8 | NOVEMBER 18 • 2021 

PURELY COMMENTARY

of the Depression, they lost 
everything. Still, they started 
over. Then came the Second 
World War and the reality that 
money they had sent to help get 
their endangered family out of 
Eastern Europe either arrived 
too late, or not at all.

CONFRONTATIONS WITH 
ANTISEMITISM
While growing up in Toledo, 
Ohio, and throughout my 
life, I would recall my grand-
mother’s words whenever I was 
confronted with antisemitism. 
Don’t think it can’t happen here. 
Sometimes I would feel com-
pelled to act, but other times I 
would look away.
Toledo was not the county 
seat of tolerance. Graves were 
routinely vandalized in the 
area’s two Jewish cemeteries. 
I remember how my stomach 
ached when I was sent home 
from Hebrew school because 
swastikas and other Nazi slo-
gans had been spray-painted 
on our synagogue’s windows. 
As an 11-year-old, I was con-
fused. What had we done? Was 
this the antisemitism that had 
fueled my grandmother’s veiled 
warning? 
When I was 30 years old, 
shopping for my son, I discov-
ered a costume kiosk at my 
local mall selling Hitler masks 
for Halloween. It was 1983. “We 
have to do something. I am 
going to call every media outlet 
in town to see this,
” I yelled 
over the phone to the city’s 
sole Orthodox rabbi. “If we go 
to the media, it will only draw 
more attention to the issue,
” he 
answered. “How had our silence 
ever served us?” I asked him. 
I vehemently objected. They 
removed them.
My Judaism provoked other 
incidents of prejudice and 

reaction. There was the time a 
college friend told me I wasn’t 
welcome to join their spring 
break trip. It wasn’t her choice, 
she said. One of the mothers of 
another girl forbade her daugh-
ter to go if I went. I didn’t want 
to spoil it for the rest of the 
group. I stayed home.
In 1991, on an assignment to 
interview tennis great Billie Jean 
King, I mentioned that the club 
where we were about to attend 
a sponsor’s lunch had histori-
cally barred Jews from joining. 
I am still ashamed that I backed 
down when King indicated that 
if that was the case she would 
leave. “I don’t think they do 
that anymore,
” I murmured. My 
moral compass was broken.
But it was when my 
then-teenage son, the only child 
of a Jewish mother and Catholic 
father, was taunted by members 
of his hockey team for his her-
itage that I felt most betrayed. 
Who were these kids I’
d adored? 
Until then I saw them as my 
son’s talented teammates. Now 
I saw them as anti-Semites. 
How could they use the ethnic 
slur, kike? Did they even know 
what it meant? I should not 
have been happy when my son 
jumped on top of the kid who 
started the war of words, but I 
was. 
Still, weren’t we lucky? A two-
day suspension for fighting on 
the hockey bus wasn’t a death 
sentence for my child. Unlike 
our European Jewish brothers 
and sisters who lost their lives 
because they were Jews, we 
didn’t have to run. We wouldn’t 
be murdered. We were born 
here. We were Americans! 
My grandmother’s warning 
tucked away, I told myself that 
these kids just didn’t understand 
how much pain their words 
created.

THE HOLOCAUST 
MEMORIAL CENTER
When I moved to the Detroit 
area in the spring of 2011, I was 
excited to find a robust Jewish 
community that included 
Jewish adult education, more 
than a dozen synagogues and, 
most importantly to me, the 
Holocaust Memorial Center.
On my first visit to the 
Center, I sat alone on the long 
granite bench in front of the 
black stone wall inscribed with 
the names of the Nazi-occupied 
European countries, and the 
number of Jews murdered 
from each of those nations. I 
walked closer and stood where 
I could see my reflection in the 
smooth stone. I set my gaze on 
Lithuania, my grandmother’s 
birthplace, where 130,000 Jews 
were murdered. I fixated on the 
what ifs. What if, like the 6 mil-
lion victims of the Shoah, she 
couldn’t have left?
It was as if Nanny was 
reminding me to take nothing 
for granted.
I knew that I wanted to be a 
part of the Holocaust Memorial 
Center where I would be able to 
do more than randomly holler 
at someone or something. I 
wanted to learn to tell the story 
of the Holocaust in the best way 
I could.
A new docent class was 
beginning in a few months. 
Yet, after going on a few public 
tours, I doubted my ability to 
share the story of the Holocaust 
with visitors. I was not a 
Holocaust scholar or a survivor. 
I didn’t consider myself a story-
teller like the other docents I’
d 
heard. Oh, they were so good. 
Suddenly I was just that scared 
Hebrew-school kid whose 
stomach hurt. But this time I 
knew why, and that I had to do 
something about it.

I was accepted into the next 
docent class and paired with a 
mentor, Donna Sklar, of blessed 
memory. She taught me how 
to tell a story. Halfway through 
the training I told her that I 
was sure I could not do this. 
She smiled and told me that my 
lack of confidence was “right 
on time.
” Did I want the phone 
number of her other successful 
mentees who had also panicked 
halfway through? she asked, 
reminding me that her docents-
in-training always passed.
It wasn’t an option to ruin 
Donna’s perfect record.
Over the next few years, I 
spoke to groups about vigilance, 
the fragility of democracy, and 
why, when we talk about the 
horrors of the Holocaust, we 
proclaim, “Never again.
” More 
often than not, I felt compelled 
to explain that “never again” has 
become an aspirational phrase 
in a world where genocide 
based on race, religion and eth-
nicity continue to exist.
This past winter, as the U.S. 
Capitol was breached by those 
who didn’t believe in the veraci-
ty of the election results, I again 
thought of Nanny’s warning. It 
is happening here with a fueled 
ferocity that I thought I’
d never 
see. I’m tempted to throw my 
hands up and say there’s noth-
ing I can do. But when I think 
of the faces of the people whom 
I’ve met on my tours, I know 
that’s not an option. Because if 
I don’t want it to happen here, 
I have to do everything I can to 
try and make a difference. 

Linda Laderman is a Detroit-area 

writer and a volunteer docent at the 

Holocaust Memorial Center where she 

leads adult groups on discussion tours. 

This was originally published in Jewish 

Historical Society of Michigan’s jour-

nal, Michigan Jewish History, Vol. 61 

(Summer 2021) and is being reprinted 

with the permission of JHSM.

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