Evening of reflection turns into warning for future
ProPublica reports on Trump administration's heartless treatment of children
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"When I came to Treblinka with my family, I met a good friend of mine. He asked me, do you want to live, or do you want to die? I said, I want to live. My friend said, If you want to live get rid of the baby. Our baby was 9 months old. I was thinking about it hard. The baby was going to die anyway. If my friend was telling me the truth I would die with the baby. This way I had a chance. So, I took the baby and put it on the side of the road. Later a wagon came from the camp and picked up the baby. This has been on my mind all this time."
- Sigmund Boraks, relating a story told to him by his uncle.
Religion is not my strong suit and my Judeo-Christian experiences are lacking significantly when it comes to the Judeo.
But there I was Wednesday evening at the National World War II Museum for a Yom HaShoah commemoration ceremony - Holocaust Remembrance Day - trying to catch up during "An evening of reflection."
It was an annual event, a tradition I did not even know existed.
The procession of Holocaust survivor family members - beneath the World War II aircraft in the U.S. Freedom Pavilion - felt solemn, funereal if you will, as each person lit a candle. You could see many wiping away tears.
It was fitting and appropriate because this was about remembering the Holocaust, an event so horrible, if we want to admit the truth, few of us want to think about ever.
That is not true of Father Patrick Desbois.
He has made it his life work, so while it may seem like an odd choice to have a Catholic priest be the main speaker at a Yom HaShoah ceremony, he was certainly the most qualified.
Desbois was described as part historian, part priest, part forensic detective and human rights activist dedicated to exposing and combating genocide.
It's an impressive resume, but don't forget antisemitism.
He was featured in a 60 Minutes segment nine years ago. Correspondent Lara Logan described how during the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 there were mobile death squads known as Einsatzgruppen whose job it was to hunt down and kill every last Jew as the Army advanced.
"They methodically entered villages, rounded up Jewish families, and marched them to freshly dug graves," Logan says in the piece.
Father Desbois' father was a French soldier at the time who was deported to a Nazi prison camp. His father rarely talked of the experience. It sparked an early interest in the war and the Jewish community for Father Desbois. He later studied anti-semitism and Jewish religion and culture.
In 2002, Father Desbois traveled to Ukraine to see where his grandfather had been imprisoned during the war and to pay his respects to the Jews murdered there.
Before the war, there were 15,000 Jews living in Rawa-Ruska. Most were exterminated during the war. But when Father Desbois visited, there was no memorial, no record of what happened to them.
That set Desbois off on a new mission returning time and time again until one-by-one the villagers stepped forward to tell their stories.
Desbois and his team of researchers combed through millions of pages of German and Soviet documents before heading to small villages throughout eastern Europe.
Desbois now tells us the story.
About how the Jews were told they were being sent to Palestine.
About how they packed up their belongings, their valuables and reported to the edge of town where they were ordered to take off their clothes and one by one they were shot.
Since then, Desbois and his team have found 2,300 unmarked mass graves and interviewed some 5,500 witnesses of the mass shootings.
The German military would send reports back to Berlin of how many Jews they were killing each day.
"We never found a place where they left a baby alive," Desbois said. "We never found a place where they left someone alive."
As horrific and barbaric as these stories were, Desbois learned something even more disturbing - The killings were not secret.
"Because everybody told me, and I have read many books about the secret of Holocaust," Desbois said in the 60 Minutes interview. "And in Soviet Union, everybody told me they knew nothing and - because it was secret."
Once the villagers knew the Germans were not coming for them, they gladly took in the spectacle. In interview after interview, the survivors of the war recounted the horrors they witnessed but did nothing to stop. They eagerly witnessed the spectacle.
"I learned a lot about humanity," Desbois said in the 60 Minutes interview. "I learned everybody can be a killer, anybody can be a victim. I learned that you like to see other people dying in front of you, killed by other people, when you are sure you will not be killed."
One man recounted that as a boy the Germans made him walk on the backs of corpses to pack down the bodies in the pit.
It was harsh to hear Father's Desbois' ultimate conclusion and it came with a warning.
"Beware" Desbois said looking around a room filled with several hundred Jews. "When it begins it is a disease.
"We need to teach the new generations," Desbois said. "We need to know what to do. Anti-Semitism is back. We need to be prepared. Hate is back. The planet is moving in a bad direction."
Was Desbois sending us a warning here in America?
No one asked.
"There is no shame in genocide," Desbois said with a cold stillness, then pointed out a shocking observation. "Not once after any of those 5,000 interviews did any person ask me for forgiveness. The evil is not out of us. You will always find people to kill the Jews."
This was no longer and evening of reflection, but a warning for the future.
As a young girl my grandmother had worked in a dress shop in Germany, and she learned to speak beautiful German. In Krzepice, she owned a bagel bakery. Everyone knew her as Szandle the Bagel Baker. She thought she was going to talk to the Gestapo officer in her beautiful German and she was sure he was going to release her. She talked to him very nice. She told him, "Officer look, I'm 92 years old. Where you going to drag me? Leave me in my home." The Gestapo was a young man, maybe 23 years old, and so proud. He got excited. He said to her, "You old goat, you still want to live." He got his gun and put just one bullet in her. We were all standing around. There was nothing we could do. That was all. She was 92 years old.
- Joseph Sher, Holocaust surivivor.
"What do you say to people who won't speak up," Desbois asked. "Don't dream, you will awaken in a nightmare. Don't wait to be in that situations. People who hate Jews are here. If you don't sleep well tonight, it is a very good sign."
War on children
You might remember ProPublica best for its investigative reporting on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas's many gifts.
But that is just one aspect of the reporting of this national non-profit news outlet.
It just recently posted a story with the headline: "The Trump administration's war on children."
The headline was certainly provocative enough, but consider this lead:
The clear-cutting across the federal government under President Donald Trump has been dramatic, with mass terminations, the suspension of decades-old programs and the neutering of entire agencies. But this spectacle has obscured a series of moves by the administration that could profoundly harm some of the most vulnerable people in the U.S.: children.
That should get your attention.
Maybe it should get you to sign up for a subscription to the news outlet.
The article reports how the Trump administration has laid off thousands of workers who supervised education, child care, child support and child protective services while blocking funding for school meals and safety.
Instead of addressing those issues, Rep. Elise Stefanik is worried about whether school boards are supporting trans students or not.
“Everyone’s been talking about what the Trump administration and DOGE have been doing, but no one seems to be talking about how, in a lot of ways, it’s been an assault on kids,” Bruce Lesley, president of advocacy group First Focus on Children, told ProPublica. He added that “the one cabinet agency that they’re fully decimating is the kid one,” referring to Trump’s goal of shuttering the Department of Education.
Assisted suicide bill
The New York Post is reporting that the New York State Legislature is finally getting behind an assisted suicide bill.
The Post reported that Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) told lawmakers behind closed doors Tuesday that the bill has the voted to pass.
Sources told The Post the controversial measure could get a vote as soon as next week.
Ken Tingley spent more than four decades working in small community newspapers in upstate New York. Since retirement in 2020 he has written three books and is currently adapting his second book "The Last American Newspaper" into a play. He currently lives in Queensbury, N.Y.
Thank you for continuing to shine a light on the darkest side of anti-semitism, and the grim reality of man’s inhumanity toward men…women…and even babies.
My soon-to-be 101 yr. old dear friend Clara Rudnick continues to speak with utter clarity of her experience as a teenaged Holocaust survivor of several concentration camps, after the killing of her parents, two sisters and two brothers. With all the commemorations of this 80th Anniversay of her liberation, she is keenly aware that only 200,000 Holocaust survivors are still alive to tell their stories.
For many years, at the urging of Father Abraham, the SGF Greek Orthodox Church pastor, Clara spoke at local schools within her beloved “North Country” to keep her story alive on behalf of the millions of Jews who couldn’t tell their stories. She reflected yesterday once again on one of the biggest honors she experienced in being invited to speak to the St. Mary’s/St. Alphonsus school children. It’s one of my cherished memories also, watching the faces of those young students, totally enthralled by Clara’s presence and her Truth as she lived it… and the courage she still possesses in living life as fully as possible…and still believing “America is still the best country on earth…everything is gonna be OK.”
We should be calling our State Reps and ask them to support the dying with dignity bill. Even if you don't think you would use it, it's a right that people and their families should have available to them. If your belief doesn't allow you to make that choice, that's ok for you, but those who may need to, it's there for them.