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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