You know, good citizen [this is addressing a Zionist in public discussion, who accused me of embracing Hitler].....when I was a small child, the war had not been over very long. I was born in 1948, and have always been proud of the fact that Gandhi and I drew breath on this planet at the same time, although he was murdered shortly after.

 

My next door neighbor Johnny Borel's dad fought at Iwo Jima. My grandpa landed at Normandy.

 

At that time it was very common for the black and white newsreel footage to appear on our primitive black and white Muntz TV with the round screen. Bulldozers pushing huge piles, the size of a house, of skinny naked human bodies, into pits.

 

The bodies would tumble loosely into the pits, limbs flailing every which way, as if they were inanimate objects. They'd land on the pile in the pit and roll down. Naked. Human. Me wide eyed, a boy of four or five, sitting watching this all by myself early on Saturday mornings, before cartoons started.

 

It made a very strong impression.

 

I was 12 when Exodus came out. It was pretty boring. Talk talk talk on the ship. I've never seen it again, but I bought the record with my allowance and was inspired by the epic grandness of the soaring theme, as I thought about the bulldozer and that pile of bodies.

 

Ron Burstein was my best buddy in Junior high. We were inseparable. We went to see Spartacus together. "Well Spartacus, not too many gladiators get to 0-2". That was his big joke, which was pretty funny at the time, since Spartacus had lost his first two 'fights to the death', (but was spared by happenstance). We had a really good teacher together who taught us about the Romans, and about Hannibal. We were fascinated. I learned the song 'Sink the Bismark', (In May of 1941 the war had just begun. The Germans had the biggest ships that had the biggest guns. The Bismark was the fastest ship that ever sailed the seas. On 'er decks were guns as big as steers and shells as big as trees. I could recite the rest but won't bore you). One day in gym class we walked around the perimeter of the school field as I sang it over and over for him. I still have VERY strong feelings for him, though its been fifty years since I last saw him.

 

I had a tender romance with a beautiful Jewish girl in college. Rivkah. Long brunette hair, soulful eyes that were so kind and inquiring, but could shoot fire when she became angry. Her family was very 'observant', and she wasn't allowed to date a 'goy'. She told them I was Jewish. Her brother went to our same college, and knew, but never ratted us out.

 

I wore a yarmulke when I sat at their table at Passover. I don't think her father was fooled, but was just too wise to try to deter his headstrong daughter from her passions. His melodious tenor voice reminded me of the Ukrainian priests, as he chanted the ceremony. I felt very honored, and more that a bit guilty to be there in disguise, as I was so fortunate to be a part of this beautiful ceremonial family tradition.

 

When I was a young carpenter, still in my 20s, I did a job for Mr. and Mrs. Liebovitz. She had the number tattooed on her forearm. She was a woman in her late forties or so, and clearly was very beautiful when she was younger. She enjoyed flirting with me, as older women often do with younger men, in a semi-maternal and 'safe' way, (safe because an actual physical relationship is not a possibility).

 

Her husband was a tailor. He liked me a lot, and tolerated his wife's playfulness without a trace of jealousy. They appreciated the quality of the work I did. She enjoyed feeding me lunch every day, (and was, of course, an excellent cook), and twice I had dinner with them.

 

By the time I finished the job, (a couple or three weeks), they felt like family to me. I felt a strong affection for them. Their thick accent reminded me so much of my Ukrainian immigrants Babi and Djee-Djee, (my grandparents).

 

When the job was done, and my tools were all loaded onto my truck, they invited me in and we sat and shared a glass of old homemade brandy that they kept for special family occasions.

 

There was surely never a goy in all history that felt the tragedy of what happened to the Jews, just before I was born, MORE deeply than I did, and DO.

 

As I watched those horrific black and white newsreel images, they were incomprehensible. As I grew and learned more, it was always an intense and perplexing mystery to try to fathom how an entire nation had been gripped by a shared madness.

 

In '67, there were both Jews and Arabs living on my dorm room floor. Their heated arguments frequently came to blows. I did not understand much at that time about what was going on, but those black and white images are forever burned onto my mind, and I still thought, at that time, that Israel was the font of goodness itself, and I didn't even know why those Arab guys were so angry.

 

I do now......It was the late seventies by the time I figured it out. By '82, when Sharon unleashed his Phalangist henchmen to do that ghastly mass murder, my anger over this cruel tragic irony was fully formed. These people who had suffered so much had become infested and infected by the same evil spirit as had tortured them so horrifically only a generation back.

 

How could that happen? How is that even possible?

 

We are witness to what must surely be History's greatest Irony, as there are actually Jewish people now in Israel that openly advocate for applying the 'final solution' to millions of captive and defenseless people.

 

As we see this tragic nation gone mad with this same mass psychosis that had captured that nation in Europe, I often feel the same as that young boy watching those black and white newsreels. It is once again hard to believe that humans can really be this crazy.

 

Now you think you have something to teach me about Nazis, good citizen? OK, let's hear it.