A Visit to Washington, Part I

This week Linda and I will be taking our thirteen and fourteen year old granddaughters to Washington, DC.  When we asked them what they wanted to see, both of them, independently of each other, said the Holocaust Museum.  They have both read books, including Anne Frank's diary, that have caused them to wonder and to ask many questions.  Their's is not a morbid interest--it grows out of a genuine concern for other people.  So we will be making it one of our stops.  In honor of that visit, I share with you one of my very first blogs, originally published in April of 2011.

Hitler and his cronies managed to convince many, many people that Jews were somehow less than fully human--that they threatened the well-being of the state. The way, the Nazis argued, to protect the state was to isolate the Jews. So over a period of only a few years, various laws were passed which created a very clearly second-class citizenship for Jews. And to make certain everyone knew who the Jews were, each and every Jewish individual was required to wear a yellow star of David.

A yellow star may seem a little thing, but it led, eventually to Auschwitz. And so the question we must ask, if we are to learn anything from all this, is where are the yellow stars in our lives? Where and how are we labeling and branding people? What divides us one from the other.

One of the many films that documents part of the story of the Holocaust is The Hiding Place. It is the story of a Christian Dutch family named ten Boom that hid Jews during World War II and helped them escape from Nazi persecution.

The early part of the film documents the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands and shows how the anti-Semitic policies of Hitler were put in place. In one scene the camera zooms in on a line of people waiting to receive their yellow star. Standing in the line is Papa ten Boom--but he is a Christian. Standing beside him is one of his Jewish neighbors. He turns to Papa ten Boom and says, "You shouldn't be here."

Ten Boom replies, "I've come for my star."

"They are for Jews," says his neighbor, "You don't have a J on your card."

"You could get it for me," replies ten Boom, "If we all wear them they won't know a Gentile from a Jew."

Ten Boom did get a star--and he wore it. And, in time, he was caught rescuing Jews, and was shipped off to one of the camps where he died.

We may not be called to, as Papa ten Boom was, to risk our lives. But we are called to make meaningless the yellow stars that exist in our own day. We are called to work towards a time when all people are treated fairly and equally. Not just on Yom HaShoah, but every day.