'Never Again' Also Means Standing Up to Hamas

I was in fifth grade at Skokie’s Devonshire School when the American Nazis decided they would torment a Chicago suburb known for having a high percentage of Holocaust survivors.

A local pharmacist had concentration camp tattoos and, I believe, so did one of my teachers. I was just coming to the age of understanding what it meant to be Jewish.

My folks were Reform, but we knew and were friends with families who were more observant. We celebrated the holidays and my grandfather made a point of reading to us from the Torah any time we visited.

But there was a dark side, a sad side, that the folks weren’t eager to connect the dots for me. We had floor-to-ceiling built-in book shelves. I couldn’t understand why my dad would buy “the same book over and over,” which they seemed to be. So many had strange black hooked lines on the covers. Nobody appeared to like the books, but we always had to get more and more.

I later learned that my grandfather, from Lukow, Poland, had 8 siblings who died in the Holocaust. His father was 80 years old when the Nazis shot him in the back of the head. There were innumerable cousins that we all should have had.

I kept hearing on the news that the “First Amendment was the most important value.” Certainly, as a lawyer today who writes for Newsmax, it’s very, very important. But I did reason as a fifth grader that surely, wouldn’t the Bible be the most important value? If the Jews are the chosen people, wouldn’t it be a mitzvah (blessed thing to do) to protect them from harassment by the entity that tried to wipe them from the planet?

It was then that I was allowed to buy groceries for the first time. Very exciting stuff: crossing the streets, getting the best products, counting the change. As soon as I exited the store, though, I was accosted by a man in full Nazi regalia who shoved a pamphlet in my hand. I dropped all the groceries and ran home.

I think I really believed that my mom wouldn’t notice that I had no groceries. I was afraid I had done something wrong and messed up my new task. She called the store and they graciously agreed to replace the groceries.

I didn’t want to go back though. I screamed all the things you could imagine: “You’re the worst mom ever! Nobody else would make their kid go back to the Nazis!” She was firm. “You’re going to go back there and you’re going to hold your head high!”

News cameras were starting to crop up everywhere, even next to my school. I was always a ham and talked about what I’d say to them if given the chance. My folks replied, “Oh, I don’t think so.” They yanked us out of school for two weeks and there several other families who did the same.

A few years later, I won a full scholarship to a prep school up in the North Shore suburbs. Entering upper school, I experienced true antisemitism among some of the toxic children of the upper crust.

Swastikas were scrawled on all my books and lockers for years. Teachers giggled, rather than intervened. I wondered what was “wrong” with my religion that made the kids want to torture me. My dad did have a conference with the headmaster to address these issues, but my parents were going through a divorce and his concerns were quickly dismissed.

This week, it all came rushing back again. Incensed that the Simon Wiesenthal Center was holding a pro-Israel rally in this now-historic village, a pro-Palestinian gathering violently demonstrated outside, injuring people — including a staff member of Turning Point USA.

A man even fired a weapon into the air, but Cook County declined to file felony charges. When there’s violence, the 1^st Amendment melts away.

When it comes to re-victimizing survivors of the Holocaust or of terrorist organization Hamas — governing body of Gaza and the West Bank — please believe that “Never again” includes standing up with fierceness for our right to live.