"What the March-talk is Doin' to People"
Friend, David
u WHAT THE MARCH-TALK IS DOIN'TO PEOPLE" INTERVIEWS WITH SKOKIES CHILDREN Until two years ago, Skokie was just a place, another of the suburbs-become-cities that characterize the urban landscape...
...It's like Hitler and the Holocaust don't affect me personally...
...Julie believes that children are not prejudiced...
...Now he's, suddenly he's...
...They didn't...
...He says how they ignored the Nazis also...
...Until two years ago, the fact that there are seven thousand survivors of the Holocaust who have chosen to live in Skokie was just a curious statistic...
...My parents, they want to get out of this area and go north...
...She sat alone in her family room, hands fidgeting in her lap...
...Nazis aren't showing free speech...
...It's s'posed to protect the rights of the people...
...And they have no right to march...
...That's what the Constitution is all about...
...But, as she stressed, the threat of the march was the "first real, local incident of anti-Semitism" in her life...
...All that changed when the first rumors that a "brigade" of American Nazis were planning to march in Skokie surfaced, and memories and nightmares suddenly became threats and imminent realities...
...Julie remembered that a classmate wore a swastika to class when the march was first announced...
...And Ira concludes, without reservation, "I get along with gentile people and everything...
...But most of the children don't want to have anything to do with it, Jewish or non-Jewish...
...It's not going to stop, march or no march...
...Non-Jewish teachers leave it open for discussion...
...It brought him into the Jewish community...
...As Ira observed, "It's a shame that this is what it takes to make people remember...
...in context...
...I have a lot of Jewish friends—I live in a Jewish neighborhood...
...Cindy rules out prejudice entirely, in her own way...
...And this debate has been going on in Skokie for so long now...
...Out of the convoluted debate preceding the march, Cindy formed numerous opinions toward Judaism and anti-Semitism which she might never have considered otherwise...
...With the television set and her algebra homework on the kitchen table, Cindy spoke candidly even though she believes, "Kids are too young to get involved in anything political...
...They're marching...
...and Jews can't forget it...
...Their families are talking about it more, but also a lot of families are talking about the better half of'Jewish'—not just being together against Nazis, but heritage and loving...
...But they really don't practice Judaism...
...We read the same Bible up to one part...
...But a lot of people are going to get killed—so it's not worth it...
...So it's not like this Skokie's a community where every Saturday everyone gets together and goes to synagogue or something...
...But it has changed a lot of Jewish kids...
...I was, like, 'there' at Auschwitz...
...They're Jewish by birth and everything, y'know...
...I probably* know more about the 'Holycost' than a lot of kids in my school...
...When they designed the Constitution do you think they had people like the Nazis in mind...
...But, when it comes down to it, at least they understand it more now and wouldn't've before...
...Until two years ago, when Ira Oliff celebrated his tenth birthday, he knew about Nazis only because he had heard his father tell how he had witnessed the slaughter of his father in Auschwitz...
...Certainly, her remarks are a product of having grown up in the sheltered suburb of Skokie...
...And here...
...But my Dad says that's what they were in the 1930's...
...You see, I think that if a lot of young Jewish people do go to the light and there's bloodshed, it's just going to bring up that the Nazis just killed people...
...I'm scared...
...But whatever their stands, they are primitive proof that at least one segment of America's youth is conscious of the history of Jewish persecution...
...It's been delayed for a long period but they'll keep on marching...
...Now I see it If this didn't happen, kids here wouldn't think about the threat of something like this...
...That's what this Constitution's about...
...But it's scary because I have Jewish friends and because it doesn't matter who it could happen to...
...Ira sat on the edge of his seat now...
...They should be allowed to...
...Before the march, I didn't think Nazism had anything to do with around here, with Skokie...
...u WHAT THE MARCH-TALK IS DOIN'TO PEOPLE" INTERVIEWS WITH SKOKIES CHILDREN Until two years ago, Skokie was just a place, another of the suburbs-become-cities that characterize the urban landscape of America...
...You wouldn't know the story of persecution...
...I never let religious differences, you know, get in the way of my personal life...
...It's true that we are the only Catholics here...
...They don't have a right to march...
...See— if we ignore it, they won't even want to march again...
...say, "Hey, we're not going to stand for this...
...Brought up in a Reform Jewish home in Skokie ("When it's holiday I'm a Jew, when it's everyday I'm me"), she has a preciously subtle awareness of anti-Semitism that treads a tightrope between wisdom and naivete ("I heard about Hitler when I was real little, but I didn't understand it until I was about nine...
...They killed then, they might do it now...
...Although Ira, Julie and Cindy live only blocks apart, and their views do reflect the rifts, in miniature, of the Skokie area, they do not represent all Skokie children...
...The continuing, vigorous dialogue that has gone on in Skokie homes, schools and synagogues has been the sole benefit of the Nazi presence in Skokie...
...But it's scary because I have Jewish friends and because it doesn't matter who, it could happen to anybody for no reason...
...I saw pictures in a book...
...That's why they're marchin' in Skokie and not somewhere else or something...
...But you can't do that publicly...
...She attends a Catholic school and her church is located on the route of the proposed Nazi march...
...Ira Oliff sat in his living room a few weeks ago, relaxed and observant...
...They're trying to provoke us...
...She insists that "the kids aren't prejudiced—it's the older Jewish parents who teach their kids to hate non-Jewish people and not as many non-Jewish people want their children to hate Jews...
...Across the street we have these neighbors...
...My faith has never really been used as a weapon against me...
...cause I have no grandparents and uncles and aunts on my father's side...
...really...
...His poise, the boldness of his chatter, suggested that even before his bar mitzvah the boy had forced himself to confront the ramifications of this issue many times over...
...The Nazis came to my father's house when he was a kid my age...
...So now they're thinking...
...Mostly because I live here...
...It's, like, s'posed to protect the rights of the people...
...If they ignored it in a Jewish village in Europe, you can't really expect people here to feel threatened, people down the block____But, you know, I don't think you can stop the violence when it comes in a city where we have 7,000 survivors of concentration camps...
...The Jews of Skokie have to show up at the march in order to David M. Friend, who has worked for Newsweek, is a freelance writer...
...She also recalled when Adam Levy, a teen-age neighbor, received a menacing phone call from someone claiming to be a member of the American Nazi Party...
...They're a good example of what the march-talk is doin' to people...
...I'm like a second person...
...Only when they're kidding...
...I want it to be stopped...
...It's such a small group, these Nazis...
...I know it sounds weird—but anything could happen...
...If there is any environment in which a raw lesson will be learned from these events, it is on the refreshingly human backdrop of children who do not yet know the meaning of prejudice and can consider this political resurgence through a mindframe that is at least partially unburdened by an older generation's prejudgments...
...I don't even want to see the Nazis march...
...Cindy Lyons has lived in Skokie since she was born there thirteen years ago...
...His articles have appeared in National Lampoon and Change...
...Anybody for no reason...
...Cause they're scared...
...And why not...
...And if people don't show up, there's no reason for them to come back...
...He chose his surprisingly sophisticated responses with an uncanny meticulousness...
...You'd just know violence...
...They're trying to lower us to their level so people'll say the Jews are just as bad...
...There's laws against smashing their heads...
...The Nazis' determination to march "next month in Skokie" had been swaying over the heads of Ira's family for nearly two years, hanging by the threadbare noose of Skokie village ordinances prohibiting the march...
...took them out...
...To me, just, it's just like the Revolutionary War: it occurred, it's in the books...
...Everyone's pretty scared about it," she remarked, nervously twirling the ends of her blonde hair...
...But the first thing—when the Nazis hung signs that they were gonna march, my neighbor ripped off the flyers, like he was really mad about it...
...There's not much difference between Judaism and Catholicism...
...There's laws against smashing their heads...
...It's like Hitler and the Holocaust don't affect me personally...
...When they designed free speech in the Constitution, do you think they had people like the Nazis in mind...
...Like I know there were six million Jews killed...
...But they're not going to know the whole story...
...So it's something I can't ignore...
...It's like if you read one page of a Passover book, a prayerbook, every year...
...I don't like fights...
...Julie Hirsch turned twelve years old this year...
...But a drop of blood on Skokie pavement during this march or the next may render the lesson a costly one and hardly worth the price of its crazy teacher...
...outbreak of anti-Semitism in my life...
...To Ira, it seemed only a matter of weeks before the ropes snapped and the higher courts paved the way for Nazi bodies to hit the Skokie streets...
...Kids aren't the prejudiced ones...
...But a lot of Jewish kids won't see it in...
...And I'd like to see what's going on...
...Jews or Nazis...
...again...
...The memory of horror and obscenity in Ira's father's deathworld has a slightly better chance of being preserved and inherited by Julie's and by Cindy's grandchildren in the year 2030...
...This is the first...
...They're violating our freedom through persecution...
...Miss Jacobs, my teacher," Julie continues, "said that ninety percent of prejudice comes from the family and ten percent from past experience...
...I'm not going to go," Julie began, with a curious finality...
...I'd like to bust their heads," Ira nodded, as calm as he was frank...
...It's kind of unfortunate," Ira lowered his eyes, "that something like this has to bring the Jewish people together...
...Jewish teachers try to push towards hating the Nazis...
...I know how they killed 'em...
...I guess the Nazis have a 'right' to march...
...So, even though the march may paint the issue of Nazism and anti-Semitism in primary colors that misrepresent the accompanying violence, one thing is evident...
...If everything really gets crazy, even weeks after the march, they might take it out on us...
...well, right after that he put his kids in Hebrew school...
...I know the story and all...
Vol. 3 • June 1978 • No. 7
