PR Straight Talk

I am the son of German Jewish refugees who escaped Hitler.  My father lost most of his family in the Holocaust.  My parents came to America to survive.   As I grew up, I became aware of the magnitude of the horror of what had transpired in Nazi Germany.  That the human mind could descend into tyranny, evil, domination and control - and unspeakable atrocities.  That leaders could sway and control the masses  based on the fixation of an ideology that offered hope amidst economic depression and national despair by scapegoating and annihilating the lives of minorities.

Out of this experience it became my fervent desire to become an advocate for a better, kinder, more tolerant, more hopeful world for all.  As a boy, I remember looking out the window and imagining people of all ethnicities, creeds and religions encircling the globe, holding hands together in peace and love.  I saw the possibilities inherent for humanity if every human being was encouraged to realize his or her potential to the fullest.  I saw people of different races, religions, genders, orientations speaking to each other, dialoguing with each other, understanding each other, tolerating and even loving each other.  I saw them celebrating their differences, united in their common quest for life, freedom, fulfillment, prosperity and happiness.  I saw an end to poverty and a new era of abundance for every man, woman and child on our planet - material abundance, and creative, spiritual abundance. 

This Dream is not unique to me.   Millions of people around the world yearn for the realization of that Dream.  I believe that a point has arrived in human history where a critical mass of people have emerged, wanting unity, reconciliation and a better world for all.   It has taken millions of years for humanity to arrive here, for consciousness to have reached a point in numbers where something spiritually and culturally unique and exceptional may be on the verge of actualizing in reality.

The yearning has been there for a long time.  It was there at the outset of the war for American Independence, and seeded in the Declaration.  It was there towards the end of the Civil War, and seeded in Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.  It was there after World War I and seeded by Woodrow Wilson in The League of Nations, and later seeded in the creation of the United Nations, and in the Declaration of Human Rights architected by Eleanor Roosevelt.

I also believe that that is the yearning of the millions who have responded to the message of Barack Obama’s inspirational rhetoric.

What the huge response to Senator Obama’s messages reflect is a great hunger for a nobler, finer kind of society and politics - one that brings us together, that reinvokes the better possibilities among and between people, that allows for the actualization of human potential in every person, that ushers in a newer more humane world - one of peace, of an end to wars and conflicts, of reconciliation between peoples, of economic prosperity here at home and in the world, of an end to poverty - of lasting hope and promise.

Senator Obama has tapped into this great need and hunger.  He has become, in his rhetoric, an eloquent and skilled spokesperson for our nobler aspirations.

Perhaps my own vision emerged from the tragic circumstance of my family – from parents who suffered through the Nazi era and came to America in search of relief from persecution, of freedom and the right to be.   I learned from their experience that words such as “freedom” - “human dignity” - “equality” - are sometimes fought for, and hard won.  I learned from them and through the trials of my own journey that there are people who would deny us our freedom and our right “to be”.

There have always been ideologues of the dark side, people who need to control and dominate others, who wish to suppress the light and the natural God-given right of  human beings to flourish and self-actualize in freedom.

And so we have a paradox.  One the one hand, humanity wishes to move forward towards the realization of the Dream.  On the other hand, we must be aware – and our elected leaders must be aware – of the dark forces wishing to suppress the Light.  I believe we are in this era now – and that the forces of Islamic extremism must not be underestimated in their desire for tyranny, domination and control.   They would have the rights of women entirely suppressed.  They would have those of other religions – should they not convert to their extreme ideological “religious” positionality – wiped out. 

We need to learn from the lessons of the past, when we discovered that this kind of radical tyrannical ideological determination has no heart, and cannot be accommodated.

I believe we CAN hold onto the Dream – and move forward with the Dream – but should not be naïve in our thinking that we can negotiate with terrorists.  We must hold onto the Light – but also realistically confront the forces of darkness with steadfastness and resolve.  It is a different time than the Cold War.  When John F. Kennedy said “Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate,” he was dealing with people who were not attached to extremist religious ideological positionality.

My concern about Barack Obama is that while he articulates the Dream that people yearn to see actualized, he may be more naïve in his readiness to dialogue and negotiate with the forces of darkness.  It would be a terrible mistake for him, as President of the United States, to hold one-on-one negotiations with a man who stupidly says the Holocaust did not exist, and who, along with his Mullahs, is determined to destroy the State of Israel.   To give stature and weight to this man and his positions, without preconditions, could be very dangerous.  One must question the naivete of such a proposition, or whether there are darker elements lurking in Obama himself.

Robert Kennedy spoke of the Dream – and I believe he genuinely touched upon it in his awareness and his rhetoric.   The difference, I believe, between Robert Kennedy and Barack Obama, is that RFK would have soberly and without naivete seen today’s threats for what they are – as impediments to the flowering of the Dream.   As to Obama, one has the right to ask, does naivete and lack of experience cast a shadow on his intentions?  Does something darker lurk behind his motives…and his rhetoric?

As we aspire to the Dream, a vital lesson is that we not ignore the Shadow - for Light and Shadow dwell in humans - and we must be discerning as we yearn for the former while allowing ourselves to clearly see the latter.

The anniversary of my late Dad’s birthday was just a few days ago.  Though he was not a concentration camp inmate, Dad was nonetheless a Holocaust survivor and a decorated war hero.  He was a strong man, and yet a kind man, and I learned from him that strength and kindness were not incompatible bedfellows.

I remember as a child watching a movie starring actor Bob Cummings.   His character made a statement I never forgot:   “Never mistake kindness for weakness.”   He could have been speaking of my Dad.

My dad’s name was Owen, but he was born “Oskar” in a poor section of Dortmund, Germany – in the Ruhr Valley, in the north of the country.  My mother Sonny, born as “Sophie,” was from the same city, though she lived in a wealthier community on the “opposite side of the tracks.”  We are Jewish, but to have been Jewish in my father’s and mother’s time and place – in the 1930’s and 40’s in Germany - was perilous and often catastrophic for those whose only “crime” was their religion.

My father and his brother Ellis somehow escaped the wrath of the Nazis, and fled Germany through Holland and Belgium.  They were often persued by the SS, and as they fled through the Belgian Forest, were chased by Nazis with growling German Shephards at their heels.  Dad somehow got onto a ship in Antwerp headed for New York.  He was a stowaway, as he had no money.

When the ship arrived in New York, Dad slept on benches in Central Park, as a hobo.  He had no family in this country.  He was penniless and he didn’t speak English.  He had left behind his mother, father and six brothers and sisters.  His intention was to earn money to bring them to the USA.  But good intentions were not to be realized.

The first act of kindness my father experienced in this country was from the Salvation Army.  Dad heard about a halfway house they ran at the time on Tenth Avenue and 23^rd Street.  There, he was provided room and board at no cost until he could find work.  He did - in the Garment Center - where he made enough to survive.

Not much later, Dad received word that his mother had been murdered back in Germany. During a sweep of the Jewish sections of Dortmund by the Nazis, as Jews were rounded up into trucks to be transferred to the freight trains destined for places like Auschwitz and Treblinka, his beloved mother Henny had been bayoneted and killed in the street in front of her house.  She refused to board the truck and tried to fight off the assailants.  To a painful and tragic end.

Henny was a short woman, less than five feet tall.  She was slightly plump, with black hair and strong shoulders and a cherubic face.   She and her husband – my grandfather Sam – were poor people with a large family.  Often, there wouldn’t be enough food on the table, but somehow Henny made food stretch, as the time when a skimpy chicken embellished with homegrown vegetables would constitute the evening meal for six days in a row.

My Dad loved his mother with all his heart – and it broke his heart to see his Mom work so hard in the kitchen and in the house, with so few resources.  Henny was a feisty woman, but my Dad only remembers her kindness and her love for her family.

How devastating for her to bear witness not only to her own attempted capture, but the capture of her children on the same day.  Four of them had been grabbed by the Nazis alongside her, and word came back that they perished in Auschwitz.  No doubt that her attempt to fight off her attackers was motivated by a vain attempt to save her precious offspring.

But growing up, I rarely heard Dad speak of that time and of those events.  Years later, in a place called Fleischmann’s, New York, a rural town in the Catskill mountains where my parents often vacationed during the summertime, I found myself sitting with Dad on the porch of the cottage that he and Mom rented each year.

It was early evening, about six o’clock.   The sun was beginning to set.  The sky was lit a pale orange with hints of faded blue.  The air was still save the sound of birds chirping gleefully in the background.

I asked my father, “Tell me about your mother.  How did she die?”

From nowhere, a wale erupted from inside him, as if the pain of what he had endured, and the deepest part of his grief around the loss of his mother, had suddenly released itself after more than thirty years.  Dad was not a crier, but this cry encompassed a pain held for decades.  After sobbing relentlessly for nearly ten minutes, Dad finally looked at me and said, “She refused to board the truck.  So they bayoneted her in the street.”

I held Dad’s hand, and simply sat there with him as we looked out at the setting sun from that back porch.  Just the song of birds filled the air now.  Then, Dad said, suddenly, “I should have saved her.”

I realized in that moment that he carried a guilt, a guilt that had lived inside him for years.  I continued to hold my father’s hand, and gently whispered into his ear, “It wasn’t your fault, Dad.  You could not have saved her.  You could not have foreseen what would happen.  You have to know that.”

Dad whispered back, “Thank you son.”  Then he held my hand harder, and declared out loud, as if not only to me, but to humanity:  “Kindness, son.  Kindness is the only answer.  Kindness towards each other.  Tolerance for each other.”

This declaration by my father had not only been shaped by the oppression of the Nazis, but by war.  During World War II, as if what he endured in the Holocaust was not enough, Dad chose to serve in Patton’s Army and as a soldier in Darby’s First Ranger Battalion.  He and his buddies hit the beaches of Anzio on the first wave assault (he was one of only a small number who survived that landing).  Interestingly, Dad always used to talk about how The Salvation Army were the only ones who were in the foxholes with the GI’s at Anzio.  “They were there,” he said.  “For the second time in my life, “they were there to help.”

Dad knew that tyranny must be fought.  He detested war, especially after his own experience, but he also knew that sometimes war was a regrettable but necessary option.  He did once, however, say, “Wars must be chosen very carefully and only when there is no recourse.”

I once videotaped an interview of my father, asking him about his war experience.  When he reminisced about that Anzio assault, he cried again.  This time it was for his buddies, many of whom were killed at his side as the Rangers made their way up the beachhead.  “They fell all around me, and I never understood why I was saved.  I could even hear the bullets whiz by my ears,” he said.  “There but for the grace of God…”.

With all this, Dad chose to see the glass of life as half full instead of half empty.  He was always one with a deep appreciation for life, in spite of the horrific tragedies he personally suffered through.  I remember him as a grateful man, who while he recognized and sometimes grappled with life’s bittersweetness, also viewed that same life as so very precious.

I never remember my Dad saying an unkind word to any person he ever met, irrespective of his or her race or religion.  I actually even think he had ultimately forgiven his persecutors and the slayers of his family – and that would be a mastership that one can only view with awe.  In my Dad I remember a man who bestowed his kindness and unconditional love and acceptance towards everyone he encountered.

 That he inculcated these values in me is undeniable.  And when it came time for my father to leave this Earth, I remember how hard he held onto the life he regarded as so precious.  He fought the ravishes of a blood cancer that ultimately took him, which perhaps on a metaphysical level had transposed physically into the manifestation of all the cruelty he had borne witness to.  For Dad, while strong, was also a deeply sensitive person.

In the hospital, on the last day I saw him alive, I recognized that he had surrendered to his fate, but I also remember that he was bathed in an aura and glow that I can only call sacred.  He could not talk.  I whispered to him in his ear, “I love you so much Dad.”  He mouthed the words “I love you.”

I feel that my Dad departed this world with a deep reverence for Life, a reverence that had been deepened by his ordeal.  I could see in his eyes a sadness, too, for he had lived through much, and seen much of man’s inhumanity to man – both during the Holocaust and then during war.  Perhaps the most painful memory he held onto was the loss of his Mom and the cruelty that had been heaped upon her.

It was perhaps because of his losses, and his hard-earned lessons of life’s fragility, that he understood that this same life was a rare and utterly valuable gift:  a gift worth embracing in a world that so desperately needs healing and deep reconciliation between its many peoples.