vip@philabs.UUCP (V. I. P.) (05/19/85)
For those of you who do not read (or are unable to get) the Village
Voice, there's a little item in this week's issue that I
think should be read by all those interested in Bitburg,
Jews, Blacks, other assorted minorities... (Reproduced here
in it's entirety.)
By Roger Wilkins
The other day I went to a cemetery in a little West German
town called Bitburg. I didn't go voluntarily. My president
took me there. He laid -- in my name and in the name of all
Americans -- a wreath in a cemetery filled with dead Nazi
soldiers, some of whom had been members of the Waffen SS.
It was an event that made me pause and say to myself, "Every
moral persion has to come to grips with this. He must think
about it. He must make up his mind about it." And I don't
mean here a reflexive anti-Reagan reaction about the
president's sluggish stubbornness and insensitivity. That
is too easy. What I must make up my mind about is what I
really think about Jews, what it means to me when Jews say,
"Never again!" and, as a black, what I think about
relationships between blacks and Jews.
I was just a kid during World War II and I lived in Harlem
on Sugar Hill. That meant that at my school, P.S. 46, all
the teachers were white and almost all of the kids were
black. Except for a few who were "refugees from Germany,"
and, I recall, the "refugees" were all in my class -- the
rapid advancement class. There was Peter who was the
smartest kid and there was Harry Klein, who was like the
rest of us -- kind of in the middle. Somehow, I don't
recall being aware of the fact that they were Jews, or that
my sainted teacher, Mr. Soloff (with the big Adam's apple),
or the principal -- Mr. Levine -- were Jews. They, like the
men who owned the candy store up on Amsterdam between 159th
and 160th, where occasionally we bought "Spaldeens" and
often stole comic books, were just white; that's all.
I didn't really know about Jews until I was at the
University of Michigan in the early '50s when, in addition
to all my black friends, I had some white friends, too. In
the '50s in Michigan white students had to make an effort to
be friendly with black students. By and large, the only
white people who made that effort were Jews. And they told
me about the Holocaust, which I had known about as a child,
but hadn't really understood. What I remember most about my
Jewish friends is that we all -- blacks and Jews together --
worried about the quotas that jeopardized our chances for
going to med school, dent school, or law school. Just like
my friend, Larry Sperlie, I had parents push me day after
day to hold a book in my hand. But day after day -- as
graduation time grew nearer -- we Jews and we blacks who
wanted to go to professional schools understood that despite
the books that our parents had given us, that we were
fighting against the world's crudest affirmative action
program. White Christians -- mainly men -- got in. The
rest of us had to squeeze through the eye of the negative
quota -- three Jews, two blacks, one woman; door closed now.
Those were bad exclusionary quotas, not good inclusionary
ones. Then through the late '50s and '60s Jews marched with
us. Some of them gave us money. And some of them died with
some of us. during that time I remember some white
Christian friends who had looked at a Jewish man -- who was
simply going about his life and raising his family -- and
called him hymie. I hated them for that. And then a dear
and close friend of mine used the same word in the campaign
last year and it broke my heart.
That is where Bitburg comes in. The president said when he
was leaving that place that Nazism was the product of one
evil man. He has forgotten. One bad man you can take. But
a highly civilized and cultured western society practicing
genocide is another thing entirely. There were bureaucrats
of death in Hitler's Germany. They lived Sam Rayburn's
famous maxim, "To get along, you've got to go along."
"Kill a couple of hundred Jews today, Lieutenant, and you
get promoted to Captain."
"Yes Sir!"
That is the evil.
Those sons-of-bitches should have said "Fuch you." But they
did not do it there, or when Stalin was killing the
Ukrainians, or in Pol Pot's Kampuchea, or in South Africa
now, or in the West when the people who lived here first
were quartered and murdered or in the South where my
grandparents were slaves.
So the Jews are right when they say, "Never again." The
individual's conscience should always say that it is more
important that people should not die than for me to go to
Herman Goering's next party.
But my Jewish friends have it wrong when they behave as if
the Holocaust was the beginning and ultimate in human evil.
It was enormous and horrible and unforgettable. But native
Americans have been destroyed by us! We should never forget
that, but we do. Black Americans who were not as lucky as I
am are splattered all over the landscape of this country
because of what "decent" people who go along have done. We
should never forget that either. The Holocaust may have
been the worst thing that every happened in human history.
But one must not see it as something out of the ordinary.
Idi Amin did it in a little country, Mao did it in a big
country. People did it for them because they wanted promotions.
The evil is that not enough people stood up to them and
said, "You will kill me before I kill those 'other' human
beings."
But people don't stand up unless they are taught. People
have to know that each of us, sometime or somewhere, is in
danger of being the "other," and that, in fact, we are all
parts of the common human stream.
Let me give an example. Among my friends there are three
very special people. One is a little round Jew named Katie
and she is 21 months old. The other two are my daughters
-- Amy, 25 years old, and Elizabeth, 22 months. One day at
a family brunch, Amy Wilkins looked at her baby sister and
said: "You are a nigger." I almost fell off my chair, but
I didn't stop Amy and she continued, "Your mother is a
nigger and your father is a nigger and your brother is a
nigger and your sister is a nigger." Amy said all that with
great love.
And she laughed and she was right to do what she did. And I
asked her then if she would say to Elizabeth's little
friend Katie, you are a Jew and your mother is a Jew and
your father is a Jew and she said, "Of course. Katie and
Elizabeth need to be strong."
When President Reagan said, "I am a Jew," he knew not
whereof he spoke. No one ever taught him to stand up
against evil. Elie Weisel tried to teach him, but it was
much too late. It is not, however, too late for the rest of
us.
I was very touched when I read this. And I thought to
myself... "Brian, you are a nigger, and your father was a
nigger and your mother was hated for marrying a nigger and
your sisters are niggers. And you have to be strong!"
Brian Day