Never Again

When I was twelve years old my mom married a Jewish man who lived with his two children, both older than me, and his father who had immigrated to the United States fleeing the Russian revolution. Sol, my step-father, wasn't very religious – I expect Korea had cured him of that – but he was very much aware of being a Jew in that he was conscious of the history of the persecution of the Jews. He knew that any family his father had left behind was long gone and his children would never know them.

My step-father was an intelligent man, although if it could be said he had a failing, it was that he tried to use his brains on figuring out how to avoid work. Instead of instilling a strong work-ethic in his children, he taught them how to take advantage of the system rather than working for what they wanted. That was his interpretation of the dream – his father had struggled to make sure his children had the good life in America and Sol was going to take advantage of everything he could scheme out of it.

Be that as it may, dinner conversation would usually consist of some subject of the history of the Jews, either that of the Bible, or the Russian pogroms my step-grandfather had fled, or – most especially – the Holocaust. As I entered my teens, I was already quite familiar with such figures such as Eichmann, Himmler and Goebbels.

When the miniseries Holocaust aired on TV, the Fligman household was glued to the television set each night it was on. And even though we had school the next day, the conversation after the program went on well into the night and continued the next evening at dinner up to the time the new installment came on.

Holocaust was a milestone for Sol. He felt it was the first time the general American public had really been exposed to the horrors of the war. It was one thing to watch a documentary or see a film in the cinema, but it was another to have it in your face right in your own living room.

I recently re-watched Holocaust and while it was no less spellbinding, it had changed for me. Instead of watching it with 15 year old eyes, I was now watching it with 45 year old eyes and those thirty years made a big difference. Not only through my own experiences, but also the experiences of the world at large.

If, thirty years ago, you had asked me what the world would be like, I would have told you with all the bright-eyed optimism of a budding liberal that it would be a lot better than it was. That things would improve, that we would learn from the past so that horrors like the Holocaust would not ever reoccur. People would be smart enough to make sure that it happens never again.

That was Sol's mantra – never again. I think it goes without saying that Sol was a fervent Zionist and while he never had any desire to go live in a kibbutz – god forbid he should grub in the dirt! – he was fanatical in his support of Israel. I remember when that Diane Keaton movie came out where she played a pro-Palestinian radical who was recruited by the Mossad to help them assassinate a terrorist. It didn't matter that her character did assist the Israelis and probably spent the rest of her life totally messed in the head because of it, just the fact that she had once been pro-Palestinian made her nearly every bad word in the book. (My personal favorite from Sol's repertoire was "who-a.") As for Diane Keaton herself – Sol put her up there along with Jane Fonda on his list of American female traitors for simply playing a pro-Palestinian in a movie. Diane, along with Jane, was a big who-a.

Regardless of his shortcomings and his politics, Sol was a good step-father and I loved him dearly. He has been gone many years, yet for the first time I wish he was here simply to get his reaction on what is currently going on in Gaza. This evening as the Israeli troops crossed the border and started their march into the occupied territory, I wanted to ask him how that is any different from Hitler crossing the border into Poland. Or how is it right that they're bombing women and children? Or how is it okay for them to push out a people who have lived there for as long as they have and have every right to be there too? How is it different?

I'm sitting here in a Starbucks near downtown Fort Lauderdale because I needed to get away from the news, but still I had to pull out my hand held and write down these notes. I think if we had buried Sol he would be rolling in his grave for me even asking these questions. If he were here, he might even call me a who-a. But I would persist. Why? Why was it genocide when the Nazis did it, but it's not when the Israelis do it? I know what Sol would say.

Never again.

--->Susan