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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (April 17, 1980)
’ es A&M remembers ewish holocaust rise voluntary o (rests," guidelini 1 Half of the p ~ which stu By PAUL BARTON Campus Reporter ‘Who has indicted this upon us? Who has made us Jews different fro- mail other people?”—Anne Frank, ‘The Diary of a Young Girl ” Kin the Old Testament the word holocaust denoted a wholly burnt sacrifice offered up to the god DricM wek l ■•tv j n mo( l ern history the term sym- )1 bill reacheiK 265 systematic extermination ofp million Jews during World War 3ercent(fai®y the Nazis ' (X) barrels J ews and others at Texas A&M deeontr University are taking time out this hs, The mi week, like people around the coun lay was to ht|y past Jan. 1, ■ of revenueiB 10 has inflicted this upon us? rter decis; Who has made us Jews different ' marginal (fo/n all other people?”— Anne > 30 a barrelfranA', “The Diary of a Young average "Cir/. ” 129.50. P try. to reflect on that dark moment in history during National Holocaust Remembrance Week, an observance established by Congress in 1979. | 'Tm glad that they are tryig to make this an annual event,” said Sol Klein, supervisor of the instrument shop in the physics department. pFormany years Klein represented IH local Jewish community on the Bryan Ministerial Alliance. There is aq rabbi in the area. A Reformed Jew, he still performs yish weddings and funerals when ble ask him to, even though a [ice of the peace must be present lake the marriage legal. Most re- Htly he participated in the Holo- jaust Remembrance Program at the jFaiths Chapel Sunday night. |l dread it when people talk about ying it (anti-Semitism) down, ’ Sin. “The more you play it down, [rougher it is going to get. A lot of i won’t raise a ruckus. If the Jews Swope had started screaming at || first, they might have attracted bine attention. ” b Klein moved to Bryan 31 years ago is a jeweler. He grew up in an all- jpwish neighborhood in Brooklyn. ? or that reason, he said he was not peposed to much anti-Semitism vhen he was young, ffie did encounter some, however. | Driving to a town in upstate New fork he saw a sign one time that read 'No Jews or Dogs Allowed.” E'Notice they put Jews first, ” Klein aid. t He also said that he and his wife lere turned away from an apartment 5 Pittsburgh, once their religion was aade known. yMien the first news of German aties against Jews was received are the war Klein was still a teen- |‘It was a rough experience for living in the United States at time,” said Klein. His father sent postcards to rela tives in Europe only to have them come back stamped with a swastika and the German word for “un known.” “It happened four or five times,” he said. “We never knew what hap pened to them. We assumed them to have been killed in a concentration camp.” Why are Jews so frequently the target of persecution? Klein lists two factors: the concept of the Jews as a “chosen” people and the frequent Sunday-school teaching that Jews were the killers of Christ. He said anti-Semitism is much less severe than it used to be, though. Michael Chapman, 26, is an en tomology major who is seriously con sidering entering a yeshiva, or Jew ish rabbinical school, when he finishes at Texas A&M. Chapman agrees the feeling that Jews killed Christ is responsible for much anti-Jewish sentiment, but he lists other factors as well. “Most people believe wrongly that we’re all rich,” he said, “that we all control the banks or that we are all either doctors or lawyers. There is a certain amount of anti-Semitism that exists in any country. It just takes the right conditions to bring it out.” Chapman said he is afraid that in many ways the world has already for gotten the horror of the death camps. For instance, he said Nazi war cri minals are no longer pursued with the same zeal and that those caught receive lighter sentences than they deserve. Looking back, Chapman is angered that churches in the West failed to speak out while Hitler’s program was carried through. He said diplomatic cables received in the United States before the war in dicated Jews were being persecuted, but nobody said anything. Herbert Polinard, minister at Central Christian Church in Galves ton and father of Texas A&M accounting major Mary Polinard, said, however, it is not fair to judge what went on in the 1930s and 1940s from the standpoint of today. He added that some of the most stalwart men in opposition to Hitler were Christian clergy in Germany, including Martin Niemoller, Diet- rich Bonhoeffer and Otto Dibelius. “By the time the church, the Jews, the gentiles and scientists, among others, knew what was going on it was too late to stop it,” he said. During the war Polinard served with the 132nd Evacuation Hospital unit Europe. He was at Dachau dur ing the first week it was retaken from the Nazis. When he entered the camp he said he saw up to 1,000 bodies stacked against the wall of the crematorium. “There wasn’t enough flesh left on the bodies to make a stench.,” he said. “There was an odor but it was not that of putridness. ” He said the malnutrition had been so bad that up to 100 people a day died even after the army started giv ing oatmeal gruel, orange juice and medicine to the survivors. The Holocaust has caused serious soul-searching among many reli gious thinkers, considering the tradi tional Hebraic concept of a God ac- “There is an enemy within us that makes us afraid of others, and the Holocaust should not be remembered so much as Nazis persecuting Jews, but as man persecuting man in the name of state or idea. ” — Herbert Poli nard. tive in history who rewards the right eous. “If we have a crisis of conscience it should be about mankind, not God,” Chapman said. “I consider the Holocaust as some thing man allowed to happen. Man was created with a free will. He has the ability to create a world full of evil or one full of peace and har mony. What we need to do is re evaluate our concept of humanity.” Polinard said that as horrible as the Holocaust was, it is still possible to see some good arising from it. “It helped in making us see the need to look at mankind as a family,” he said. “The Holocaust was not just anti-Jewish; it was anti-rational, anti moral and anti-human.” He said the same type of thinking could arise anywhere. “This can happen to all of us,” he said. “There is an enemy within us that makes us afraid of others, and the Holocaust shold not be remembered so much as Nazis persecuting Jews but as man persecuting man in the name of state or idea.” ■ The Battalion 845-2611 /^!\ f Barcelona APARTMENTS ient laving, better than it’s ever been S ★ New management it New furnishings * New pool-and-sun area it Extra large apartments ★ Tennis ★ Excellent location to campus and shuttle bus. 19 you haven’t seen Barcelona lately, you don’t know how great living can be. 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Just $2.75 Visit Our New Fun Parlor Pinball, Foosball and Lots More! f THE BATTALION Page 11 THURSDAY, APRIL 17, 1980 FORJ ¥j STEAKHOUSE A UNIQUE EXPERIENCE IN GOOD FOOD, FUN AND FRIENDS. 2528 S. Texas College Station a literary magazine of Texas poets on KAMO-m 90.9 Support public radio in the Saturday, April 19 Brazos Valley — Send your tax- _ . . deductible donations to: Tuesday, April 22 10:30 a.m. 8:30 p.m. KAMU-FM Texas A&M University College Station, TX 77843 Host Paul Christensen with guest Gary Sny der, in Part I of an exclusive two-part inter view with this major voice of the ecology movement. POETRY SOUTHWEST is funded in part with the support of the Texas Commission on the Arts and HumqpWes and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.