Thursday, November 4.1993 — THE BULLETIN —
Op-EdPage Fii^
Wounds Still freihfram^
By ARNO HERZBERG
IJNIONV NJ. (JTA> — Whenever the month of November appears on the calendar, I know that days of pain arid remembrance wait for me. Hesitant and almost discouraged, I tiirn the leaves of days jiassed and pause on the day which seems destined to harbor di$asters for oiir people.
Arno Herzberg was JTA bureau chief in Beri
It is heart wrenching to remember Nov. 9-10. Too much happened oh these days to be glanced over on the pages of history — Kristallnacht, the deaith of German Jewry in 1938; the United Natibns resolution equ^^^^ with racism in 1975; and the Berlin Wall coming down in 1989.
With a heavy heart we record these events. The wounds are still fresh and I wonder whether they will^ happened more than 50 years ago on the "Night of Broken Glass" is standing before us in all its ugliness, more vivid than ever,
Germans burning down the synagogues, tearing up the scrolls of our Law, burning .prayer books, coming into the houses of Jews to smash their furniture, tearing up their linens, destroying eVerything in sight, smashing windows of every business owned by a Jew, ransacking merchandise and, in the end, arresting all Jews and shipping them to concentration camps.
The good German burghers saw it all. They clapped when the Jewish men were marched through the streets. It was a gibripus achievement. Nobody can duplicate it so easily.
But can we forget this? Can I, or shall I, forgive what all these good Germans have done? I should forgive the Germans that they murdered my father and my mother and wiped out my whole family?
In the final analysis, we Were all alone 50 years ago, as
(UNTITLEP)
By RINA LEVINZON (Translated by Milea Tubinshlak)
Sometimes I dream of being hunted, No place to fun, tb find retreat
From being cornered and confronted By guns and dogs and marching feet. And there is nowhere 1 can get to. Blamed for some kind of blasphemy. And they confine me in a ghetto, iThey build Oswenzims just for me. 11 burn on medieval pyres, I And ovens turn me into ash, I With bloody hands and crimoh fires LEVINZON Pogroms devour my flesh. For thousands of grisly years I've fallen, given up my life. But I survive, and Fm still here, ; Through chance, perhaps,
• but I survive. •;
Israeli RIna Leyihzon won 1st prize In tiie 1992 XIII World Congress of Poets'TeacePoemGompetitlon." MIkaTubinsiilak madei from Edmonton.
THf GROWING WEEKS OF DARKIV FOR JONATHAU POLLARD
The weeks go by slowly for Jonathan Pollard, sentenced to life imprisonment; without the x)ssibility of parole; for passing American defence nformation to Israel.
Pollard has been
incarcerated for:
414
WEEKS
What Can You Do??
Organizations worldwide recognize that Pollard's punishment in no way fits his^crime. A collective voice of outrage at his excessive sentence - letters, telegrams, faxes and phone calls - can make a difference.
Voice your protest by writing to: — President Bill Clinton The White House Washirigton, ac 20500
Or phone:
The President's Comment Line 1-202-456-1111
The President's Fax: 1-202-456-2461
s new
a
Vancpuverite Cherle Smitti Is a former publisiier witti November i^ouse.
By CHERIE SMITH
Thirteen-year-old Dara has been hospitalized after a series of fainting spells, arid is afraid of going home. There is a danger lurking there that para can't ackriowledge, even to herself. Only when she returns home for a trial week does the full weight of Dara's fear come crashing into her consciousness.
As Dara plots her escape she begins, slowly and painfully, to put together the pieces of the puzzle. Finally, with the help of her hospital friends, the teen comes to confront her family's problems, in the only way she knows how.
Elizabeth : (Smprdin) Morantz. who moved to Halifax from Vancouver 21 years ago, has written a lyri-
■__U'
TAKING CARE OF ALABAMA
By Elizabeth Morantz Macmillan ($9,95 paperback)
Dara's mind reels — and the story swings back 14
years to the southern USA. For here is the real beginning of the story, when Dara's mother, Mary Louise, falls under the spell of a charming, dange'rous young man. who renames her Alabama, brings her home to Canada and changes her life forever.
cal. emotionally com] portrayal of the traumas experienced by a girl with deeply troubled parents.
In many respects, it is a story about contrasts:
North and South, kindness and cruelty, leaving and staying. Morantfs style also serves to contrast these themes. Dara's tale is writ-MORANTZ - Page 6
Nov;d- Dec-9
THE ALTfiUISTIC PERSONALITY Rescuers off Jews In Nazi Europe
By Samuel P. bilner and Pearl M. Ollner The Fr€^ Press 418 Pages $14.95 (paper)
By ARNOLD AGES
BROKEN GLASS everywhere evlclent In Jewish clothing shop front destroyed In Hanover in November 1938 during infamous Kristallnacht.
victims usually are. There were a thousand questions. Pid G-d die in the flames of the synagogues? Did he turn away from the concentration camps? Was the world deaf and blind, closing its borders and leaving us to the hatred of a whole nation? There were no answers. There was no understanding, not even a feeling word:
Even the Jewish leaders in America at that time were of a peculiar brand. I left Germany in 1938 at the end of September. Somebody sent me to Stephen Wise, the great leader. I tried to inform him about the hardships Jews in Germany had to bear and told hini that it was only a: matter of weeks before German Jews would be faced with a catastrophe. '-±'11:
His answer: We know everything that is going on in Germany; our American correspondents give us iall the details. This was the end of my audience. I left with a bitter taste in my mouth. This was the time when ne\ys about the persecution of Jews in Germany appeared in small print on some inside page of. American newspapers ^ if it was printed at ail.
There was soiriething unreal in the attitude of people who should have known better. Their judgment was clouded by the ingrained experiences of past times. Events had but-paced them, but they did not know it.
Have times changed now?
Kristallnacht was the end of a beginning and it was, at the same time, the beginning of an inglorious end. The Berlin Wall torn down in 1989 was the end of a post-war era that reminded the Germans what they have done to Jews and to others, but it inight also be the beginning of an end to remembering the past.
After all, those \yhp perpetrated the eyij are still alive and vyant to forget what they did.. Those who were born after the war were never told about the misdeeds of their fathers. History books used in German high schools devote hardly any space to the Holocaust. Sure, the Germans are eager to learn. They learned to adapt themselves from the republican regime to Hitler's Reich, and then again from the depth of
KRISTALLNACHTPage 6
Not since the publication of Nehamia Tec's When Light Pierced the Darkness have so many books appeared, chronicling the uplifting and much welcomed history of gentile rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust;
The books by Paldiel, the
ume follows Paldiers: country-by-cduntry aiidit 6f| gentile rescuers and supplies! faces (many in color photo-' graphs) to names associated with heroic acts ofsuccdririg Jews in distress.
In the biographies of the several hundred peoplfc featured infthese anthologies of
Arnold Ages, professor of French ai the University of Waterloo (Ontario), Is a specialist In modem Intellectual history."!.
Oliners, Block and Drucker confirm; itioreover, the lesson of the Biblical portion known as Yitro. One of the things we can learn from the arrival of Moses' father-in-lavy at the Israelite encampment in Sinai, say; the comentaries, is that not all people are hostile toward Jews and that some display extraordinary empathy with them.
The works under consideration here show the historical, psychological and human sides to the actions of righteous people during
personal risk, one notes that all kinds of people are represented — priests, min-isters, T^iplomats, writers, office workers, housewives, artisans, farmers and merchants.
The common thread which united them was: the belief that Jews, like other human beings, deserved the right to live and prosper.
In some cases religiou» beiiefsjpeinforced that sentiment; in others, religion played no role at all. The one common eleiheht that the Oliners  identify  is an
RESCUERS Portraits of Moral Courage In the Holocautt
By Gay Block and Malka Druckar Holmes & Molor 255 Pagei $29.95 (paper)
that epoch when the swastika came very close to blotting out the sun from civilization. ■■■ y'^.^..
The authors' app^ch to their subject is meritorious: no treacly sentinlentalism here, only a sober, sometimes dry renderiiig of heroic deeds of rescue performed by simple, honest men and women.
The depiction of their decency is, however, set against the backdrop of the Nazi invasion and occupation of Europe.
Whether dealing with France, PolandGreece or the Netherlands, Paldiel sets the stage by describing in a succinct fashion how the Nazi invasion of each of the 16 countries mentioned affected the resident-Jewish population.
He describes how in each case the scenario was somewhat different due to local circumstances, but inevitably the pursuit and murder of Jews became the Nazis' prime directive.
The Oliners pursue a^ so me what diffe rent geography; their concern is mapping the riiental interstices of gentile rescuers and showing — in one memorable chart — how rescuers were different from non-rescuers in the way they related to Jews.
Block-Drucker vol-
TEC
upbringing in a family setting where a sense of respbn-sibility for others was paramount.
Since the annihilation of Jews was most pronounced in Poland- Ukraine, Lithuania and Hungary— because of the presence of Nazi concentration camps on Polish soil — the longest sections in Paldiel's memoir deals with geritile rescuers in those countries.
There are epic sagas of perspnai sacrifice reported, of gentile activities in waxn-ing Jews of danger, in hiding and feeding them, of furnishing various papers and documents."r"
Many of those righteous , gentiles, having been identified by the' Yad Vashem in Israel, had been invited to Israel  and  honored in
STORIES — Page 10
THE PATH OF THE RIGHTEOUS Gentile Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust
By Mordecal Paldjel
Ktav 401 Pages $35 (paper)
/