editorials
T his year, as we mark Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israel’s
Independence Day on April 26 (5 Iyyar), we
join the people of Israel and supporters of Israel
around the word in celebration and introspection.

We celebrate the Jewish state’s amazing growth,
successes and achievements as we marvel at the
vibrancy, creativity and grit of the “startup nation”
that blossomed in the desert. At the same time, we
worry about the profound political and societal rifts
that now divide the people of Israel in a way and
with an intensity we have not seen before. These
fundamental internal differences raise concerns in
Diaspora communities and among friends of Israel
around the world. In the eyes of many, the divide
threatens the continued vitality of the Jewish state’s
democratic enterprise.

Although Israel has faced all sorts of challenges
in the past, this is the third time that a threatening
cloud of this significance has hovered over a Yom
Ha’atzmaut celebration. The first was the original
Independence Day on May 14, 1948, when Israel was
under withering attack from all of her neighbors. The
second was on the eve of the Six-Day War in 1967,
when Egypt and Syria were gearing up for war and
the U.S. was warning Israel not to shoot first. In both
cases, Israel overcame overwhelming challenges
and survived. And thrived. We pray for the same
result now.

The Israel we celebrate this year is a much different
Israel than in 1948 or 1967. Today’s Israel is militarily
strong, economically successful, a world high-tech
innovator, at peace with many of her neighbors
and largely in control of the Palestinian population
in the surrounding territories. The Israel of 1948
and 1967 would hardly recognize what the country
has become.

The other difference is that the earlier threats
to Israel’s existence were external. This year’s
threat is from within. It is our hope that just as the
people of Israel joined together to overcome historic
external challenges, they will find a way to work
together to resolve today’s internal disagreements.

The path forward will not be easy. But so long
as approaches toward resolution recognize the
sincerity of opposing views even while respectfully
disagreeing with them, a path toward resolution can
be found.

As part of that process, modest compromise is
in order and should be embraced. For example,
Yom Ha’atzmaut is immediately preceded by Yom
Hazikaron, the sacred Memorial Day for Israelis
who died in the country’s defense. In the face
of ongoing protests against the government, an
opposition member of Knesset called for a pause in
the demonstrations on Yom Hazikaron, so all could
join together and honor the dead. Then a member
of the government circulated a proposal calling for a
halt to protests on Yom Ha’atzmaut, as well.

As of this writing, Israel’s opposition has not agreed
to the requested pause. They should. Everyone
should join in commemorating Israel’s fallen heroes
and in celebrating the anniversary of the unparalleled
country they want Israel to be.

Happy birthday Israel! Am Yisrael Chai! ■
Israeli Youth Trips to Poland
O n March 22, Israel’s Foreign Minister Eli Cohen
and Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau
announced an agreement to resume Israeli youth
trips to Holocaust sites in Poland, pending approval of
the deal in the Knesset and Poland’s Parliament. The
announcement was designed to end the suspension
of the trips announced last year during a series of
diplomatic clashes between the countries arising
primarily from Poland’s effort to highlight German
crimes against Poles during World War II rather
than focus solely on Poland’s atrocities during the
Holocaust. Under the proposed deal, new sites will
be added to the students’ itineraries, including some
that document Nazi crimes against non-Jewish Poles.

And each delegation of students would get a Polish
guide (in addition to their Israeli leaders) at the sites
their tour visits.

The deal – which reportedly will require every trip
to visit one of 32 sites recommended by the Polish
government — has been criticized by a wide range of
Israeli educators and politicians, and by Yad Vashem,
Israel’s main Holocaust memorial and museum.

According to Yad Vashem, the Polish government’s
12 APRIL 20, 2023 | JEWISH EXPONENT
list contains “problematic sites inappropriate for
visiting on educational trips.”
There is also concern over the deal’s terms and
its wording — particularly the explanatory language
inserted by Poland that can be construed as equating
the Holocaust with other atrocities. Critics argue
that the trips should remain focused solely on
the Holocaust — a degradation of humanity without
parallel. Others express concern that some of
the sites on the Polish list ignore documented
aspects of direct Polish involvement in the Nazi
effort to wipe out the Jews and commemorate
victims of
Communist persecution
that include Polish militia fighters and others who
murdered Jews.

Supporters of the proposed deal say the
sites recommended by the Polish government
include sufficient choices for organizers to avoid
controversial places, and that the deal represents an
acceptable compromise.

And then there is the political angle. Israel’s
government wants to normalize relations with
Poland which, until several years ago, was one of
the most pro-Israel countries in the European Union.

That relationship started to unravel in 2018 after an
increasingly nationalistic Poland passed legislation
that outlawed blaming the Polish nation for any
role in Nazi crimes. Israel’s then-foreign minister,
Yair Lapid, called the law antisemitic. When Poland
would not back down, Israel suspended the youth
trips. In Israel, political opposition to rapprochement
continues, with now-opposition leader Lapid calling
the deal “a national disgrace.”
Both sides in Israel appear to agree that the
high school trips are an important tool to teach
young Israelis about the Holocaust. With that
objective in mind, if acceptable sites are included
in the list of 32 designated by Poland, Israeli tours
can insist on visiting one of them. And if the Polish
guides say anything unacceptable to the Israelis,
those guides can be replaced. As long as Israeli
personnel retain control over tour agendas, programs
and trip administration, some accommodation
should be able to be reached to enable resumption
of the trips and normalization of an important
political relationship. ■
Photo by Tiia Monto / Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license
Israel at 75



opinions & letters
I Can’t Forget
What the Nazis Did
P Rabbi Michael Meyerstein
icture a cute-looking, 6½-year-old girl with curly
braided hair. She is standing on a sidewalk, on
a cold, dreary day in Leipzig, Germany, together
with her parents and my wife and me. My granddaughter
Vivi is staring intently at a 75-year-old worker, kneeling
on the ground. He is digging a hole through the pavers to
install several 4” x 4” brass plaques mounted on cement
cubes — memorials to relatives who perished at the
hands of the Nazis more than 80 years ago.

In February, we traveled 9,500 miles round-trip to
dedicate 12 Stolpersteine plaques in memory of relatives I
never knew or even knew I had. They were just some of my
late father’s aunts, uncles and cousins who were murdered
in the Holocaust, and we regarded the ceremony as a
pseudo-levaya, a quasi-funeral that would be the fi nal act
of respect and farewell Hitler had denied my relatives.

I couldn’t have imagined, 60 years earlier when I
fi rst visited Germany, that I would ever return in a
spirit approaching forgiveness, or that I’d feel a deep
connection to a country that was once synonymous with
brutality, pain, humiliation and suff ering.

Stolpersteine, a German word meaning “stumbling
block,” refers to a design brilliantly conceived by the
non-Jewish German artist Gunter Demnig in the early
1990s. Installed in front of the homes where innocent
Jewish victims last freely lived, the brass plaques simply
and artistically memorialize, honor and personalize those
brutally persecuted. On each plaque are engraved the
victim’s name, dates of birth and death. As Demnig once
said, “A person is only forgotten when his or her name
is forgotten.” Hence, 100,000 of his plaques throughout
Europe remind us that Jews are part of a shared history,
and a common memory.

Whether consciously or not, the “stumbling pedestrian”
instantly recalls the extraordinary evil unleashed by
ordinary people, on once vibrant Jewish communities,
and the terrorized Jewish neighbors who lived within
April 13 Poll Results
them. This evil was driven by a blind loyalty to a
gratuitous hatred of “the other,” meaning non-Aryans.

Who were these relatives I recently memorialized?
Recently uncovered documents suggest my relatives
were all decent, law-abiding citizens who contributed
to Leipzig’s economy, enriched its cultural life and
strengthened its social fabric. Sadly, being model citizens
did not spare them from torturous fates.

One of those relatives, Elfriede Meyerstein, my paternal
grandfather’s sister, was born Feb. 27, 1871, in Breslau. At
20, she came to Leipzig where her husband Menny ran
a textile trading company with his family. They lived at
the same address for many years. By 1931, after Menny’s
death, she lived with her daughter Käthe Huth.

The Nazis, once in power, immediately expropriated
Elfriede’s assets, comprising foreign stocks meticulously
accumulated by Menny. The Nazi “Ordinance on the
Registration of Jewish Assets” of April 26, 1938, forced
her to surrender those securities to the state. In 1939,
shortly after Kristallnacht on Nov. 9-10, 1938, the Nazis
collected a “reimbursement tax” as “atonement,” from
Elfriede and the rest of Germany’s Jewish community.

Just prior to her Sept. 19, 1942 deportation to
Theresienstadt at age 71, Elfriede was forced to sign
a “home purchase agreement,” the Nazis’ fi nal act
of expropriation. The document falsely and cynically
promised her a “retirement home,” with free lifetime
accommodation, food and medical care, but paid for
by her, in advance. The Reich Security Main offi ce
confi scated 65,000 Reichsmarks ($300,000 in today’s
currency). Her “retirement home” was in a ghetto with
disastrous hygienic conditions, starvation and no medical
care. Elfriede died one month later.

After considerable soul-searching and three visits
to Germany, spaced over 60 years, my attitudes and
feelings today, vis a vis Germany and its citizens, are
dramatically diff erent from when I fi rst visited in 1966.

Then, I came with unprocessed emotional baggage. In
1939, my father, Ralph Meyerstein, fl ed Dusseldorf and
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my mother, Cecily Geyer, fl ed Dresden, both for England.

My paternal grandparents, Alfred and Meta Meyerstein,
were deported from Dusseldorf on Nov. 8, 1941, to Minsk,
where they were killed. My maternal grandmother, Salcia,
was deported to Riga in January 1942; in November 1943
she was sent to Auschwitz and murdered.

My parents met in Ware, a small town north of London,
where some German Jews took refuge. They moved
to London where they married during the Blitz, and we
came to the United States in December 1947.

As an only child, I shouldered much of my parents’ guilt
over abandoning their parents, even though it was their
parents who, thankfully, had urged them to fl ee Germany.

When retelling their survival story, my eyes still well up
with tears, revealing a lifetime of trauma I’ve absorbed
on their behalf. That fi rst visit felt almost adversarial in
tone. It was I, representing my parents’ personal losses
and those of the Jewish people, versus Germany and
Germans. I reacted viscerally to hearing guttural Deutsch
See Can't Forget, page 15
letters A Victory for Freedom of Speech
It seems that Jonathan Tobin believes in two things (“A
Resistance Coup Just Defeated Israeli Democracy,”
March 30). One is that a person should only be per-
mitted to express his/her opinion on Election Day
under the cover of curtains. Another is that lawmak-
ers should have unlimited power.

It’s important to know that it was the German
Parliament that gave Hitler absolute power.

What if the lawmakers in the United States had
absolute power? Schools could be segregated. States
could prohibit interracial and same-sex marriage.

Lawmakers could restrict what’s being sent over the
internet. Schools could limit freedom of speech.

In Israel, people exercised their freedom of speech.

Conservatives could have had counter-demonstra-
tions but chose not to do so.

What happened in Israel is a victory for freedom of
speech and the preservation of democracy. ■
Charles Wolfsfeld, Philadelphia
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