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