OPINION

Indifference Of Man
Fought By Education

o .ANAND PAREKH

Essay Competition

1 saw one family of about
six, all already stripped nak-
ed and waiting for the order to
get down into the grave. Next
I.-to the father was a boy of ten
or twelve years old. He placed
P'iri hand on the boy's head and
pointed the other toward
heaven and said something to
the boy, who, I could see, was
trying to keep back the tears.
0..The man's wife was standing
near an old woman with
I• snow-white hair, either her
mother or the mother of her
husband, who held a baby in
her arms, singing softly to it
and stroking it. Then came the
,order, "Next ten!" and the
family started moving round
the mound of earth to climb
into the grave .. .
Raoul Hilberg
his unforgettable ex-
ample of the Holocaust
clearly indicates its
°"cruelty. 'Ito forget what we
know would not be human. To
remember it is to think of
what being human means. It
is extremely difficult to
0-describe the events and
atrocities of the Holocaust.

C.H.A.I.M., Children of Holocaust-survivors Association
in Michigan, held its seventh annual Holocaust writing
competition. The participating schools represented Oakland
and Ingham counties. There were 198 essays submitted on
the topic "Why should students learn about the Holocaust?
How can this learning experience be applied to life today?"
This year's winners are: first place, Anand Parekh, Detroit
Country Day; second place, Naomi Brenner, Pioneer High
School, Ann Arbor; third place, Vivi Stenberg, Groves High
School.
Honorable mentions went to Stephanie Sesi, Williamston
High School; Makyha Bowles, Detroit Country Day; Ellen
Winn, Pioneer High School; Kate Pogany, Taryn Merkl, An-
thony Salciccioli, Groves High School.

.

Certainly, if it is anguish for
those of us who are not
Jewish like me, it must be
more awful for those who are
Jewish. We must realize that
the Holocaust was not a one-
time event, but actually
shows a recurring flaw in our
moral values. Students
should learn about the evils of
hate, ignorance and indif-
ference in order to prevent
another Holocaust of any pro-
portion. To accomplish this,
students must understand
what the Holocaust was and
what can be learned from it.

There are many obvious
reasons why we must learn
from this dreaded event. In
the forefront are the in-
evitable consequences of
hatred, bigotry, and prejudice.
Nazi Germany's prejudice
toward the Jewish "race" end-
ed in genocide of a group of
people and a horrible world
war.
Students should learn from
the Holocaust that hatred or
imagined superiority is evil.
It is also essential that
students learn to instill
respect for each other's racial,

Working Together
Against Discrimination

NORMAN H. BEITNER

or the third straight
year, the Black-Jewish
Seder, held on April 14
and sponsored by the Anti-
Defamation League and the
South Oakland County
NAACP, was a tremendous
success. That evening, approx-
r imately 280 people, divided
• almost evenly between blacks
and Jews, participated in a
celebration of freedom and
dialogue.
I. The seder symbolized the
mutual commitment of blacks
l• and Jews to work together to
fight
oppression
and
discrimination and to share
o common cultural values, in-
cluding freedom and justice
`for all.
The annual Black-Jewish
I. Seder is an outgrowth of our
dialogue group that has been
I meeting regularly for almost
I three years. Through this
group, the ADL has succeed-

II Norman Beitner is president

Oof the Michigan Regional
Advisory Board, Anti-
Defamation League.

ed in building a bridge to the
black community in South-
field, Oak Park and other
suburbs of south Oakland
County.
We exchange ideas, share
our concerns and express our
differences — but, in all cases,
the paramount goal is to
foster a better understanding
of each other and to
strengthen our bonds as we
try to reduce tensions bet-
ween blacks and Jews.
To that end, in addition to
meeting monthly to discuss
matters of interest, we have
visited the Holocaust
Memorial Center and the
Afro-American Museum, and
have shared family picnics
and joint service projects on
behalf of the homeless.
Although the civil rights
era, and the images of blacks
and Jews marching together
to equality, is receding from
the nation's memory, the
seder was an opportunity for
both communities to publicly
state that the mutual fight
against oppression continues.
By joining together to
celebrate Passover and its

message of freedom, we af-
firmed our common struggle
to eliminate discrimination
and bigotry, whether it takes
the form of racism or anti-
Semitism, and to fight the
David Dukes, the neo-Nazi
skinheads and the white
supremacist groups of modern
America.
It may be true that tensions
and differences between
blacks and Jews exist, as The
Jewish News has recently
dramatized in its "Southfield
at Risk" and "The Sleep-
walkers" articles. Yet, it was
very exciting and gratifying
to witness 280 blacks and
Jews reciting, as one, portions
of the Haggadah and of Mar-
tin Luther King's "I Have a
Dream" speech or listening to
the beautiful melodies sung
by the Hope United Gospel
Choir, including an authentic
Zulu song.
The message of cooperation
emanating from the seder
was proof that despite the so-
called rift between our com-
munities, blacks and Jews
still recognize the need to
reach out to one another to
forge a common agenda. ❑

CO

z

CC

-C3

0
0

religious and cultural dif-
ferences. From our Declara-
tion of Independence, we note
that "all men are created
equal and are endowed with
certain inalienable rights .. .
life, liberty and the p-ursuit of
happiness." This important
quotation should be the foun-
dation of our moral values.
Students must learn to live
together and learn about dif-
ferent cultures and religions
rather than to hate them.
They must learn from the
Holocaust that their own con-
science is a better guide than
conformity.
The most important reason
though, why students should
learn about the Holocaust, is
so they never participate in
anything like it. It is not
usually understood that the
hidden killers of the Holo-
caust were the normal,
"civilized" people. They were
the ones who may not have
known what they were doing,
but who actually made the
extermination of Jews possi-
ble. It is a challenge then, for
us to avoid becoming like
them.
The Holocaust showed us a
flaw in our moral values
which cannot be cured by any-
thing except education. A per-
son who watches a crime be-
ing committed and does
nothing about it is as blame-
worthy as the criminal him-
self. Realizing that one of the
prime causes of the Holocaust
was indifference, one can easi-
ly see how the Holocaust ap-
plies to life today. As Elie
Wiesel, a Nobel Prize-win-

ning survivor stated, "The sin
of the 20th century is indif-
ference:' Therefo,re, even if we
do everything externally
possible to prevent another
Holocaust, there will always
be a chance of it recurring
unless we alter our values.
Such a reorientation comes
from education.
We find some people still
clinging to the values of Nazi
Germany. Organizations such
as the Ku Klux Klan and
White Supremacy have
emerged as racist groups.
They refuse to believe that
the Holocaust occurred and
see no wrong in racial hate.
White conservatives and neo-
Nazis in South Africa have
also caused that country to be
embedded in racial violence.
Even political figures such as
former grand wizard of the
Ku Klux Klan David Duke
are seriously being con-
sidered for top spots in our
government. Can we let this
happen? NO!
We also must never forget
the consequences of any Holo-
caust. The Armenian Holo-
caust in World War I was the
first of the major extermina-
tions in this century. Yet,
Adolf Hitler himself, con-
templating the extermination
of the Jews, said, "Who
remembers that the Turks
massacred a million Arme-
nians only a little while ago?"
Even after the Jewish Holo-
caust, there were mass exter-
minations in Indonesia and
Bangladesh, not to mention

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THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

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