A Man's Comment on Antisemitism

As a young kid I observed "polite" anti-Semitism in many ways in my east coast community during WWII. After the war, still a kid, I noticed that my father accepted a handout "news" sheet after church on Sunday mornings. One Sunday afternoon I read the sheet and discovered that it was full of anti-Jewish propaganda. Â I pulled out the large Life magazine picture book of WWII that had recently arrived, opened it to the pictures of the hell that was the holocaust and asked my father if that sheet wasn't going to lead us to the same thing.

My dad, a deeply devout Christian man, was a highly educated engineer and manufacturing firm executive. I remember how he looked at me as a little kid's logic sunk in. He never took the sheet again after church and avoided the guy with the sheets like the plague. As a GI a few years later I stood in the gas chamber at Dachau and saw the ovens that still had ashes in them from when they were finally stopped sixteen years before. I can't understand anti-Semitism as a Jew can but I can understand and abhor it from my own perspective.

I know why Jews are afraid when they see a cross or crucifix. I know what the Roman Catholic Church has done over the centuries with such things as the inquisition and irresponsibly blaming all the Jews for the death of Christ. I also know that the Anglican Church is guilty of some of the same narrow minded prejudice against Jews, Catholics and 17th century dissidents. I also know that Muslims are guilty of the same slaughter of Jews and Christians from the 7th century to this very day in Israel, Iraq and our own USA.