How am I supposed to tell my mother of another congregation targeted by hate and violence?
She’ll no doubt have seen the news reports of Saturday’s fatal shooting at Poway, Calinfornia, synagogue, by the time I visit her this evening. She’ll no doubt greet me with her loving smile and tell me she’s fine in her soft voice.
But I’ll know she isn’t fine. And she’ll want to talk about it.
“Let us not concur casually about the most important matters.” – Heraclitus (She won’t say it, but I’ll hear it nonetheless.)
At 85 years old, this woman has witnessed hate and violence. She and every grieving mother, father, child, grandparent, partner and friend have witnessed enough hate and violence. When does it end?
Her reactions to the endless ticker-tape of horrible news don’t change. Her sadness doesn’t change whether the attack is on a Shiite mosque in southeastern Iran or a synagogue in Pittsburgh, USA. The questions we have are the same, whether we’re lamenting about church arsons in black communities in Louisiana or the murders of bible-study students in Charleston, S.C. How has our society allowed this to go on and why has such hate and violence been able to energize a movement against innocent people?
May 2nd will mark 40 years to the day that my mother gave her testimony as permanent record of her survival from a Nazi concentration camp. She will attend a program at New Haven’s Slifka Center, where she will speak and listen and watch portions of victim’s testimonies. Perhaps she’ll read from a collection of her poems. Perhaps she’ll just think.
No doubt, Saturday’s deadly shooting at the Congregation Chabad will draw its due focus. No doubt, there will be a proclamation that the Holocaust didn’t come out of nowhere and the rise in hatred we’re seeing now is truly worrying.
Now, more than ever before, is the time to understand that none of us is alone in the fight against hate. To the contrary, it’s (in my opinion) our selfish feelings that prevent true solidarity.
If you see yourself as a greater victim because of your religion, race, ethnicity, sexuality or whatever makes you different from the person next to you, you miss the opportunity to band together. Where’s the difference between the inner-city mother grieving the loss of a son to gun-violence and an 85-year-old woman still grieving the loss of her parents to war-violence? Together is the only way we’ll make it. We need to stop segregating ourselves with our claims. We need to peacefully unite.
No one who has born witness to hate and violence should have to live it over and over again in a modern world. It makes me question exactly how modern we are. Has anything ever changed?
My parentless mother escaped death already. No one should have to live in a world where they’re fearful this could happen again.
After the Bombing
The street cried.
I saw lintels weep,
windows covered their eyes
and doors sway in shame.
I saw bricks tremble, fall exposing the sorrow of their walls.
Chimneys moaned,
The smoke banked
in widening cracks.
Every house was a wound
Stairs turned like midnight dancers,
lamps swayed in the dreaming air,
chairs tumbled, mirrors incandescent
caught light,
drowsy broken stars
over shattered beds.
A multitude of pots
punctuated the plastered heaps and random color of emptied clothes.
All this I saw
again and again.
No wonder my eyes are mute.
Renee G. Hartman
David Hartman, a retired New Haven police officer and lead hostage negotiator, lives in Westville.
Click here and here for more information about the May 2 – 3 commemorative events of the Fortunoff Video Archive For Holocaust Studies, at which Renee Hartman is scheduled to speak. Click on the videos below to watch part of her testimony, and to watch archives Director Stephen Naron discuss the event and the project during a recent episode of WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” program.