G'
=zwanw•ws"
WR M
4..
Debating All Of The Sides
Of Public School Education
Several local Jewish organizations, including
the Jewish Community Council and the National
Council ofJewish Women, have formed a coali-
tion whose self-stated mission is to preserve
church and state separation and to "ensure the
future of public education."
The group, which also involves the American
Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress,
ADL, Women's American ORT and Na'Amat, is
being chaired by Council vice president and state
school board member Kathleen Straus.
The group's mandate is to combat the mission
of other growing and disturbing influence groups
associated with the Christian Right. The con-
cern over public funding for private schools
through vouchers and mandated school prayer
are among the group's targeted issues. But there
is an overall issue as well, and that's what the
Coalition sees as the Christian Right's disman-
tling of the public school system.
While we feel vouchers should be studied fur-
ther as a potential solution to the crippling
deficits ofJewish day schools and the escalating
tuition parents must face each year, we urge that
A
the study be done with caution. For in no way
would we want these same vouchers to under-
mine the existence of education for all children.
The public school system, when administered
effectively and fairly, has been a cornerstone of
what's good about American society. Unfortu-
nately, we often read or hear only the bad. But
the leadership and direction of Michigan and
America should be based on equal educational
opportunity for all.
And while the initial reaction from the public
might be almost numb — "Here's yet another
church-state issue" — we feel that the formation
of such a coalition is important. Educators and
legislators need to be given all sides of the issue.
Without advocacy or watchdog organizations
such as this newly formed group, issues that cry
out for debate would end up unchallenged and
even law.
We urge this coalition to move ahead, but we
also ask them to remember that there are Jews
on all sides of these sensitive educational issues.
And all of those sides need to be considered.
THE D ETRO IT J EWIS H NE WS
Grim Tears
4
Many tears were shed last week at a site in
southern Poland:
Tears at the fragments of bones that still break
the surface a half-century after the last life was
lost there. Tears at the relics of the death machine
that still stand: barracks, guard towers, railroad
tracks, the ramp where men were separated from
women, children separated from families, weak
separated from strong. Tears at the fear and, in-
deed, at the very tears that stirred the air in this
fearsome place, a place called Auschwitz.
The tears shed upon the 50th anniversary of
the liberation of Auschwitz can never match the
broad, deep rivers of tears that were shed dur-
ing the years that Auschwitz was the most ef-
ficient factory of death ever on this planet; when
it was a disgusting testament to the Nazis' awe-
some productivity in the business of extinction.
But still, the tears shed last week were unique.
For one thing, they came from Jew and Pole
alike, but for slightly different reasons. Even
though 90 percent of those killed at Auschwitz
were Jews, -Poles and Jews still bicker about the
meaning of Auschwitz and of the Holocaust as a
whole: Poles emphasize the 6 million of their coun-
trymen who were massacred, starved or sent to
death camps during the German occupation. But
half the Poles who died were Jews, and the Nazis
killed more than 90 percent of Poland's pre-war
Jewish population of 3.1 million.
To Jews, the Holocaust was, quite simply —
and nothing more — the Nazis' effort to wipe
them off the planet because they had been born
Jewish. To Poles, the slaughters were the end
result of enmity between them and Germans,
the swing of a blow of a conquering force.
Perhaps these differing interpretations will
someday be resolved. Perhaps not. In the mean-
time, they are unsettling to both parties, and
generate the sort of bickering and friction that
would have given pleasure to the Nazis.
A second reason that made the tears unique
was that, accompanying them, was an extraor-
dinarily frank admission from Germany's Ro-
man Catholic bishops that Catholics shoulder
an enormous responsibility for the Holocaust:
"The denial and guilt that was prevalent in those
days also came from the Church.... More than a
few (German Catholics) allowed themselves to
be taken in by National Socialist ideology and
remained indifferent to crimes against Jewish
life and property.... It weighs heavily upon us to
know that there were only isolated initiatives
on behalf of persecuted Jews."
Unlike the Poles, who hold fast to their inter-
pretation of the Holocaust, Germany's Roman
Catholic bishops have had the courage to con-
front their own history. In doing so, they have
made themselves and their faith stronger and
more vital. They also have given a modicum of
hope to the tears shed at Auschwitz: Hope that
we humans have learned something from these
grisly slaughters.
This is not to say that those killed at
Auschwitz died to educate the rest of us. It is
merely a statement that if we — Jew and
Catholic, Jew and Pole, Jew and everyone else
— have not learned anything, then, in the words
of philosopher Emil Fackenheim, Hitler would
have, indeed, gained a gruesome "posthumous
victory," the victory of ignorance.
Editor's Notebook
Auschwitz's Anniversary
Is Every Day, Every Year
PHIL JACOBS ED TOR
Might have no-
ticed in last week's
Jewish News the
lack of bandwagon
jumping when it
came to the 50th
anniversary of
Auschwitz.
Anniversaries
belong on other
pages in the newspaper, follow-
ing engagements and weddings.
The annihilation of generations
of our loved ones and our friends
should not be relegated to the
memories of Jewish and/or gen-
tile America by commemorative
stories or quick studies in a news-
paper or even a national maga-
zine's cover. This wasn't a
ribbon-cutting or a grand-open-
ing.
Anybody care to remember
another anniversary Jews and
the media and general public
celebrated in 1992? It was called
Sepharad '92 and it marked the
500th anniversary of the Jew-
ish expulsion from Spain. There
were newspaper stories, studies
on film, tear-jerking readings.
Then guess what? It all disap-
peared. Three years later, the
memories have been mothballed
until another 10 or 25 years
when we dust them off again.
Ask yourself: Do you remember
Sepharad '92?
The Holocaust, Auschwitz
cannot be dusted off. It doesn't
matter that history's most no-
torious death factory was liber-
ated on Jan. 27, 1945. What
matters is the memory of those
who died there, and the lessons
learned of how the Nazis and
the Poles and others dipped to
levels that can't be dignified by
the words "humanity."
Angry. Yes, because the sto-
ry of the Holocaust doesn't be-
long to the secular world,
although its lessons must be
heard by others. I write with
rage because Auschwitz's "an-
niversary" is every second of
every Jew's life. I report with
tears in my eyes because so
many fellow Jews want so much
to disappear in our society. Fifty
years ago, there was assimila-
tion as well. Fifty years ago, be-
ing a good German was foremost
on the minds of Jews. They dis-
appeared.
Today is an anniversary of
Auschwitz. So is tomorrow, so is
springtime, so is the summer and
fall. Little babies were pulled
from their mother's arms. Bub-
bies and zaydes were bodies piled
high. But for God's grace, we
could have been there.
Some of us don't want to hear
from it anymore. There are "too
many" Holocaust stories we've
been told.
Auschwitz shouldn't
be trotted out,
then forgotten.
No, there are not enough.
With my hand clenched, pound-
ing into the consciousness of
those of you who read this, I ask
you never to mark your calen-
dars with anniversaries on the
Holocaust that span decades
and generations.
The example of Sepharad '92
is still with us. All of us could
probably come up with other ex-
amples as well, illustrations that
are urgent, importants of our
lives that get forgotten when the
news media moves on to the next
important anniversary.
You must remember the Hobo-
caust and Ausichwitz when you
look in the mirror, when you take
a breath, and when you hug your
children or your parents.
The Holocaust, Auschwitz, the
lessons, the nightmares belong
to us. It was and continues to be
a Jewish experience. Learn that
well, and never forget it.
You won't need a special cal-
endar date. 0