Opinion
JENNIFER CALFAS
EDITOR IN CHIEF
AARICA MARSH
and DEREK WOLFE
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITORS
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MANAGING EDITOR
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The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4A — Thursday, November 5, 2015
Claire Bryan, Regan Detwiler, Ben Keller, Payton Luokkala, Aarica Marsh,
Victoria Noble, Anna Polumbo-Levy, Melissa Scholke, Michael Schramm,
Stephanie Trierweiler, Mary Kate Winn, Derek Wolfe
EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS
Remembering, not rationalizing, the Holocaust
REBECCA TARNOPOL | VIEWPOINT
M
y
grandmother
was
always moving. It was in
this way, and in others,
that she wasn’t
(and never pre-
tended to be) a
“sweet old lady.”
At
her
wake
almost a year
ago, someone I
didn’t know very
well came up to
me, patted me
on the shoulder
and told me that
my grandmoth-
er was “such a
sweet old lady.” As I maintained the
same sad smile I had worn for the
past three hours or so, I knew that
this depiction, though well inten-
tioned, simply wasn’t accurate. Yes,
she played bridge regularly, didn’t
really know how to work e-mail and
always had candy out in Waterford
crystal bowls in her condo’s liv-
ing room. But once you got to know
her, she was far from demure, meek
and unassuming — nothing like the
“sweet old lady” some people remem-
bered her to be.
My grandmother was surely kind-
hearted and sensitive to her core.
However, she was also bold, unapolo-
getic and infectiously enthusiastic
about practically everything she
devoted time to. To her, one of the
worst things in life was to be stag-
nant. She regularly volunteered as a
docent at the Nation American Muse-
um of History, which is a Smithson-
ian institution, and on weekend visits
with my mother and sisters, she nur-
tured my love for history by telling
me stories of how she felt when JFK
was shot and what it was like to live
during the Cold War, all while briskly
strolling through exhibits. We had a
lunch reservation to catch, of course.
She also worked relentlessly to
continue broadening her horizons
through books, magazines, news-
papers and movies. Although she’d
sometimes call me and my cousins
for help on a particularly “millennial”
New York Times crossword puzzle
clue, she always seemed to know more
about current events and pop culture
than I did. I vividly remember when
she broke the news to me that Justin
Bieber was arrested for drunk driving.
She was always moving, whether
it was voraciously through books or
quite literally across the globe. All
while over the age of 60, she careened
through Old Delhi in the back of a
rickshaw, climbed nearly 500 feet
above ground across the Sydney Har-
bour Bridge, tossed water off a hotel
balcony onto unsuspecting tourists
in Florence, observed lions while
on safari in Botswana, attempted
to push the Leaning Tower of Pisa
back in place for a goofy photo and,
while sitting firmly next to me, sped
through Denali National Park in the
back of an off-road Jeep driven by
my uncle. She was both excited and
exciting, and being close to her meant
having the privilege to listen to her
adventures, stories and advice, all of
which I eagerly consumed over regu-
lar lunch and dinner dates.
On top of all this, my grandmother
was one of the most beautiful, ele-
gant and glamorous women I knew.
She lived and breathed “look good,
feel good” and refused to succumb to
most, if not all, old-lady expectations.
She favored her Stuart Weitzmans
and Ferragamos over more practical
orthotics, and always smelled subtly
of Chanel No. 5. Going grey was sim-
ply not an option, and so she visited
Andre Chreky, once the hairdresser
to First Lady Laura Bush, for a regu-
lar cut and dye. Anyone other than
her grandchildren simply could not,
and did not, call her “Grandma,” and
rest assured, she’d kindly (but curtly)
correct you if you did. And even when
she eventually became so sick to the
point where she couldn’t walk more
than five feet without feeling weak,
she refused to be seen in public in a
wheelchair. End of story.
But this glamorous and unapologet-
ic outer shell did not signal a self-cen-
tered and cold core. My grandmother
was, in fact, endlessly warm and pas-
sionate — about her family, her friends
and generally life itself. And this was
despite the sudden and utterly unex-
pected loss of her husband, my grand-
father, at 54. Although I hadn’t been
born yet, I knew that she’d never even
fathomed being widow in her 50s, and
that this cruel reality turned her world
upside-down. By the time I was old
enough to fully grasp what had hap-
pened, my grandmother seemed to
once again possess the world’s most
positive outlook on life, even when
hers had been so abruptly interrupted
by tragedy.
She constantly reminded me to
keep everything in perspective and
to remember that this too shall pass;
her personal story stood as a testa-
ment to this. She was genuinely and
truly invested in my pursuits, my
happiness, my health, and when she
held my hand and asked, “How are
you doing, dolly?” I knew she wanted
the real answer — even when it wasn’t
the easiest thing to hear. She seemed
to be enthusiastic and engaged in
nearly everything my cousins and I
did, and her affinity for white wine
and board games was only rivaled
by her love of smiling, laughing and
rejoicing in the warmth of family.
Although this past year without
my grandmother hasn’t been the
easiest, I take solace in the fact that
every day she stays with me, deeply
embedded in my own sense of self.
As I pause to remember her one year
later, I can almost feel her tapping
on my shoulder, reminding me not to
dwell too long. She wants me to keep
moving through life, just like she did,
and to never, ever sit still.
— Anne Katz can be reached
at amkatz@umich.edu.
ANNE
KATZ
Remember, then keep moving
“S
i fueras un animal, que animal
serías?”
“If you were an animal,
what animal would you
be?” my GSI in Spanish
232 asked the class.
Because I take ques-
tions like this seriously, I
thought it was a bit unfair
that he was expecting
us to answer with such
a limited vocabulary. On
an average day, I would
struggle with this ques-
tion in English. On a good
day, I could name only a handful of animals
in Spanish. As we went around the room, cats
and dogs had already been picked a few times
apiece, and while I liked dogs more, I could
relate better emotionally to cats. I could not
make myself pick either.
“Un pato,” I answered. A duck. In the middle
of Spanish class, I had quacked (bad puns make
the world a little better). My teacher arched his
brow, questioning my answer, my sanity.
“Si,” I replied.
I breathed. I needed the oxygen. Who had I
become in my life if I was now best compared
to a duck? What were the redeeming qualities
of a duck, anyway? They have waterproof feath-
ers and walk in a pseudo-graceful dance. Their
babies are cute, but most babies are rather ordi-
nary that way. Ducks are not exactly fierce and
beautiful dwellers of wild habitats. They are
also, I quote from a friend, “rather messy and
did not make a good house pet.”
I spent my weekend thinking about ducks.
I carved one into a pumpkin Friday night,
drew cartoons of them into the margins of
my anthropology notes. Ducks trailed behind
me as I wove through the tables in the din-
ing hall, and their webbed toes stepped into
puddles after my rain boots did. Though I did
not yet know the reason, I had to believe there
were more worthwhile attributes of ducks.
According to the unreliable Internet, ducks
seem to represent everything from freedom
to upcoming life transitions. As diverse as
the results were, adaptability was a common
theme. Through my irritation at the inconclu-
sive symbolism, I realized this searching for
an answer was more than glossy green birds
or plastic yellow bath toys. This was about
why my feeling of self-worth now depended
on the worthiness of ducks to be at the fore-
front of my mind.
Lately, I have been incessantly evaluating
myself. Needless to say, I did not pass my own
judgment in the “uses time effectively” category.
Time, now that I admit it, was at the root of all
of my self-appointed problems. I spend too much
time reading. I call my mom way too often. I sleep
later than I should. I did not fully take advantage
of a beautiful October. Time is not to be wasted.
As these thoughts began to invade my every-
day, my skepticism of larger life choices also
became more prevalent. Why am I studying Eng-
lish and anthropology? As of now, I have no clue
where that will get me in life. Am I wasting four
years? What makes what I am doing worthwhile?
Once one questions the very decisions that make
them who they are, one finds themself stumbling
further — what makes any attribute or activity
more worthwhile than another?
Worthwhile (adjective): such as to repay
one’s time, attention, interest, work, trouble,
etc. (Thanks, dictionary.com.)
Lately I have been so afraid of time, I have
been trying to use the dictionary in an effort
to achieve precision of language. (I have read
Lois Lowry’s “The Giver,” where they refrain
from using words like love, yet still I continue.)
However, this activity is extremely harmful to
me because I do not spend enough time talking
as it is. I do not need to focus on clipping the
hedges around what I say. In fact, I think I need
to water them. (I do not garden.) Which brings
me back to the definition of worthwhile — when
does what I say become or cease to be worth-
while? There is neither specific measurement
nor unit to measure in. The broadness of the
definition allows nearly all possibilities, seem-
ingly forcing me to create my own definition.
After discussing my semi-crisis with a
friend— from ducks to being worthwhile — she
PAYTON
LUOKKALA
Earlier this year, I spent a morn-
ing at the senior residence center a
block away from the high school I
attended. There, I met Ben, who sat
alone in the residence’s dining hall.
Ben had lost much of his memory
with age, unable to recall such sim-
ple things as what his sons do for a
living or where his grandchildren
attend school.
But one thing came up again and
again in conversation. Ben would
lift his left wrist, point to the faded
numbers and recite from memory:
“I was in Auschwitz. My number
was 138…”
The Holocaust has been a focal
point of recent politics, between
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu’s statement that Haj
Amin al-Husseini — one of the first
major Palestinian leaders — was
responsible for the “final solution,”
to Republican presidential candi-
date Ben Carson’s remarks that the
effects of the Holocaust would have
been relieved if the Jewish people
were allowed to have guns. In light
of these comments, it’s more impor-
tant that we remember the devasta-
tion of the Holocaust than try to
assign the blame to any ethnic or
national group. Worse yet is when
people downplay the significance
of the genocide by suggesting how
theoretical situations could have
alleviated at least some of the suf-
fering faced by the millions of vic-
tims, Jewish or not.
My family was lucky: Three of
my four grandparents were born
and raised in the United States,
and my maternal grandfather and
his family fled Poland before the
Nazi regime took over the country.
Only my Jewish heritage ties me
to the genocide. But my ties were
strengthened last May, when I had
the opportunity to visit the very
camps that forged experiences so
horrible that they remain vibrant in
even the most fractured memories.
Auschwitz-Birkenau
was
the
first camp I visited. My arrival at
the camp evoked more of a cog-
nitive dissonance than any over-
whelming emotion. It wasn’t until
I was physically there that I real-
ized nothing I experience now will
allow me to truly understand the
circumstances people were dis-
posed to in the camps.
Even the tangible items — the
rooms filled with an endless sea of
kitchenware, shoes without own-
ers, human hair collected from vic-
tims — could not and still cannot
make up for the time that separates
me from the harrowing reality of
the camp. Time has claimed the
barracks and gas chambers that
populated the massive complex,
leaving Birkenau mostly in remains.
Time has removed me from the
clatter of arriving trains, the shouts
of German guards, the confusion of
tongues, the booming of gunshots
and replaced such wretched noises
with silence. Time has turned the
site of war crimes and mass mur-
der into a sort of tourist attraction,
complete with shops that line the
way up to the “Arbeit Macht Frei”
sign in Auschwitz I (and not to
mention, free Wi-Fi therein).
The next day I visited Chelmno.
Chelmno, though established for
the same purpose as Auschwitz,
was a different world. The entire
camp consisted of two buildings,
an establishment especially tiny
when compared to Auschwitz, yet
it claimed the lives of hundreds of
thousands of Jews by way of gas
trucks. This is the reason Chelmno
has no visitors: Few people have
heard of it, since so few people sur-
vived its wrath.
Chelmno’s burial site is a clear-
ing in a forest located a couple miles
outside of the camp. It too was
silent, the only visitors being myself
and my classmates. The scene was
especially haunting since evidence
of the Nazis’ crimes pervades the
area. But the stages of natural suc-
cession have already begun to swal-
low the memorial grounds, weeds
and grasses growing irreverently
around the graves.
I realized there that while the
evidence of the Holocaust glares
at us today, it may not be there for-
ever, and the prospect of a world
without survivors began to scare
me. If I, as a Jew, felt a disconnect
between the history of the camps
and the way that history is memo-
rialized, I could only wonder what
impression the camps make on
someone who has no connections to
the atrocity of the Holocaust. Soon
there will no longer be people like
Ben, whose faded numbers imply
stories unspeakable yet invaluable
to the preservation of history, of
memory. It’s very possible that in
20 years, Auschwitz will merely be
another museum, Chelmno, anoth-
er forest. And with the number of
misguided comments made about
the genocide in the last few weeks,
it’s all the more important to real-
ize the Holocaust may become no
more than a rhetorical device used
to vilify another party.
I, therefore, feel a responsibil-
ity not only for myself, but for my
entire generation — perhaps the
last generation to have the privilege
to interact with survivors — to con-
tinue the memory of those who died
for remaining loyal to the values we
have freedom to practice today. It’s
on us to continue this memory so
the world may never forget the dev-
astation caused by the Holocaust.
Rebecca Tarnopol is
an LSA freshman.
T
he World Health Organization released
a jarring report Oct. 26 that identifies
processed meat as a group one car-
cinogen — meaning that it
has a firm link to cancer.
This finding adds traction
to the Meatless Monday
movement, which encour-
ages individuals to not eat
meat on Mondays in order
to improve their health and
to promote environmental
conservation. On a weekly
basis, University Dining
hosts Meatless Mondays
at East Quad. University
Dining presents Meatless
Mondays at East Quad as a
public health and environmental conservation
initiative; although altruistic, the fact that stu-
dents attending this dining hall on Mondays do
not have the freedom to choose whether to eat
meat or not brings about questions of the role of
the University in limiting food options.
Meatless Mondays are an example of the
extension of the University’s public health and
environmental initiatives in the food realm.
Other initiatives include choosing Michigan
farmers for vegetables, fruits, honey and milk
served in all of the dining halls, with East Quad
additionally serving meats less than 250 miles
away from campus. This allows for fresh and
local ingredients to be served in the dining
halls, while also reducing the carbon footprint
that would be created with large transporta-
tion distances. This initiative does not con-
troversially inflict a limitation of choice upon
students: Yes, students are less likely to have
honey in their tea from across the Atlantic, but
having locally grown honey has few drawbacks
for students if the University can negotiate
ingredients at a competitive rate that does not
alter meal plan costs. Furthermore, University
Dining has paired with a company known as
Sea to Table that helps the University find sus-
tainable fishery suppliers. Yet again, having fish
that comes from sustainable and eco-friendly
suppliers does little to have cause for students
to object if costs are not significantly increased.
However, Meatless Mondays go much fur-
ther than these other initiatives because meat
consumption is such an intrinsic and natural
act for a human to engage in. We are omnivores,
and although some choose to become vegetari-
ans (5 percent of Americans according to a 2012
Gallup poll), the vast majority of University stu-
dents and Americans consume meat on a daily
basis. In fact, the Wall Street Journal calculates
that the average American adult who consumes
meat eats about 0.36 pounds of meat a day. Meat
provides humans with essential proteins and
fats that facilitate survival, so the tendency to
consume meat is functional and healthy, but
of course damaging if overdone. The World
Health Organization highlights in their Oct.
26 report that consumption of 50 grams (0.11
pounds) of processed meat is linked with an 18
percent increased risk of colorectal cancer. Yet,
this increased risk is a relative risk increase,
meaning that it does not include personal risk
factors such as pre-existing conditions and
age in its calculations. The National Cancer
Institute’s colorectal calculator does not even
include risks for those under the age of 50.
University Dining mentions the association
between meat and cancer on their webpage
explaining Meatless Mondays, a notable con-
cern, but not a sweeping public health concern
considering that the association is only proven
for people consuming meat at ages far exceed-
ing the mean age of a Michigan student.
Furthermore, the notion in itself that stu-
dents’ access to meat should be limited over-
steps a previously established boundary. The
University of Michigan Dining website includes
pages that provide explanations of accommo-
dations for students with special nutritional
needs or dietary constraints from religious
observations. This ideology is compromised
when East Quad only serves vegetarian options
on Mondays, not accommodating the majority
of students who eat meat on a daily basis.
Considering that the association between
colorectal cancer and processed meat con-
sumption for those under the age of 50 is not
proven, the public health justifications do not
seem to outweigh the University’s own aim
to accommodate all students. After all, dur-
ing various religious holidays with dietary
restrictions, University Dining strives to
accommodate religious students but does not
universally eliminate access to meat and other
foods to all students. Meatless Mondays at East
Quad exemplify a doctrine of public health and
environmental sustainability being pushed
onto students at the expense of student agency
in food choice.
— Ashley Austin can be reached
at agracea@umich.edu.
ASHLEY
AUSTIN
A column about ducks
Meatless Mondays
of indoctrination
told me that to her, “worthwhile”
means it helps you to better under-
stand the world. Mathematicians
have numbers, scientists have theo-
ries, and writers have words. What-
ever gets us through the day, it seems,
is worthwhile. By this I mean that we
(though there are exceptions) feel
happier when we think we under-
stand what is going on around us,
even if this understanding does not
have a direct transition into any tan-
gible “worth.”
“Worthwhile” is a dark pond we
feel brave just for dipping our toes
into. That said, how do we decide
when we are deep enough into the
water? We must just go with our gut
feeling, I suppose.
Through all of the doubts, I have
concluded only this: If we are doing
something, somewhere along the
way we must have already decided
it to be worthwhile.
We might ask ourselves then:
What is worthwhile about reading
a column about ducks?
— Payton Luokkala can be
reached at payluokk@umich.edu.