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FROM THE SIDELINES
Requiem for the Winograd Report
By Rabbi Dow Marmur
 JERUSALEM—As many predicted, the Winograd Report on the conduct of the second Lebanon war has already been buried. Though there was a lot of debate in the days after it was published a few weeks ago, since then virtually nothing has been heard. It has gone the way of almost all previous reports of that ilk.
 Yes, the IDF seems determined to discretely implement many of the Winograd recommendations and in time we may see changes for the better, but experts say it’ll take a generation to right all past wrongs. However, more than half of the Report dealt with serious faults and much needed reforms in the government’s decision-making process. There’s no evidence that any of it is even being considered. Why?
Jim Lederman, the most astute analyst of Israeli politics I know, suggests that this has been the way in which government business has been conducted for so long that powerbrokers, whether inside or outside the government, are firmly wedded to the status quo. They don’t look out for what’s best for the country but only for what’s expedient for them and their supporters. Hence the absence of vision and the inability to formulate long-term plans based on sober analyses and the weighing up of options.
That’s why, I infer, instead of getting rid of Ehud Olmert and his government, most politicians preferred to leave him in place on the pretext that he’s making peace with Abu Mazen, even though it should have been obvious that neither of them is able to deliver. I was one of many who thought that, under the circumstances, it was right to defer change out of fear of a Netanyahu government taking over.
I could have been very wrong had Netanyahu, according to Lederman, not missed his big chance to come out in favor of the Report’s recommendations and insist on elections with the prospect of him as Prime Minister implementing them. Instead, he concentrated on the conduct of the last sixty hours of the war. The Report said that this particular aspect didn’t deserve that much blame. As a result, Olmert is riding high as Prime Minister while Netanyahu, as Leader of the Opposition, has to fend off attacks on his allegedly lavish jaunt in London – ironically, on a mission to defend the war.
Another reason for the failure to deal with the Winograd Report, according to Lederman, is that those in power are totally isolated from the people. Because of the constant threat of terror attacks on politicians, they’re surrounded by body guards and have virtually no opportunity to meet with ordinary folk. Their own advisers and “experts” are usually yes-people who filter facts to secure their own positions.
Israelis, says Lederman, are a very democratic lot. Despite the vigorous debates in the country - or perhaps because of them - a consensus (not unanimity, of course) on important issues does emerge. Unfortunately, the politicians don’t hear it. Hence the gap between those ostensibly democratically elected and those who elect them. The media could have bridged the gap, but they’re more interested in sensationalism than substance.
So what’s the answer? Radical restructuring of the government decision-making process, including electoral reform, appointment of responsible and viable committees to advise the government, etc. etc. Nobody seems to believe that it’ll happen. This means that it has become almost irrelevant which party is at the helm.
Under the circumstances, it’s difficult not to be cynical about politics in Israel.
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THE POLITICAL GROTTO
Obama's 'race' speech showed leadership
By Gary Rotto
 SAN DIEGO--You would think from all the attention given to the comments of Rev. Jeremiah Wright that he will be telling Senator Obama what to do with every bill that comes across the desk of the president. This is a discussion that becomes tinted by not only religion but by race as historically Black churches have been bastions of not only religion but the Black cultural experience.
This should not be lost on us in the Jewish community. Jewish Community Centers are a modern development in our history. The State of Israel as a center for culture has been with us for 60 years. Prior to either of these developments, Jewish culture was tied to the synagogue as a multi-faceted facility. The synagogue was the Beit Knesset – the house of assembly; a Beit Tefila - "house of prayer,” and a Beit Migdash – the house of study. It has been a place where we could celebrate many Jewish holidays of the “they tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat!” variety. How many times have we been at a synagogue and wondered during the silent Amidah what they would be serving at the oneg? How often have we caught up with folks at the oneg to find out what is happening in their lives … or perhaps in someone else’s life, while hopefully not engaging in leshon hara.
There are many times that we Jews debate what the rabbi has stated during the sermon- was it current, was it meaningful, was it off base? How often have we debated whether the rabbi was too soft or too strong in his/her comments on Israel? I’ve lost track of how many times people have complained to me about “how inept the Israeli Consulate is at delivering a good PR message.” While the cadences and verbally demonstrative responses in Black churches may be foreign to us, the discussion, the debate, the furor, over specific issues often are as intense as our own post-service debates.
It’s ground-breaking for a candidate to be able to refer to his white grandmother and African father. It’s refreshing to hear someone say how disappointed he can be over remarks that someone, or rather “some ones” have said and not disown those close to him. Would we believe a father who disowns his son for getting into an accident while drunk? We expect to hear how this is wrong, but we would not believe someone if he/she said that his/her love for the errant family member had now ended.
Senator Obama is both sincere and original in taking the discussion to the next level. Race needs to be discussed and we need a national dialogue in order to create better understanding among communities. We have disappointments in each other –Blacks wondering why the promises of the civil rights movement of better jobs, of better access to education remain seemingly unfulfilled, and Whites wondering why Blacks can’t just move on forty plus years late. To each group, perception is reality.
Several of Reverend Wright’s sermons deserve to be condemned. And there are remarks by rabbis that I have heard in other communities that have made me cringe and embarrassed and angry. Rabbi Meir Kahane is one whose remarks come to mind calling for the equivalent of apartheid within Israeli society – amongst its citizens. Rabbi Dov Lior of Kiryat Arba supposedly said that “...a thousand non-Jewish lives are not worth a Jew's fingernail.” I would hope and expect that many people would call for a denunciation of that statement. Not unlike what Senator Obama said about Louis Farrakhan.
The debate about whether then Senator John F. Kennedy would be beholden first to the Catholic Church and to the Pope in particular was a discussion before my time. But the discussion echoes in the calls for disowning Rev. Wright. He may not be at the level of the Pope, but the questions about allegiance and influence are the same.
Senator Obama embraced his multi-cultural heritage and began to lead us down a path of reflection and discussion. This should not be the sole focus of a presidential campaign. But it is clearly a move providing leadership to our country and contributing to an important national dialogue. Additional discussion and steps are needed at various points of the long campaign trail. If he continues to wisely reflect on and lead this discussion, Barack Obama will display true leadership skills that few others have ever achieved.
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REFLECTIONS
Advice for Obama: In life and in politics,
we are judged by the friends we keep
By Sheila Orysiek
 SAN DIEGO—Two weeks ago a friend came to visit bringing with her a large bag of yarn scraps for me to knit and crochet into Linus blankets which are then distributed through various agencies and hospitals to children in stress through the Linus Blanket Project. But that is not all this friend brought. She arrived in the full throated throttle of a head cold. This, too, got passed along to me. Though I saw the state of her health, years of deeply embedded “polite” rules of behavior prevented me from asking her to leave my doorstop and return another day. Instead I invited her in - resigning myself to the foregone conclusion of inheriting her misery.
Thus, I spent a good deal of time curled on my easy chair, hugging my own comforting blue blanket and listening alternately to the radio and TV - but not completely wasting my time as I continued to knit/crochet Linus blankets - bleary eyes and all.
This being the state of affairs I had plenty of time to watch the Senator Obama/Pastor Wright contretemps unfold. Let me say at the outset that Obama is not someone for whom I would ever vote - not because of skin color - but because of his political ideology. However, aside from his political agenda, Obama presents a much more complex - and troubling - view of how he sees the world.
We are judged by the friends we keep - and rightly so. Were I to state that my mentor, an important influence on my life, is the head of the Aryan Nation or the Ku Klux Klan - others would be right to judge me by that connection. It’s not enough for me to say that this person - this Klansman - has always been good to me, the fact that I associate with a bigot begets conclusions on my choice of friends and my willingness to overlook bigotry.
If I consider someone my mentor, but that person utters hateful screeds against other people is it worthy of me to continue the relationship? Do we judge someone only by how we are treated - not by how this person treats others? Should that not also be a component in how we chose the people in our lives?
In his speech Obama stated he could not disavow his relationship with Wright even though he knew of Wright’s support for Louis Farrakhan. Would I be applauded if I continued a friendship with a member of the KKK? Would that be considered honorable?
Had Obama joined the church under the pastorship of Jeremiah Wright for only the last couple of years, with his busy campaign schedule, it would be within the realm of possibility he could have missed those sermons. But now we know that the relationship has endured for 20 years, and by Obama’s own admission in his speech he had indeed heard sermons such as were shown on the news.
Also in his speech, Obama said he could no more disavow his friendship with Wright than he could disavow his relationship to the black community or his grandmother. Those three relationships are not comparable. The fact that he sees them as comparable is more than a little troubling.
Obama has not only attended this church for 20 years, he supported it materially. He had his children baptized there and presumably brings them to services - and they get to hear and absorb the hatred directed toward their native country, their fellow citizens labeled “rich white people” who are to blame for all the ills known to man, and support for an anti-Semite like Farrakhan. Apparently, Obama has no problem with having his children in this milieu.
When Obama states in public he is a strong friend of Israel but cherishes a relationship with a man who cherishes Farrakhan, which Obama shall we believe - the public man or the private man?
In his speech, Obama made reference to his grandmother uttering racial slurs. Later he tried to clarify this by calling his grandmother a “typical white person.” Ahem. Excuse me. Surely calling someone who utters racial slurs a “typical white person” - is a slur against white people.
There were other things that disturbed me - as I lay dying of a head cold - the reaction of the congregation to the vicious sermons by Pastor Wright. Can people rightly demand an end to racism when they themselves exhibit it and applaud it? Not only did the church keep this pastor - they celebrated him - were proud enough of him to record those DVD’s and sell them as representative of the church.
As Wright blamed everything on “rich white people” - it looked to me like the church wasn’t doing too badly itself. This was no shack in the swamp with wooden benches and a leaky roof. This church looks to be well endowed. They have a United States Senator within their midst. Perhaps the congregants haven’t noticed the great strides forward they have made and choose to keep boiling and invested in the past.
A group of people who demand their civil rights (and rightly so), and to be treated with respect (and rightly so), have to be ready and willing to extend that respect. Dancing around the pews while hate is spewed from the pulpit is the equivalent to dancing in the streets when a rocket lands on someone’s house. If a history of slavery and prejudice is an excuse for dancing around the pews to celebrate hate - then as Jews we have a 2,000 year excuse. But any group that invests in projecting hatred forward based on anger from the past - loses its future.
As I heard Pastor Wright damn America, I couldn’t help wondering which country on earth he would consider better than America? Well, we have an answer. He accompanied Farrakhan on a trip to Libya to pay their respects to Khadafi. Now, there’s a worthy exemplar of civil rights and humanitarianism!
A visit to the church website makes it very clear the church trumpets African values, history and culture. Are the values of Africa better than those of the America Wright damned? Is African history even to the present day devoid of genocide? Slavery? Abuse of human rights including forced marriages and female genital mutilation? Using children for war? Mass starvation? One would think so - listening to Pastor Wright damn the country which gives him the freedom to damn it. Khadafi or the other despots who rule in Africa would not be so kind.
On one news show I heard reference made comparing John Kennedy’s speech (Sept. 1960) regarding his religion and the presidency and Obama’s speech. I reread Kennedy’s speech and find no comparison. Kennedy is not defending a 20 year relationship with a man spouting hate. Kennedy is stating deeply held principles - affirmatively - he has no need to defend. He hadn’t done anything which needed defense.
Obama tells us that what he lacks in length of experience he would make up in judgment. Shall we judge him by the friends he keeps? Shall we judge him by whom he considers his spiritual mentor? Shall we judge him upon what he allows his children to learn? Shall we judge him by which groups he supports with his presence and his money? Shall we judge him by how he defines “typical white people?” The very same “typical white people” he would like to one day preside over as president? Those are fair parameters upon which to judge someone.
Another troubling item - how does a church get away with political rhetoric under the tax code?
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SDJA STUDENT QUARTERLY
Editor's Note: In April, the senior class of San Diego Jewish Academy will travel to Israel as the last chapter in their high school educations. Two stories in the current issue of SDJA Student Quarterly explore projects intended to help finance that trip.
Students help honor Israel at 60
By Alexa Katz
 SAN DIEGO—This year is Israel's 60th anniversary and to celebrate this, the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center will present the Afula Conservatory Syphonic Band and Choir during the San Diego Music Festival at 6 p.m. Sunday evening, March 30. As part of this program, SDJA students Charly Jaffe and Gaby Maio as well as aculty member Don Harrison will discuss the relationship between San Diegoand Israel.
This presentation coincides with the publication of the book San Diego Builders of Israel edited by Harrison and published by the United Jewish Federation's Israel Center. It celebrates the contrbutions San Diegans have made to the development of Israel over 60 years.
Jaffe and Maio wrote a chapter about the connection between the San Diego Jewish community and its sister region of Sha'ar Hanegev, which is often bombarded by rockets fired from nearby Gaza.
"Charly and Gaby did a wonderful job, not only in the writing of their chapter of the book, but also in donating the $500 payment for the article for the senior trip to Israel. Thus, they not only described the special relationship between Sha'ar Hanegev and San Diego, they also contributed financially to the furthering of that relationship," said Harrison.
The ceremony will celebrate Israel's 60 years by having representatives of three different generations interviewed about their experiences of Israel. Maio will interview Jaffe, who was a participant in the Jacobs International Teen Leadership Institute (JITLI) which brngs togehter Jewish and Arab teens on a trip from San Deigo to Spain and Israel. Jaffe will represent the youngest generation.
Harrison, who is also the editor of the onlyline paper, San Diego Jewish World, will interview former UJF President Dr. Richard Katz, who also is a former chairman of the national executive committee of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
The oldest generation will be represented by Gert Thaler, who was a pioneer in creating tours and travel from San Diego to Israel. Thaler has been a leader in numerous San Diego-Israel organizations such as the Jewish National Fund and the Tel Aviv Foundation. She will be interviewed by Norman Greene, formerly co-publisher with Harrison of the now defunct San Diego Jewish Press-Heritage.
The musicians from the Afula Conservatory Symphonic Band and Choir, which was founded 30 years ago in the northern Israeli city of Afula, features talented singers and instrumentalists ranging in age from 14 to 18 who travel all over Israel, Canada and the United States performing in concerts and competitions.
San Diego Builders of Israel will be distributed to the attendees of this ceremony at the end of the night.
SDJA STUDENT QUARTERLY
Litter, mice force snack bar to close
By Eitan Frysh
 SAN DIEGO—Litter left on the grounds and tables of San Diego Jewish Academy's Upper School is hving its financial consequences. Field mice have fed off this trash and taken shelter in the snack bar, prompting the administration to close it for health reason. This in turn has reduced revenues for the senior class trip to Israel. Dean of Students Brian Kissell says the snack bar will remain closed until the campus stays clean.
"It would be great if people woul take the responsibility for thier own personal area," commented teacher Melissa McKinstry." The whole community would benefit from a clean campus."
In an e-mail to parents, Kissell observed that trash cans typically are "less than 15 paces" from litter still regularly left by lunching students. The dean speculated that students "almost seem to take pride in their left-over trash." He added: "There are very few times when I admit that I am at a complete loss for what to do in a situation, but this is as close as I have even been to that time."
Due to the availability of litter as a food source—and construction of the school gym destroying another area of their habitat—field mice migrated to the snack bar. Their droppings made conditions unsanitary. According to senior Sam Ulrich: "The week that we found that there were mice near our food we bought house containers" to preserve the food."
Although some thought the pontential healt problem solved, others did not. Some "parens decided that they were going to take the initiative, and call the health department if they found that we have 'rats' on campus," Ulrich said. There have been no sightings of rats, only of field mice.
The closing of the snack bar has so far resulted in approximately $1,500 in lost sales, according to Ulrich. Noting that is money which had been expected to help finance the seniors trip to Israel at the end of the semester, Ulrich said: "Seniors are getting the brunt of this issue and you guys (the rest of the student body) are not."
In his e-mail, Kissell reported: "So far, any success we have experienced has been short-term and limited." He aid that seniors must accept a share of the blame in that they havenot regularly cleaned the snack bar.
Fingers of blame also have pointed elsewhere. Carlie Wittgrove, a senior, accused the sophomore class, saying "It's the tenth graders' fault." Ninth graders and middle schoolers also are sometimes accused. Kissell made specific reference to the people who eat lunch wile stitting beside the trailers as a main source of the litter problem.
Recently, seniors have been raising litter awareness on campus, making sure people pick up their trash. After winter break, eniors also thoroughly cleaned the snack bar and set up traps to capture any more mice that might enter.
Kissell commended them on their progress saying that the several weeks after winter break when the snack bar was briefly open there had been "steady progress." However, it was not kept up so he decided to close the snack bar once again to prevent the reoccurence of unsanitary conditions.
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FROM THE HALLS OF ACADEMIA
No respite from racism: 1936 in the evolution of German racial politics
By Lawrence Baron, PhD
 SAN DIEGO—On August 1st 1936, the day the Summer Olympic Games opened in Berlin, an American reporter for the liberal magazine The Nation conveyed his impression of conditions in Germany: “One sees no Jewish heads being chopped off, or even roundly cudgeled. The people smile, are polite and sing with gusto in beer gardens. Board and lodging are good, cheap, and abundant, and no one is swindled by grasping hotel and shop proprietors. Everything is terrifyingly clean and the visitor likes it all.”
To the outside world, it appeared that Germany had resolved its “Jewish problem” by peaceful means. Compared to the sporadic acts of violence perpetrated against Jews by Nazi Stormtroopers during the first two years of Hitler’s rule. the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 seemed “moderate” by merely stripping German Jews of their citizenship. severely restricting Jewish-Gentile economic and social interactions, and defining who was considered Jewish by a more lenient standard than had been employed in the 1933 Civil Service Law,-namely, designating Jews as people with three rather than just one Jewish grandparent. Hitler arrogantly declared that with this “single secular solution it may be possible still to create a level ground on which the German people may find a tolerable relation towards the Jewish people.” Although describing the laws as “the heaviest of blows for the Jews in Germany,” the leadership of the Reichsvertretung, the official organization representing German Jewry, hoped that the legislation would “create a basis on which a tolerable relationship becomes possible between the German and the Jewish people.”
Indeed, a rational political analyst could conclude that there was no significant reason to persecute the Jews by 1936. After all, many people believed that the level of anti-Semitism rose and fell with the health of the German economy. In 1933 unemployment had reached its zenith, thereby increasing the demagogic appeal of Hitler’s call for the Aryanization of Jewish property. Three years later, the remilitarization of Germany and massive public works projects like the building of the Autobahn had eliminated unemployment and restored Germany’s international stature. Moreover, Hitler’s Economics Minister Hjalmar Schacht was hesitant to Aryanize larger Jewish companies for fear of hurting German commerce by losing the expertise and international connections of their owners. The goal of German anti-Semitic policies in this period was to encourage German Jews to emigrate, but the numbers of German Jews fleeing the country dropped to a low of 21,000 in 1935 after peaking at 37,000 in 1933. The staging of the Olympics in Germany also augured well for the Jews. In June of 1935 the Ministry of Propaganda ordered that anti-Semitic signs be removed from major German roads to avoid offending foreign visitors in 1936. When Count Baillet-Latour of the International Olympic Committee noticed such signs on the road to Garmisch-Partenkirchen shortly before the opening of the Winter Olympics, he demanded that Hitler personally order that the signs be taken down as a gesture “of the most elementary courtesy.” Hitler grudgingly complied and even prohibited Germans from engaging in acts of collective retaliation against Jews following the assassination of a Nazi party official in Switzerland by a Jewish medical student the day before the Winter Games began on February 6, 1936.
The problem was that Hitler did not make traditional diplomatic, economic, or political considerations his major priority. Instead, he viewed the state as the instrument through which the Aryan race would enlarge its population and territory, genetically purify its own ranks, enslave inferior races like the Poles and Russians, and segregate, deport, or eventually liquidate asocial and dangerous rival racial groups like the Gypsies and Jews respectively. To be sure, he delayed the pace and scope of achieving these goals as he consolidated Germany’s economic, military, and political power between 1933 and 1936. He gladly reaped the international public relations benefits of hosting the 1936 Olympics. Nevertheless, the same year marked the establishment of institutions and the implementation of policies which signified the escalation of Nazi military and racial aims which would culminate in the outbreak of World War Two in 1939 and the systematic genocide of European Jewry in 1941.
Even though Hitler outlawed reprisals against the Jews in the wake of the assassination in Switzerland, he blamed the murder on “the hate inspired influence of our Jewish foes” and accused them of trying to dominate the German people.In August, the month when the Summer Olympic games began in Berlin, Hitler issued a Memorandum for a Four Year Economic Plan to enable Germany to wage war against Bolshevism and International Jewry. He concluded his plan by recommending that the Reichstag pass two laws: “ (1) a law providing the death penalty for economic sabotage, and (2) A law making the whole of Jewry liable for all damage inflicted by individual specimens of this community of criminals upon the German economy and thus upon the German people. The dire consequences of the Plan for the Jews emerged quickly with Goering’s appointment as the head of the Four Year Plan. Unlike Schacht who valued the role of foreign trade in Germany’s economic recovery, Goering sought a German economy that was independent from world commerce and could rely on its own resources to prepare for war. This allowed Goering to Aryanize larger Jewish companies without worrying about the repercussions such a change in ownership might have on foreign trade. Moreover, Hitler’s legal recommendations became the subsequent basis for the economic reprisals exacted against German Jewry in the wake of Kristallnacht. One decree promulgated on November 12, 1938 effectively eliminated the Jews from the German economy by banning Jewish ownership of retail stores, Jewish sales of goods at “markets of all sorts, fairs, or exhibitions,” and Jewish management of most enterprises. The same day Goering assessed a one billion Reichsmark “atonement fine” against the German Jewish community for allegedly instigating the assassination of a German diplomat in Paris by a young Polish Jew. the incident which Hitler cited as the catalyst for the widespread arson and pillaging of Jewish businesses, homes, and synagogues which has become known as Kristallnacht. 91 Jews had been killed in the rampage; hundreds of synagogues had been burned; and, thousands of Jewish shops had been destroyed. In reality the pogrom had been requested by Goebbels, approved by Hitler, and carried out by members of the SA and the SS.
The leading role of the SS in what were supposedly spontaneous outbursts of mob vengeance indicated that the riots and the subsequent internment of nearly 30,000 German Jewish men were legally sanctioned actions. The foundations for this policy had been laid in June of 1936, 2 months before the opening of the Berlin Olympics, when the Reichsfuehrer of the SS Heinrich Himmler had been appointed the chief of all German Police Forces. As Saul Friedlander has noted, the merger of the police and the SS “signaled an unmistakable step toward the ever increasing intervention of the (Nazi) party in the state’s sphere of competence and a shift in power from the traditional state structure to the party.” Earlier in 1936, the Security Service of the SS had established an office for Internal Intelligence which housed a subsection to monitor the activities of secular, religious, and Zionist Jews for evidence of subversive activities. One of the functions of the Subsection II 112, as it was officially designated, was to compile a card index to identify every Jew residing in Germany. During the Kristallnacht riots, this data bank facilitated the targeting of Jewish businesses and residences, as well as the temporary internment of 30,000 Jewish men in concentration camps to serve as a not so subtle warning that it was time for Jews to emigrate. In this way Hitler translated his perception of Jews into reality. He had castigated the Jews as a “community of criminals” in 1936 and now the SS had taken the next logical step by placing tens of thousands of Jewish males under preventive detention.
The most immediate repercussion of holding the Summer Olympic Games in Germany was the internment of Sinti and Roma gypsies living in the vicinity of Berlin. Popular prejudice against Gypsies, whom most Europeans, let alone Germans, stereotyped as disreputable fortune-tellers, pickpockets, scam artists, and troublesome vagrants, was probably more virulent than German anti-Semitism because the majority of German Jews had acculturated and achieved considerable upward economic mobility in the previous century. Nazi racial anthropologists classified Gypsies as fallen Aryans whose racial purity had been contaminated through miscegenation with the diverse racial groups they had encountered during centuries of nomadic wandering. Although not specifically mentioned in the July 1933, “Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Defects” and Hitler’s 1934 order to terminate the pregnancies of “hereditarily ill women, or women who had become pregnant by a hereditarily ill partner,” Gypsies confined in hospitals and mental institutions were routinely forced to undergo sterilization operations or abortions to prevent the births of children whom Hereditary Health Courts decided were genetically destined to become unproductive wards of the state. In November of 1933, many Gypsies were arrested as “asocials” under the provisions of a recently adopted “Law Against Dangerous Habitual Criminals.” In a commentary on the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, “Gypsies, Negroes, and their bastards” were classified as non-Aryans and subjected to the same kinds of discrimination applicable to Jews. In May of 1936, the “Central Office to Combat the Gypsy Nuisance” was opened in Munich. Its primary task was to compile a list of Gypsies residing in Germany. In June and July of that year, the Berlin police apprehended 600 Sinti and Roma and interned them in a camp located near a sewage dump and cemetery in the suburb of Marzahn. The reason behind this mass arrest was to remove the Gypsies from the streets of Berlin where it was feared they might attract negative publicity from the foreign press during the Olympic Games in August.
The inclusion of “Negroes and their bastards” as non-Aryans for the purposes of enforcing the Nuremberg Laws foreshadowed the sterilization of members of this highly visible minority in 1937. This paralleled the eugenics program introduced in 1933 to prevent “useless eaters” and undesirable groups from propagating. During the Olympic Year, over 63,000 disabled patients in German mental asylums and hospitals were sterilized and 127 of these unsuspecting victims died from complications resulting from the surgical procedure. The debate within government circles over whether to eradicate the “inferior” gene pool of otherwise healthy children of mixed African and German parentage by extending the sterilization program to them too apparently intensified in 1936. The idea of African racial inferiority initially developed as a pseudo-scientific justification for German colonization of parts of Africa in the late 19th Century. The German public had been infuriated by France’s deployment of African Colonial Troops in the post World War One occupation of the Rhineland. Unsubstantiated reports of numerous rapes of German women by these black soldiers became grist for the propaganda mill of those who hated the Weimar Republic although only one such rape was ever documented. Hitler ranted in Mein Kampf that it was the Jews who brought “the Negro to the Rhine” with the intent to bastardize the white race. The African soldiers fathered approximately 600 children with German women. The Nazis dubbed these mulatto children “the Rhineland Bastards.” In 1933 Herman Goering ordered that they be identified, and registered. A racial anthropologist conducted a study of 27 of them and concluded that they exhibited behavioral and intellectual abnormalities. In 1935 the necessity of sterilizing these otherwise healthy children was proposed by an Advisory Committee for Population and Racial Policy. The German occupation of the Rhineland by German Troops in March of 1936 increased the numbers of Afro-German children under Nazi control. The humiliating victories of African-American athletes in the Summer Olympic Games further exacerbated the animosity Hitler felt towards blacks. Although there was no legislation passed concerning the Afro-Germans, the Gestapo rounded-up approximately 400 Afro-German children and had them sterilized.
The Third Reich believed homosexual men posed a serious threat to the German body politic as well. Though Himmler briefly suspended their persecution during the Summer Olympic Games to avert incidents involving foreign visitors, he founded the Federal Security Office for Combating Abortion and Homosexuality” two months later. Sexual relations between men had been prosecuted as a criminal act carrying a maximum of a five-year jail sentence under Paragraph 175 of the German Legal Code since the unification of Germany in 1871. The campaign to decriminalize homosexual acts between consenting adult men had been started by a Jewish doctor named Magnus Hirschfeld in 1897 and Paragraph 175 almost was rescinded in 1929 with the support of Social Democratic and Communist delegates in the Reichstag. Consequently, the Nazi racial “expert” Alfred Rosenberg charged that Jews were “forever trying to propagandize sexual relations between siblings, men and animals, and men and men." The Nazis became the second largest party in the Reichstag in the 1930 elections ending the possibility of revoking Paragraph 175. Hitler initially took no public stand on the issue because Ernst Roehm, the leader of the SA, was an openly gay man. When Hitler had Roehm executed as part of the Night of the Long Knives Purge of 1934, he justified the assassination on the grounds that Roehm’s homosexuality had corrupted the ranks of the SA. In 1935 the criteria constituting “criminally indecent activities between men” were defined more loosely, and, the maximum punishment for such activities was increased to 10 years in jail. The legal rationale for the tougher approach to male homosexual relations was that the new state “must combat all unnatural instincts with vigor.” The linking of the suppression of homosexuality with the campaign to outlaw abortions on Aryan women reveals the racist thinking behind these policies. Homosexuality and abortion both lowered the Aryan birth rate. Furthermore, Himmler associated homosexuality with effeminacy and insisted that it would diminish the military fierceness of German soldiers. Although the witch-hunt for gay men relented during the Summer Olympic Games, 5,320 German men were sentenced for committing homosexual acts in 1936 compared to 2,106 convictions in 1935, 948 in 1934, and 853 in 1933.
Similarly, the Nazi suppression of Jehovah’s Witnesses also intensified during 1936. Despite the fact that only about 20,000 Witnesses resided in Germany, they were perceived by the Nazis as undermining the spirit of complete subservience to state authority which Hitler expected from all German citizens. Not only were the Witnesses suspect because of their American origins, they actively opposed the deification of the Fuehrer and the nation by refusing to give the Nazi salute, exclaim “Heil Hitler,” or serve in the Wehrmacht. They also believed in the unity of humankind, valued their Jewish Biblical origins, supported Zionism, and openly denounced Nazi racism and anti-Semitism. By the Summer of 1933, the Nazis attempted to ban the missionary activities of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in most German provinces. The Witnesses, however, continued covertly to disseminate their literature. The reintroduction of military conscription in March of 1935 prompted more arrests of male members of the denomination and a national ban on the group the following month. In June the Ministers of the Interior and Justice Departments authorized the lengthening of “protective custody” terms for Witnesses who already had served prison sentences. The American leader of the Witnesses, Franklin Rutherford, indignantly labeled Hitler the “Devil’s special representative on earth.” In 1936 the Gestapo set up a special branch to compile a registry of all Witnesses and infiltrate their Bible studies groups with secret agents. During the course of the year, 400 Jehovah’s Witnesses were interned at the recently opened camp of Sachsenhausen. Bavarian Police records from this period indicate that 7% of those arrested for engaging in “behavior harmful to the state” were Jehovah’s Witnesses.
The fanfare surrounding the 1936 Olympics has overshadowed the sinister implications of the institutional changes and policies adopted in that year to make the persecution of groups deemed enemies of the state more efficient. Although some historians of the period stress that “anti-Jewish discriminatory measures eased during the Olympic Games,”others like Saul Friedlaender recognize that “by 1936 ideology and policy could increasingly progress along a single track.”To be sure, the number of concentration camp inmates dropped to a low of 7,500 in 1936 and 1937 comprised primarily of political opponents, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and Gypsies who were charged with being “habitual criminals” and “asocials.”
1936 represented a pivotal year for the creation of the agencies in charge of identifying and registering Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Jews and for the imminent sterilization of the “Rhineland Bastards.” With the invasion of Poland in 1939, the eugenics program of sterilizing severely disabled patients in German hospitals was transformed into the euthanasia program for executing “useless eaters” ostensibly to free up hospital beds for wounded German soldiers. Gypsies and Jews in these institutions qualified for “special treatment,” a Nazi euphemism for medical murder, without the same physician approval required for handicapped Aryans. By 1939 the emphasis on the expropriation and emigration of German Jewry shifted to the ghettoization of Polish Jewry and the first deportations of groups of German Gypsies and Jews for “labor in the East.” As part of the attack on the Soviet Union two years later, special units of the SS rounded-up Gypsies and Jews alike and shot and buried them in nearby ditches. By the Summer of 1941, the gassing procedures developed for the euthanasia program were being tested on Russian Prisoners of War. The first death camp for Jews and Gypsies opened in December of 1941. Homosexuals and Jehovah’s Witnesses who had the misfortune of being interned in the expanded concentration and death camp system suffered high casualty rates.
The measures taken in 1936 did not inevitably lead to these events, but they bureaucratically and legally paved the way for them. The handbook issued to German athletes in 1935 declared, “Athletics and sport are the preparatory school of political driving power in the service of the State.” Just as surely as Hitler thought that his military conquests would guarantee that the Olympic Games would be held in Germany forever after, he believed that his genocide against the Jews and Gypsies and incarceration and reeducation of other undesirable elements would purify the Aryan Race for all time. The Third Reich won the Summer Olympic Games in 1936, but failed, albeit barely, to eradicate its ideological, racial, and religious enemies.
SAN DIEGO JEWISH WORLD THE WEEK IN REVIEW
Rabbi Dow Marmur in Jerusalem: Christian liturgy profoundly impacts Jews
Ira Sharkansky in Jerusalem: U.S. economy, Mideast tensions respond to their own cycles of emotion and excesses
From SDJA Student Quarterly, a publication of San Diego Jewish Academy:
Will Bohannon in San Diego: What is SDJA like for non-Jewish student?
Emma Tuttleman-Kriegler in San Diego: Overseas anti-Semitism stuns student
Cynthia Citron in Los Angeles: Harry Boychick has a raucous bar mitzvah every Sunday in interactive Hayworth play
Peter Garas in Canberra, Australia: Israeli historian's theory on origins of Jewish people has important implications
Donald H. Harrison in San Diego: 'Brain Death Bill,' conversion to Judaism highlights in life, career of Dixon Arnett
J. Zel Lurie in Delray Beach, Florida: Obama's speech on race compares with John Kennedy's talk on his Catholicism
Rabbi Dow Marmur in Jerusalem: The plight of Christians in Arab states
David Strom in San Diego: Chabon's latest is a fast-moving mystery that raises troubling quesitons for Jews
Donald H. Harrison in Oceanside, California: The real importance of the Easter bunny
Natasha Josefowitz in La Jolla, California: The 'clonal effect' in Election 2008
Lloyd Levy in London: Ongoing hostility to Israel in British media
Sheila Orysiek in San Diego: Bella Family: The Revolt of the Cousins
Jay A. Waronker in Maputo, Mozambique: Restoring a synagogue in Mozambique
Carol Davis in Vista, California: You never can tell... or should you?
Donald H. Harrison in Rancho Santa Fe, California: Mom, 80, helped arrange surprise party for her 80-year-old son, the writer
Dov Burt Levy in Salem, Massachusetts: Issues in the wake of terror last forever
Janet Tiger in La Jolla, California: Sculptor Shirley Lichtman becomes subject of JCC art exhibit only a day after her death
Gidi Yahalom in Kibbutz Beit-Alfa, Israel: Pig's Testimony: Why Jews Don't Eat Pork
Judith Apter Klinghoffer in Cherry Hill, New Jersey: McCain's foreign policies score with Jews
Rabbi Baruch Lederman in San Diego: Harry S Truman: The American Cyrus
Rabbi Dow Marmur in Jerusalem: John McCain: A true friend of Israel
Sheila Orysiek in San Diego: The Four Big Questions; One Great Answer
Rabbi Leonard Rosenthal in San Diego: Purim riddle: Did Tanakh predict baseball?
Ira Sharkansky in Jerusalem: Palestinian-Israeli friction points range from cell phones to the right of return
Link to previous editions
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