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April 23, 1999/7 Iyar 5759, Vol. 51, No. 30
Memories should make souls ache
JOSEPH AARON
Chicago Jewish News
I don't know if I've had this bad cold, this rundown feeling all week because of the crazy weather or because of our crazy world. I'd like to think it was the weather, the one day hot, one day cold, but I know it's not. I think that what is at play here is what I've been seeing. And what I've been seeing is Kosovo. And what I'm finding is that I'm having a very, very hard time with it. Taking it very much to heart, feeling sick because the world has learned absolutely nothing from the Holocaust. Nothing. In that sense, the 6 million died in vain. And considering that the 6 million include my zayde, bubbe, tante and others, that is a thought very difficult for me to bear.
But beyond that, what is so difficult for me is that it has been so easy for me and for most of us to look at Kosovo as a TV show, a political sideshow, a military story.
An image I have never been able to shake from my mind is that of revelers in Manhattan, dressed in tuxedos and beautiful gowns, celebrating New Year's in 1943. Cocktails in hand, hors d'oeuvres at the ready, music in the background. All, while a thousand or so miles away, the Jews of Europe were being slaughtered, gassed, stripped of everything. Six million were murdered, more than a million children. And yet, so many went about their business, about their lives. I could never understand that. Now I can. For I am doing the very same thing.
The Albanians of Kosovo are being slaughtered, ripped from their homes, stripped of everything. No, it's not exactly the same but it's too much the same. Affecting too many innocent people, people being persecuted just because of who they are, no other reason. Reason enough.
And yet, I put out my little paper each week and get excited about the new baseball season. I watch the news and shake my head, then turn the channel to check out "Star Trek." And I think that is why I am physically sick. I think my body is rebelling, reacting both to what is going on and reacting to how I am reacting to what's going on. Am I any better than those during the Holocaust who watched and turned away? What am I doing, how much is it affecting me?
If it were Jews, not Kosovars, I would be doing more, so much more. And while that is right and as it should be, it is also very wrong and not at all the way it should be. How many during the Holocaust said it is just Jews, what does that have to do with me? But it was not just Jews, it was men, women and children. Us. All of us, no matter what we are.
So it is with the Albanians and Kosovars. And yet, again, we are all just sitting, watching. Maybe even feeling bad. But feeling bad ain't enough. Which is why I think I've been feeling bad. My body is telling me that what I am not doing is not right. Not right because I am the son of Holocaust survivors. Not right because we as Jews know what it is like to be abandoned by the world, to be persecuted. Not right because we are told to remember not just to remember, but to help others who find themselves in the position we once were in. And so, the cry for us to act, to scream, to ache about Kosovo should be ear-piercing. And heart-rending.
The story is told of a shtetl in Europe that had its first store open on Shabbat. The town's rabbi went to visit the sainted Chofets Chaim, the greatest rabbi of his generation. The Chofets Chaim asked the rabbi if he had done all he could about this horrible situation. Yes, said the rabbi, I protested, petitioned but nothing helped. I did all I could, he repeated.
The Chofets Chaim got angry. "All?" he asked. "Did you faint?"
His point was that we must feel down to our toes, into our souls when an outrage occurs, cannot be unaffected by it, must be devastated by it.
That we haven't been, that I haven't been, makes me sick. And makes me wonder what my zayde and bubbe must be thinking about me.
Joseph Aaron is editor and publisher of the Chicago Jewish News.
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