Forum
FORUM The Wrong Number of Children Your June cover showing a Jewish family observing Yom haShoah in their home was a beautiful picture, but it had the wrong number of children in it. The picture...
...The Editor-Artist-Photographer who thought up this cover thinks well...
...Certainly this was true of the brave people of Denmark and Sweden who refused in large numbers to collaborate with the Nazis...
...I said so clearly in my letters...
...I was lucky, for there right in front of me was sitting the maestro himself...
...Rcif cannot make that distinction...
...I know such Austrians personally, and I have expressed my vast admiration and gratitude to them in every way I can...
...David Weiss, who felt unable to follow the invitation to Austria...
...The United States adheres to this policy of internationalization today...
...In fact, the real question is: Should Russian Jews remain an exception or should they be placed on the same footing with other refugees...
...After reading my June issue of moment, however, these six yellow tulips took on a new meaning for our family...
...We must not simply remember what happened to our people in the Shoah...
...That is not a "hard-line" approach...
...It is incumbent upon us, the survivors, to remember with ritual and observance the horrors of the Holocaust years...
...All during that period there existed in Holland a considerable number of Dutch Nazis, and it was consistently true that the Nazis could carry out their heinous crimes only with the cooperation of the local populace...
...Toscanini's expressions of love and concern for the Jews in Palestine convinced me that he would be opposed to any force, including the current "intifada" or other PLO attacks, which threatened the survival of the new-born home of the survivors of the Holocaust...
...Logic, Law and Policy Refute Rozenman's Case," Forum, June 1989...
...Taking into account that a flower may contain from zero to over one thousand stamens, there is great variety in the number and structure of pistils...
...No windows...
...What if a million Jewish families did this...
...A forgetting so soon, in the conviviality of the ornate Grand Hall of the Society of Physicians of Vienna, at a banquet in Vienna's Town Hall, cannot but imply that even the unthinkable is soon to be set aside...
...I shall always attempt to keep their memory alive with the six million whom we commemorate on Yom haShoah, but perhaps with a different symbol that the one that Golinkin suggests...
...As a soldier in the U.S...
...Abba Lessing Associate Professor Lake Forest College Lake Forest...
...Suck on salt, eat maror, smell Your own shit in the toilet bowl...
...In your repeated dreams, you'll walk In a dimwitted dangerous city...
...But the vast scale of persecutions and, finally, of genocide carried out by Austrians and Germans were not the disparate actions of individuals, not even the disparate actions of very many individuals...
...These facts seem extraordinarily significant...
...Shall we memorialize the Holocaust with our families without reflecting more on the need not to remain silent or passive in the face of injustice...
...He stressed how impressed he was that in a country where everybody had to struggle to overcome the hardships of emigration, there were musicians who sacrificed all for the sake of making good music...
...I related casually to one of my fellow passengers 'who happened to be Giora Feitman) my encounter in early 1937 with Toscanini and his report on the Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra...
...I question, however, using tulips as a symbol for the remembrance...
...Aaron Goldman Washington, DC When I Met Toscanini Your article "When Toscanini Went to Palestine" (June 1989) was of very special interest to me, because I am a live witness to some of the events described...
...I approached him and, instead of asking for an autograph, I asked him about his impressions from his tour in Palestine...
...To my annoyance, six yellow tulips appeared in the red bed...
...We must know the heart of the persecuted and oppressed everywhere, because we were victims in Nazi Europe...
...their own country who still feel bitterness in their hearts...
...receives in th meantime an offer from a third countrv the applicant must go to that country save for some overriding reason (e.g., tt reunite a minor child with a parent already here...
...The story has an epilogue...
...Illinois Dutch Tulips Not the Way to Commemorate the Holocaust Your June cover photo was very effective...
...Ann Schwarcz Monroeville, Pennsylvania Against Yellow Tulips Heic is a poem I wrote entitled "Remembering The Holocaust: Against The Use of Yellow Tulips...
...Under this policy of internationaliza tion, of which the U.S...
...This chai may be an added affirmation of the Jewish determination to survive as a people...
...His grave face immediately brightened into a big and hearty smile...
...Wc are both in complete agreement with Rabbi Golin-kin's excellent suggestions ("How Should We Commemorate the Shoah in Out Homes...
...Franklin C. Marcus Silver Spring, Maryland The writer is a former Foreign Service officer who worked in the Bureaufoi Refugee Programs...
...Law, If Israel Offers Asylum, They Are Not Refugees Mr...
...Robert L Cohen Brooklyn, New York Erasing the Mark of Cain In his letter ("Why I Accepted the Invitation David Weiss Declined," Forum, June 1989) explaining why he did accept the invitation of the Austrian Society of Allergy and Immunology to attend a festive meeting of "Old Austrian" immunologists in Vienna, Dr...
...This definition has its roots in the aftermath of World War II and the United Nations' struggle to resettle the millions of people rendered homeless by the War...
...Give that S18 (or S180) donation to a Jewish educational organization because ignorance and apathy, more than anti-Semitism, are the gravest threats to Jewish survival in the Diaspora today...
...It was the behavior of the Austrian-German collective that has burdened and stigmatized that society as a whole...
...Congratulations, Rabbi Golin-kinl You have instinctively chosen the perfect flower as a symbol of the Shoah...
...Strap cruelty to your own forehead, Smash every spider on the wall...
...I heartily agree with Noah Golin-kin's article, "How Should We Commemorate the Shoah in our Homes...
...and S.S...
...What Dr...
...Your readers should be aware that the movement lo save the Jews of Yemen is no longer a one-man operation, but a growing movement of concerned and committed individuals who understand that we have a moral imperative to do everything possible to save these desperate people...
...I took courage and entered the lobby of the Grand Hotel, where he was staying...
...It epitomizes the outsize focus on the Holocaust-—on death and victimization—in contemporary Judaism...
...Furthermore, adding together the six petals, six stamens and six parts of the pistil, gives us a total of eighteen...
...The American Council to Save Yemenite Jews has now merged into and become a part of the International Coalition for the Rescue of the Jews of Yemen, based at 150 Nassau Street, Suite 1238, New York, NY 10038, telephone: (212) 7665556...
...It is in reaction to your recent article about commemorating the Holocaust ("How Should We Commemorate the Shoah in Our Homes...
...Our Austrian friends are, I hope, serious in their endeavors to this end...
...If we choose the latter, they must go to Israel...
...True, refugee is not defined by the number of countries willing to admit him or her...
...Or 150,000 Dutch Jews, 140,000 perished...
...Your perspective ' 'Between Commenlaty and Tikkun" (June 1989) is a step in the right direction...
...June 1989), I think he hasn't gone far enough...
...Minna Feibelman Akron, Ohio The Tulips' Symbolism of Six My husband, George, is a Hungarian-born survivor of the Holocaust...
...Jerome Degen Brooklyn, New York IIV aqne—Ed...
...June 1989...
...But he has to think a little better...
...No one will see you again...
...And it was done with the enthusiastic approval and active participation of the great majority of Austrians and Germans...
...Honor the memory of a righteous gentile who saved Jewish lives by joining the Shalom Center and pledging to do one positive action a month for world peace, to prevent a Nuclear Shoah which now threatens all of humanity...
...I am convinced that confronting the remnants of anti-Semitism and misinformation about American Jews in Austria, as in other countries, can effectively be dealt with only through increased contacts and a large-scale dialogue between American Jews and Austrians...
...This week, in time for Yom haShoah, my tulips bloomed...
...I, myself, have lost family from Holland: my father's sister, her husband, and their two children, my cousins, who lived in Amsterdam and were deported to Bergen-Belsen and Matthausen...
...To my pleasant surprise he went into a long speech full of praise for the Palestine Orchestra, and for the settlers in Palestine in general...
...Save the Jews of Yemen Thank you very much for printing the article "Yemenite Jews in Desperate Straits" which appeared in your June 1989 issue...
...In my book in progress for Jewish parents, I suggest that an appropriate mitzvah for Yom haShoah would be for the family to take at least one positive action for human rights and pikuach nefesh (saving lives...
...The story spread like wildfire throughout {he plane, my fellow passengers were electrified by the account of a living witness to their own pre-history, and I had to repeat my story at least 20 times on the plane before we landed in Israel...
...Forster, an honorable man, I also asked him to my home in Jerusalem...
...After Toscanini conducted his historic concerts in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa, he kept a conducting engagement in my native city of Stockholm early in 1937...
...Don't tell your children anything, They'll be bored...
...Section 101(A)(42) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, as amended, which incorporates the Refugee Act of 1980, defines a refugee as someone who cannot return to his country of nationality or, in the case of stateless persons, country of last residence, because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of, among other reasons cited by the act, religion...
...Thus, if a refugee who is applying for admission to the U.S...
...We are presently working on establishing such a dialogue which, I hope, will constitute a two-way street...
...Forster and his professional organization set out to do by calling this meeting was indeed commendable...
...See how They just left, will not come back...
...His beloved father perished in Auschwitz and other members of his extended family were lost as well...
...We are particularly taken with using the yellow tulip to symbolize the Six Million...
...Yom haShoah, however, has become an object of distinctly imbalanced observance by largely secular Jews who do not experience the joyfulness of traditional holidays—a totem of obsessive mournfulness and gloom...
...That attitude, Dr...
...Sing twelve-tone rows off-key...
...As a 15-year-old music lover and strong Zionist, I was of course thrilled at his presence in our town...
...You cannot make your way back home...
...Arnold Reif, a distinguished colleague working in the same field of science in which I am active, makes a number of statements that are painfully misleading and that distort the position I myself have taken in refusing that invitation...
...But such instances cannot be equated with the national resolve of the Danes and Swedes insofar as Jews or Jewish refugees were concerned...
...I fully respect the attitude of Dr...
...On top of it, I was an avid autograph collector and had, for a long time, set my sight on getting a coveted Toscanini autograph, especially in view of his well-known aversion to signing his name for collectors...
...it is the only realistic, the only humanistic, one I see before me, for "Old Austrian" Jews...
...Yom haShoah observance in recent years amply reflects the wisdom of the rabbis who seek to absorb this tragedy into the framework of our tradition— not, as Irving Greenberg argues ("The Struggle Over a Date for Yom haShoah," June 1989), the wisdom of secularists in overruling them...
...is one of the main supporters, a refugee must accepi the first offer of resettlement he/she receives, absent a compelling reason nc to...
...Manfred R Lehmann New York, New York Under U.S...
...I must do so precisely because I, too, accept the imperative to work towards the ideal of warm acceptance of all humanity...
...obviously, different floweis may have up to hundreds of petals...
...A day of mourning for loved ones slaughtered in the Shoah (and, in my case and many "others, for those whom we were not privileged even to know) is entirely appropriate—but kaddish in Judaism is an occasion, however problematic, for glorifying God, not for sanctifying death...
...I'm sure you don't need an explanation...
...For example, learn as much as you can about a child who perished, and to honor that child's memory redeem a living child from hunger, ignorance and probable death by "adopting" a child through Save the Children...
...Also each tulip hasii'.v stamens and the tip of its single pistil has three separate sections, each divided into two parts—total six...
...The sympathetic, enlightened Austrians whom Dr...
...I was of course stunned that he spoke so freely to me, a young boy whom he had never met before, and my meeting was crowned with his agreeing to give me his autograph, which I treasure to this day...
...There are thugs, racists, murderers among every people, among the Jewish people as well...
...Don't flush it down...
...Think about your father and mother, Watch them leave, instantaneous terror, Helplessness, repeat, helplessness...
...Many of your readers may be unaware of the oddly appropriate characteristics of the tulip...
...I myself must persevere in mine, not to let awareness and memory fail, not to cheapen so enormous a suffering by a precipitous, insipid return lo easy "friendship" between the collectives of the Jewish people and organs of the State of Austria...
...Remember a family who was denied sanctuary from Hitler's Germany in the 1930s by supporting the Sanctuary Movement for Central American refugees today...
...Julie Hilton Danan San Antonio, Texas Are We Sanctifying Death...
...We do not simply remember that we were slaves in the land of Egypt...
...Reif, can only pave the way to recurrences of the unthinkable, whoever its objects in the future may be...
...Look at your rabbits right after They died in their cages...
...That is why I seek, to the present, contact with such heroic nonconformists, why I participate in tree-planting ceremonies honoring the Righteous Among the Nations at Yad Vashem, why I risked American army court martial or a Russian prison to be with Minna Gneist and Hans Gneist and Rosa Nassau in Soviet-occupied Austria after the war...
...I continued throughout the 1960s and 1970s to visit her and several other such heroic Austrians, maintaining the deep friendship between us until their deaths...
...Or honor the memory of an adult tortured and killed in the death camps by writing letters on behalf of a prisoner of conscience in the Soviet Union or a political prisoner through Amnesty International...
...Nobody can blame those who were forced out of...
...Lippman Bodoff argues that Russian Jewish emigrants are refugees, despite the fact that they can go to Israel and that America should apply its refugee laws even-handedly without making an exception for Jewish refuseniks...
...They'll die Right in front of you...
...The traditional Jewish calendar is characterized by a healthy balance between joy and sorrow (with the emphasis on the former...
...In 1951 the UN General Assembly adopted a definition that was repeated almost verbatim by the Congress in 1980...
...Again, do we wish to retain this exception, or do we want to treat Soviet Jews as we do othe refugees...
...The picture should have shown at least three Jewish children in a family...
...Of course, there were Austri-ans who rejected Nazism and there were those—very few—who actively attempted to mitigate Nazi excesses and who even risked their lives in aiding Jews and other victims of persecution...
...What look place was the effectuation of a central policy of Austrian and German society, of the state, and of all its diverse bodies, military and civilian...
...I categorically reject the assignment of guilt to innocent individuals for the crimes of their collective society...
...All doors Will be without hinges...
...What I believe must be done by those of us who are survivors is to prevent a facile, convenient erasing of memory...
...By allowing Soviet Jews who hold Israeli visas to come here, we are permitting them to choose their ultimate destination, something we allow no other group...
...Each blossom has exactly ma identical petals, most marked in the center of the flower with a distinctive pattern (six times repeated...
...This is not an attempt to "universalize" the events of the Shoah but to respond to suffering in a classically Jewish way: Commemorate, yes, but let our suffering sensitize us to injustice...
...William J. Wolf Phoenix, AZ Between Commentary And Tikkun You are right: In the present Arab-Israeli crisis, there has got to be some better American Jewish position than Commentary's apocalyptic stance or Tik-kun's hair-shirt breast-beating...
...in proportion to their population, this was one of the largest Jewish communities lost in Europe...
...There arc, of course, documented instances of rescue of Jews in other countries, including Holland, and even of a demonstration in 1941 in Amsterdam to protest the treatment of Jews...
...I am astonished that as discerning a biologist as Dr...
...In their nests you'll find discarded hair, Filthy straw, which you will have to Clean out, worrying about disease...
...Give it to the Animals: they'll know what it means...
...The mark of Cain can be erased from a society—with time, with recognition, with constant awareness of how it came to be there, and with powerful counteraction by that society...
...Raise your arms, don't breathe, Surrender to every enemy, Don't expect to find warm water anywhere...
...This definition prohibited refugees from sampling life in various countries of asylum until thev found one to their liking...
...Of course, the population of Austria, as of every nation, is heterogeneous in its attitudes and actions as well as in its religious, cultural, and other backgrounds...
...We "know the heart of the stranger" because we were slaves there...
...Believe that love is finally gone...
...Six Unplanted Yellow Tulips Last fall I planted what I thought was an entire bed of red early-blooming tulips...
...The author chose the tulip because it is the flower of Holland, and because, he claims, "Holland, Denmark, Sweden and Bulgaria were the only countries that saved Jews during the Holocaust...
...Army of Occupation in Germany, in 1946-1947, I made illegal trips, in civilian clothes and with no papers, to towns deep in the Soviet zone so as to see and bring food and money to a Catholic woman who was my and my sister's governess and who acted with remarkable courage in protecting us and other Jews of Wiener Neustadt against attacks by S.A...
...That, of course, has nothing to do with the esteem and love due to those Austrians and Germans who stood out against the stream of collective criminality...
...A few vears ago, I traveled by El Al from Nairobi to Jerusalem and found that the plane was full of members of the Israel Orchestra returning home from a concert tour in South Africa...
...Eat a lot, whatever you can find, Especially white bread, Butter and sugar in two layers...
...Arnold E. Reif ("Why I Accepted the Invitation David Weiss Declined," Forum, June 1989...
...Reif met in Vienna are doing what non-Jewish Austrians must do, on their soil, towards the dimming of the collective stigma...
...Anyone interested in helping this most important project may contact us at the above address, or me directly at 6516 North 7th Street, Suite ID, Phoenix, Arizona 85014...
...Prayers are dangerous here...
...Ambassador Friedrich Hoess Embassy of Austria Washington, D.C...
...bands...
...God may go up in flames with them, Causing new droughts, parched-dead skin...
...That is why in writing to Dr...
...Incidentally, I totally disagree with the ill-taken position of your author to the effect that Toscanini "would not make the great gesture of support for the Israel of Prime Minister Shamir that he made for the not-yet-born Israel 50 years ago...
...And I also said that I believe the struggle against anti-Semitism—and against every form of inhumanity—must be carried out differently, by different people...
...Rose Aronowitz Levine Castro Valley, California Not Simply Remembering, But Doing Although Rabbi Golinkin proposes that we "branch out" from commemoration of the Holocaust to opposing anti-Semitism today ("How Should We Commemorate the Shoali in Our Homes...
...June 1989: Don't use flowers, protect them From disgrace...
...What I made clear in my letters to Dt) Forster, the president of the scientific organization that invited us, was a very different sentiment, that societies as societies carry the hallmark of collective action...
...David W Weiss Jerusalem, Israel From the Austrian Ambassador I was very pleased to see the letter by Dr...
Vol. 14 • October 1989 • No. 6
