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Opinion

OTHER VIEWS

Horror And Heroes

W

hen you walk in, the memo-
rial flame draws you into the
black, silhouetted wall and its
numbing number: 6,258,484. The docent
explains that the number of Jews killed in
the Holocaust is comparable to the number
of people it would take, sitting side-by-side
on the bench facing the Memorial Wall, if it
stretched from Farmington Hills all the way
to Los Angeles, Calif.: 2,275 miles haunted
by the ghosts of the dead.
A field trip to the Holocaust Memorial
Center in Farmington Hills is not the easi-
est way to spend a Sunday spring morning.
When Adat Shalom and Beth Shalom syna-
gogues asked their Hebrew School students
and parents to meet there a week before
Pesach, I felt compelled to go.
My 13-year-old daughter had learned
a lot more about the Holocaust at Adat
Shalom in Farmington Hills this year
and was anxious to see the museum. I,
however, couldn't remember when I last
visited the small building next to the West
Bloomfield JCC and knew I had never gone
to "America's First Freestanding Holocaust
Memorial Center" since it re-opened on
busy Orchard Lake Road.
The new Zekelman Family Campus is
spacious and impressive, filled with enlight-
ening details that I couldn't remember: Out
of the 6 million, 3 million Jews killed were
from Poland; USSR had 1.5 million and
Hungary 570 million.
The information about anti-Semitism in
the Museum of Jewish European Heritage
reveals what led to the destruction of

23,000 Jewish communities across Europe.
We can read the words of Henry Ford that
led to the rise of Nazism and view a con-
tainer of cyanide-based insecticide, Zyklon
B, manufactured by Bayer, the international
corporation known for its
aspirin. A container of Zyklon
B was able to kill 500 people
within 10 minutes.
Hitler and his henchmen
were masters of propaganda,
making their "Final Solution"
sound like an innocent
government operation. Gas
chambers were labeled "bath
installations,""cleansing"
meant extermination; kill-
ing was known as "special
treatment." They performed
their cleansing with carbon
monoxide, cyanide, starva-
tion and guns while the world slept-walked.
Thousands were quietly killed amidst the
silence of the world.
There were heroes, however, during the
carnage and there have been many since
World War II. When my Livonia United
Hebrew Schools teacher in 1968 instructed
my 11-year-old classmates about our
forefathers, we thought he was somewhat
strange. I had little foresight that this same
Rabbi Charles Rosenzveig would one day
devote his life to creating an incredibly
important institution that "exposes the evil
consequences of hatred and promotes the
virtues of altruism:' His contribution to the
legacy of Holocaust education cannot be

diminished.
The tours that he established through the
horror-laden exhibits are necessary so that
our children learn to raise their voices in
the coming decades amidst the hatred of so
many countries and the millions
who despise Israel and Jews. These
kids must learn about the perils of
prejudice and hatred and talk to
survivors while they have a chance.
Survivors are disappearing, most
of them now in their 70s and 80s.
When two friends, Tom and Joey,
lost their father, David Lebovic, a
few weeks ago, I heard the story
of his survival for the first time
at his eulogy and thought of his
unending smile. After visiting the
Holocaust Memorial Center, I won-
dered, how could David have been
such an incredibly positive person
after living through such misery?
The same question was asked by a
13-year-old to Sara Byer, a survivor who
spoke to us on Sunday, April 13. Sara
spoke about her childhood in a shtetl in
Poland living with her wealthy grandpar-
ents and family who owned breweries and
factories. This was of little help in what
she termed the "most anti Semitic country
in the world."
As Germany and the Soviet Union divid-
ed Poland, her family was kept hidden by
a German Christian in Poland and eventu-
ally moved to Russia because it was "better
for Jews." There, they were sent to a forced
labor camp in the Arctic Circle where her

-

family worked, barely surviving starvation
in unbearably cold temperatures, as low
as 65 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. She
spoke about the hunger that felt like a sharp
stone grinding inside her stomach.
Somehow, most of her family survived
and she found her parents in Paris after
the war. She said that Jews who returned to
hometowns in Poland were greeted with the
welcome, "Dirty Jews, go to Palestine!" and
many were killed. Eventually, she moved to
the Detroit area, got a doctorate in psychol-
ogy, specializing in treatment of trauma,
had two children and six grandchildren. Yet,
it was only four months ago that she began
to tell her own Holocaust story.
Not everyone in Poland hated Jews. In
this 65th anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto
uprising and on Yom HaShoah, we need to
remember Irena Sendler, a Polish Roman
Catholic social worker who smuggled hun-
dreds of Jewish children out of the Warsaw
ghetto, withstood torture, was sentenced to
death, but survived.
Last year, she was nominated for the
Nobel Peace Prize and is a "Righteous
among the Nations" survivor, now 98 years
old.
We need to salute and praise Irena, Sara,
David, Rabbi Rosenzveig and all the other
heroes who teach our children that the hor-
rific hatred of others should not destroy us.
They must make us more selfless, ready to
"save a single life" and hopefully, "the entire
world."

❑

Arnie Goldman is a Farmington Hills resident.

Israeli Identity, Technology, Politics

Jerusalem/JTA

I

srael at 60 faces three major challenges:
identity, technology, and politics.
The future Israel will have to strive
and struggle to maintain a credible role as
the cultural and spiritual center of Jewish
peoplehood. Demography will continue
to play a fundamental role here, but the
main challenge will be whether Israel can
strengthen internal and transnational
Jewish cultural bonds to preserve some
consensus among the Jewish people.
Jewish religion and identity will remain
central to how Israel sees itself and Jews
worldwide perceive Israel. But to be viable,
Israel's Jewish identity must be attractive
to an array of Jewish constituencies, each
of which will view Israel as a place that,

A26

May 1 • 2008

permanently or occasionally,
poorest.
is home.
On the political front, Israel
On the technology front,
will require leaders that can take
Israel will have to expand its
the country to new horizons.
already remarkable facilities to
Many Israelis today feel that our
become, even more than now,
political leaders do precisely the
a world center for research and
opposite, slowing down the major
development capable of offer-
transformations we need to
ing its creativity and services
make in such areas as the Israeli-
to Jews and others beyond the
Palestinian conflict, Israel-dias-
Sergio
limited space of its local mar-
pora relations, the relationship
DellaPergola
ket. Israel must join the world's
between religion and state, public
Special
most developed societies.
investment versus privatization
Commentary
To achieve this, Israel will
in the economy and more active
have to overcome the gaps
participation of private individu-
distinctions that persist between greater
als in civil society.
Tel Aviv and the country's peripheral areas,
Politics in Israel will have to be rein-
and limit the deepening socioeconomic dif- vented so it again becomes a driving force
ferences between the country's richest and
for the fulfillment of Jewish dreams. The

overarching issue of peace and normaliza-
tion of ties with Israel's neighbors is crucial
to this because the final outcome of the
Middle East conflict will result either in the
fulfillment of dreams or disaster.
These three major challenges share
something in common: urgency. Every day
that passes without progress brings poten-
tially irreversible negative consequences
that threaten the very survival of Israel and
the Jewish people.
The way we respond to these challenges
ultimately will determine the future course
of the Jewish people — and Israel's fate at
its 120th birthday. ❑

Sergio DellaPergola is a professor at the Hebrew

University and a senior fellow at the Jewish

People Policy Planning Institute in Jerusalem.