Like many people who grew up in the Thumb of Michigan, the closest I came to knowing Jewish people was seeing the flannelgraph cutouts of ancient Israelites in Sunday School as a boy.
That all changed, though, when I traveled to Israel for the first time in 2012. I volunteered at a hospital there, where nearly everyone I worked alongside was Jewish. And since moving to Las Vegas nearly seven years ago, I count many Jewish people as close friends. One of those friends is Marton, a frail but lively 92-year-old. He wears a Torah scroll pendant around his neck and, unless we are going out on the town, is nearly always clad in bright blue button-down pajamas that match his vibrant eyes. As happy as those eyes usually are, there is still a tint of sadness to them. They have witnessed atrocities most of us never have and never will — death marches, starvation, bombings and cold-blooded murder at the hands of Nazi soldiers. Antisemitism — the hatred of Jews — was a regular part of Marton’s growing-up years. He recalls gentile children cornering him after school, in the early 1940s, bashing his head against the metal shutters of a shop as they called him “dirty Jew” and “Christ-killer.” On April 5, 1944, the decree was issued that all Hungarian Jews were to wear a yellow Star of David on their clothing. Not long after, Marton, his family, and the rest of Hungarian Jewry were rounded up by the Nazis, with some, like Marton, going to the Budapest Ghetto, and others to Auschwitz. Although Marton and all of his immediate family survived the Holocaust, the physical and emotional wounds of the hell-on-earth experience remain. A piece of shrapnel is still visible in the lobe of his ear, where it lodged itself after a bomb detonated next to him 75 years ago. And there are nightmares — he still wakes up screaming sometimes, the reality of what happened to him just as vivid in his mind as it was when he was living it. Tonight, at sundown, Yom Hashoah — Holocaust Remembrance Day— begins. It is a time of sadness and solemnity in the Jewish community, as it ought to be for the whole world. Unfortunately, despite pledges to “never forget,” the lessons of the Holocaust are lost on many, particularly those in my age group and younger. According to a survey conducted last year by the Claims Conference, “11 percent of U.S. Millennial and Gen Z respondents believe Jews caused the Holocaust.” But what do we expect when nearly half of them have seen Holocaust denial or distortion posts on social media or elsewhere online? Antisemitism has been around since the days of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and I have it on good authority that it will only get worse. At its core, antisemitism is Satanic, an evil obsession to harm and eventually annihilate the Jewish people, those God calls the apple of His eye. Education is not the key to stamping out antisemitism, but it’s certainly one of them. Thankfully, Thumb residents have an excellent resource for educating themselves and their children in the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills. I also recommend watching “They’re Not There: A Story of Hope” on YouTube. In it, Anneke Burke-Kooistra, who was originally from the Netherlands and later resided in Mayville until her death last November at the age of 82, tells the story of how her family hid Jewish people during the Holocaust. The mantra “Never again!” is right and just. But let’s remember what that dwindling number of people, people like Marton, keep telling us: It happened, and if we aren’t vigilant, it can happen again.
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AuthorTy Perry is a writer based in metro-Detroit. Archives
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