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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
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