Heart Talk

A Vile Foe Resurfaces

Growing up in Orange County in the 1950s and 1960s, I was exposed to plenty of anti-Semitism.                                                                                                                                             “Of course she’s a Jew,” said the alpha male of our sixth grade class. “Just look at that big hooked nose.”

“Know why these nails are called Jew nails,” asked the father of a friend of mine. He was holding a piece of wood with nails that had become bent as they came out the bottom of the 2 by 4. “Because they’re crooked and they stick together.”

And, so it was, not just in Orange County, but much of the nation. However, as the decades rolled by, there seemed to be a lessening of blatant anti-Semitism. Oh, it was still around, but limited to the outskirts of society. So seemingly tolerant had we become, that, had it not been for the Electoral College, the United States would have had a Jewish Vice President in 2001. (Remember Gore-Liebermann did get half a million more popular votes than Bush-Cheney).

Perhaps anti-Semitism in the United States was in the rear-view mirror. Perhaps we had eradicated it like we had the measles. Well, not so fast America. Just like the measles is now making an unfortunate comeback, due to the very questionable decisions of the Anti-Vax folks, so, it seems, is anti-Semitism.

Let’s start with the well-publicized incident at a teen party in Costa Mesa, attended by students from several schools in the Newport-Mesa School District. As part of a drinking game, they arranged cups in the shape of a swastika and had their photo taken while some of them were giving the Nazi salute. This same week, on the other side of our nation, at the Sidwell Friends School, where Sasha Obama is a student, Swastikas were displayed at an assembly.

Were these isolated incidents perpetrated by stupid kids? Unfortunately, no. Remember the shooting at the Pittsburgh synagogue that left 11 worshippers dead, and seven more wounded? After years of declining hate crimes against Jews, the FBI reported a 37 percent increase from 2016 to 2017. The Anti-Defamation League keeps track of physical assaults and vandalism on Jews and Jewish institutions. They found a 57 percent increase in such outrages from 2016 to 2017.

There are ugly voices from both the left and the right in our polarized political environment that contribute to this uptick. There is a young Democratic congresswoman from Minnesota that traffics in anti-Semitic tropes. We have a president who thinks there were fine people on both sides at Charlottesville.

What troubles me the most is the traction that such attitudes are gaining among our young. From ignorance grows bigotry. Either a lot of students are sleeping through history classes, or some schools are not exposing them to the full horrors of the Holocaust. According to a recent study, 66 percent of U.S. millennials did not know what the Auschwitz concentration camp was. Forty percent of this group believed less than two million Jews were murdered during World War II.

As a social science teacher, few things were more important to me than teaching about the horrors the Nazis committed. I made sure my students knew who Adolph Eichmann was. It was he who said he would leap into his grave with a smile knowing he had caused the deaths of millions of Jews. I also introduced them to Josef Mengle, “The Angel of Death,” who performed unspeakable experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz. I had Holocaust survivors speak to my classes. They read “Night” by Elie Wiesel and “The Diary of Anne Frank.”

Perhaps it is the dark corners of the internet that lure impressionable youth down these rabbit holes of anti-Semitism. Perhaps it is other things. But whatever it is, it needs to be stopped.

The Newport-Mesa School District, to their credit, reacted swiftly to the events of the party, having special assemblies and inviting Anne Frank’s step-sister to speak with some of the people who had attended this unfortunate party. However, this could be a long struggle. The following Sunday morning, pro- Nazi posters were found around the campus at Newport Harbor High.

So, it falls to all of us not be passive observers of this hateful belief system that seems to be soaked into the DNA of Western Civilization. When you hear someone do or say something anti-Semitic, don’t let that person get away with it. Let’s not return to the Orange County of my youth.

James Utt is the author of “Laguna Tales and Boomer Wails.” He really hopes you vaccinate your kids against measles.