(🇺🇦 Ukrainian Wladimir Klitschko beating down a Russian 🇷🇺)
The Setting
My first lasting encounter with bigotry was in a high-rise apartment in Detroit, Michigan. I was 7 years old. My family had taken a long road trip vacation from Connecticut to visit Muskegon, MI where my father grew up, and then Detroit, where a long lost and outcast family member, Uncle Alvin, lived.
My dad’s family barely acknowledged Alvin’s existence. He was a mysterious figure, lived a strange life. On this trip I met Alvin for the first and only time. To 7-year old me and my 10-year old brother, he was awesome. Not some reclusive, shady character, he was a delightful man — warm, friendly, talkative, kind — certainly kinder than my own father. He showed us his houseboat and brought us to the Army-Navy store he owned, where he gave us tons of cool Army gear — a kid’s dream!
We couldn’t understand why the family kept Alvin in the shadows, but we were young and trusted that the family had good reasons to isolate him, that there were things we didn’t understand. Nope. It turns out Alvin was just gay. Only after he died alone of a mysterious autoimmune illness (likely AIDS) about a decade later, did the family let out the secret.
Believe it or not, this passage really isn’t about Alvin and gay rights. Like I said, I didn’t know Alvin was gay for another decade. Instead it’s about when bigotry first pointed its finger at me.
What Can’t Be Unseen
When we first arrived at Alvin’s house, he had the TV on. A war movie was playing. But only one side had guns. The other side had no guns and no uniforms. In fact, the side with the guns and the uniforms was just shooting the other people — men, women, and children dead in the streets, or arresting them, amidst a mele of huge barking dogs and shouting.
My 7-year old eyes saw perhaps 30 seconds of that movie, but it was instantly and permanently burned into my brain. I can see that scene today, 3+ decades later. For the next two days, we blissfully cruised on Alvin’s houseboat, swam in Lake Michigan, and climbed sand dunes. But the car ride from MI back to CT eventually came, and there were plenty of miles and hours for me to interrogate my parents about what I’d seen on that TV. That’s when I first learned about the Holocaust.
They killed 6 million Jewish people for… being Jewish?! My mind exploded. Kids too? Why?! But we’re Jewish! Could that happen to us?!
I grappled with this revelation — that I could be murdered just because I celebrated Chanukah and not Christmas — through six states, including the seven barren hours of I-80 from Toledo, OH to Scranton, PA, where there’s nothing to do in a 1980s Buick station wagon but hunt for out-of-state license plates on passing cars and crane your neck to read billboards from the back seat. That’s a lot of time for a 7-year old to think about hate and terror and genocide.
A Formative and Lasting Impact
Learning about the Holocaust fucked up 7-year old me. It had two primary effects that I can recognize today.
- First, it forever made me cautious about revealing my religion to a new acquaintance. No, I never felt like someone would sick their German Shepherd on me, but I always have the slightest bit of hesitation.
- Second, it made me belligerently anti-racist decades before being “anti-racist” was a thing. It made me anti-anything that even hints of discrimination based on race and religion. (Understanding other forms of discrimination came later).
The Holocaust. Holy shit. After that I learned about it for years in Hebrew school. I read books on it. My entire public high school was bussed to the movie theater to see Schindler’s List. In college, I opted to take an entire college film class on the Holocaust. It was in this class that I read Maus. The folks banning it recently are idiots. 100% recommend.
To this day, that the Nazis killed 6 million Jews and millions of other “undesirables” including gays, disabled people, Romani (Gypsies), and Slavs seems almost unimaginable. And not for anything they did, but simply because of who they were. Just people trying to live their lives. Holy shit! Really?!?!
Perhaps this isn’t my entire origin story. Maybe I’ll uncover more as I write. But coming to terms with the reality of the Holocaust was certainly the seed of this defiant not-fucking-around-with-discrimination streak in my character.
Never. Never never never never would I excuse good people being treated badly simply because they celebrated different holidays, prayed to different gods, loved differently, or had a skin color other than mine.
Abso-fucking-lutely never.
To end with some inspiration. Here are five amazing heroes who saved Jews from the Holocaust. Take a minute to watch their heroic stories. And consider what YOU could have the power to do if you GOT IN THE RING. 🥊
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