaced orphans. In order to be eligible for one of these golden tickets, the survivor had to have arrived in Germany before December 22, 1945. Further, the law required that 30% of the visas go to “agriculturalists.”
[image error]
The passage of this law made all the difference for Sam and Esther. They had arrived in Germany in October of 1945, they had cousins in America who were willing to “sponsor” them, and Sam was a farmer. Perfect. In August of 1948, they applied again for visas under this new Act. Sam and Esther were interviewed yet again. But this time, Sam was “certified” as a “2nd Class Farmer.” There is an actual document from the International Refugee Organization with a very official stamp and signature (see above). Sometime in early 1949, they received news that their visas were approved, and they would sail to America in May. It was May 28, 1949 when their ship, the USAT Marine Jumper, arrived in New York Harbor with Lady Liberty holding up her torch to greet them.
[image error]
This is a moment for us all to pause and appreciate – because it’s a celebration of survival, resilience and hope. After all the death, the loss, the fear and hiding, the starvation, the days of hopelessness, they had made to America to start a new life.
Tonight, we begin the Holiday of Shavuot – a celebration of the beginning of the abundance of the harvest and of receiving the Torah on Mount Sinai after the Exodus from Egyptian slavery. On May 28, 1948, Sam and Esther left their Egypt – their narrow place of suffering. I imagine that on that day they were sad for all they lost in Europe, but that they were filled with hope for tomorrow.
I want to live with hope for tomorrow and celebrate Sam and Esther’s grit and determination. Right now, with so many around the world suffering from the Corona Virus and so many families grieving for the loss of a loved one, we can pause, reach deep within ourselves to find our grit and determination. We need it.
It is traditional to learn on the first night of Shavuot in order to connect with the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai. If you explore a text or a thought this evening, please dedicate some of your learning in memory of Sam and Esther Goldberg and some to those who have died of this dreaded virus.
Please stay healthy and allow the joy of the Holiday to enter your home and your heart. I will be making blintzes – hope you will too. I have a blintz recipe on my website (www.karentreiger.com) if you need a good one.
May 27, 2020
Reminder – Seattle Holocaust Center Conversation – Today – 1-2 PM
I believe that it will be a timely and meaningful discussion.
Here is the link with more information and to register to join the conversation.
https://www.holocaustcenterseattle.org/programs-events/593-novelideas-book-discussion-with-paul
