Kristallnacht 2011

ב"ה                                                                                                                                             

12 Cheshvan 5772                                                                              November 9, 2011

                               Uneasy Coexistence of the Sacred and Profane

           

In Germany and parts of Austria in 1938, today and tomorrow, a series of attacks against Jews and Jewish institutions and businesses was unleashed --- 1,668 synagogues were ransacked and 267 set on fire, while in Vienna alone 95 houses of prayer were destroyed --- known as Kristallnacht, Night of Broken Glass. A special commemoration was held at the Valley Stream Jewish Center --- jointly with Temple Hillel and the Jewish Community Center of East Hempstead --- hearing from guest speaker, and period victim, Herbert Blum, 85, native of Ichenhausen, Germany. Fortunate he was to emigrate in December 1939, and, when drafted in the infantry of the U.S. Army in April 1944, he saw heroic combat in Belgium as well as in Germany. Professionally successful in his adopted country, Blum practices law and accounting, while being a Manhattan resident.

As usual, for our shared Jewish history, so often tragic, our south shore community continues to offer examples of depressing intra-communal division: the Orthodox Jewish contingent noting watershed events separately, while the local, ill-mannered, and misnamed The Five Towns Jewish Times persists in its twin sins of omission and commission, intentionally remaining indifferent and silent in covering news of Sephardim, along with Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist Jews! The appeal to area Orthodox rabbis is renewed, for the case of in re FTJT, and its vainglorious publisher-editor, is a matter for them to resolve --- taking the perpetrator to the proverbial woodshed for some dressing down, and, for the sake of our grandchildren, instruction in manners, derech heretz, the proper way to interact. 

This evening at the ECOSOC Chamber of the United Nations, a roundtable discussion ensued on Justice and Accountability after the Holocaust. Greeted by UN's Officer-in-Charge Stephane Dujarric, and moderated by the deputy director of the UNO's Outreach Division Ramu Damodaran, five prominent historians and legal professionals focused on the role of the judiciary in Nazi Germany, and the establishment of the current international justice system after WW II. For this hefty task Cecile Aptel (law professor and co-chair of the International Bar Association's War Crimes Committee), Patricia Heberer (historian with the Center for Adavanced Holocaust Studies at the USHMM), Hon. Irwin Cotler (MP, and former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada), and Karen Obada Mosoti (Head of the Liaison Office of the International Criminal Court to the UN) addressed the judiciary's complicity in upholding discriminatory Nazi laws, which culminated in the Holocaust; they also referred to today's role of nations and courts in protecting vulnerable populations, holding war criminals accountable and preserving democratic values.

A short film dramatically illustrated the defense of following orders from superiors, in the advent of the November 21, 1945 Nuremberg trial of surviving Nazi war criminals to be a sham. US Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, lead prosecutor, eloquently demonstrated the Nazi conspiracy to terrorize, prepare, and execute aggressive war, goading its population into silence and indifference as vulnerable minorities --- Jews, in the main, but also homosexuals, Communists, unionists, Roma (Gypsies), the disable --- were systematically exterminated as undesirable.

We need to be aware that all victims had a name: that saving a life, according to a Talmudic dictum, is tantamount to saving the world entire; and the loss of a single life diminishes us all. It behooves us to honor the Righteous Among the Nations --- including the Stamos family selflessly, with imminent danger to themselves, preserved the nascent Matathias unit --- noting that the disappeared Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg has been elevated to mythic status in his attempt to save Jews, becoming an honorary citizen of Hungary, Israel, the United States, as well as Citoyenneté canadienne honoraire (one day, my native Greece, too, will join this distinguished roll).        

Further, we are admonished to adhere to Prof. Yehuda Bauer's addenda to the Ten Commandments, in order to prevent future genocides: thou shalt not be a victim, thou shalt not be a perpetrator, and thou shalt not be a bystander. Clearly, we are enjoined to oppose state-sanctioned incitement, and the culture of hate, recently on display again in the UN conference dubbed "Durban III," from which 14 Western nations declared non-participation! The test of every society is how it deals with the powerless in its midst.

In time, there remained time to turn from expert testimony to the audience's comments and questions. The threatening gestures of Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, intent on the elimination of UN member, Israel, from the world map confronts civil society with a challenge not yet effectively dealt, much less eliminated; the dastardly episodes of man's inhumanity so graphically and ad nauseaum on display in such locales as Cambodia, Darfur, Myanmar (Burma), Rwanda.

For my part, I was recognized by name from the panel to offer a few observations and pose a question. There was a tip of my hat to the moderator, whom I reminded also so ably chaired the previous United Nations forum, Give Peace another Chance, and the Hon. Irwin Cotler, who persuasively made the case against the fundamentally flawed World Racism Conference Commemoration assessing a decade since its tragic inception in Durban, South Africa. With gladness of heart, I hailed Canada, and its wonderful sons, Messrs. Cotler, and the country 22^nd Prime Minister Stephen Harper!

Getting tough, Canada signed the Ottawa Protocol to combat anti-Semitism, "recognizing it as a pernicious evil and a global threat against the Jewish People, the State of Israel and free, democratic countries everywhere. Further, the prime minister stated, "Those who would hate and destroy the Jewish People would ultimately hate and destroy the rest of us as well." Identifying myself as a Greek-Sephardic-Jew, proudly living in our blessed America, I expressed my acute anxiety that Greece continues to experience anti-Semitic spasms with periodic attacks on synagogues, Holocaust memorials, desecrations of cemeteries, even the Jewish Museum in Athens, with the government willing but unable to secure the permanent safety of the country's remaining 5,000 Jews.                                                                                                                         

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an established forgery more than a century old, continues to be openly promoted and sold; the notorious Kostas Plevris, author of The Jews: The Whole Truth, is a Holocaust denier; while the extremist LA.O.S. Party stands to make advances from Greece's economic and political crises. In a dispatch from Athens, by dear friend and fellow B'nai B'rither Matos Borbolis, we learn that the role of the party's leader, the insidious Yorgos Karatzaferis, was critical in forming the current interim government headed by Loucas Papademos. After the 9/11 attacks in New York, the politician posed the question "why were all the Jews warned not to come to work that day?" before the Greek parliament. On a televised debate with Israel's ambassador to Greece he said: "Lets talk about all these tales of Auschwitz and Dachau"; in 2002 during a parliament session he asked the then Greek prime minister: "Is it true that your daughter secretly married a Jew?"; and during Operation Cast Lead in 2008, Karatzaferis said that the IDF was acting "with savage brutality only seen in Hitler's time towards helpless people."

In a different context, Sir Winston Churchill opined: Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. For decent people, let this forum be the start of ongoing dialogue to advance the cause of peace through understanding and tolerance.

Sincerely, and with fraternal affection,                                                          

Asher                                                                                                      

Prof. Asher J. Matathias                                                                                  

312

Longacre Avenue, Woodmere, NY 11598-2530

                                            

516-374-2958 Mobile: 369-5799 AsherJmat@Aol.com  

*Thanks for the posting. R.M.B., Atlantic Beach, NY

**Very Interesting. N.F.N., West Falls, CT

*Well written! E.E-P., Cedarhurst, NY

**Thank you. G.F., NJ

*Dear Asher, I am always amazed by your command of history as much as I am by your passion for our Jewish heritage and the future of our people. Thanks for sharing this most learned account with me! It was great seeing you at the polls on Tuesday. What a long but most worthwhile day! I think we definitely should go ahead and set up "Checkers, Chess and Chat" at the Community Enrichment Mini-Center at 1026 Broadway in Woodmere. Please give me a call to discuss. Your friend, Ann (S.S.), Woodmere, NY