I can't imagine the decision my grandfather faced before he fled Poland. My entire family on his side had refused to believe that centuries of hard work and laying roots were in danger. The family estate, the prestigious name they had established and the accompanying wealth were sources of immense pride, and my family was unwilling to abandon it all on second-hand information. They heard the rumors, and they saw the signs, but they were convinced that they would remain safe. The Nazis wouldn't come for them.
My grandfather was more suspicious. He warned the rest of my family that they were in mortal danger and, after many centuries, had finally overstayed their welcome in Poland. At the rationally hysterical insistence of my grandfather, four of my great uncles heeded his warnings and fled with him. They made a harrowing exodus that took them as far as Uzbekistan and through places as unfriendly as Austria before they finally made it to Israel. There, they all lived happy, fruitful lives.
But they left everything behind, including our family name (to avoid being identified as Jews). And they left everyone behind. The rest of my family on my grandfather's side decided to stay behind to protect the lives they had built in Poland. They did not get to keep their home. They were not the victims of shady lenders. They had no interest in a government bailout. They all perished in the holocaust.
Sixty years later, this experience still sits with my family in many ways--the food issues, the non-Jewish last name, the sparsely extended family and, even two generations removed, the survivor's guilt. Though my grandfather rarely talked about what happened during the holocaust, I know that he and my great uncles couldn't have survived without superhuman strength. And though I share some vestiges of this traumatic past, I could never fathom the pain he endured--for which I ultimately owe him my life.
It is in this context that I had to listen to Sarah Palin screech "never again" in the same sentence that she mentioned Joe Sixpack and Hockey Moms. As Roger Cohen put it:
As it happens -- life's ironies -- I was reading Kipling after watching the vice-presidential debate, or more precisely Sarah Palin, the winking "Main-Streeter" from Wasilla. And the words of hers that rang in my ears were:"One thing that Americans do at this time, also, though, is let's commit ourselves just everyday American people, Joe Six Pack, hockey moms across the nation, I think we need to band together and say `Never Again.' Never will we be exploited and taken advantage of again by those managing our money and loaning us these dollars."
Huh?
I'm sorry, Governor Palin, words matter. Life has its solemn lessons. "Never Again" is a hallowed phrase. It's applicable not to the loss of a mortgage, but to the Holocaust and genocide.
According verbal equivalency to a $60,000 loan and six million murdered Jews, or 800,000 slaughtered Rwandans, is grotesque. Perhaps Palin didn't mean it, but that's no less serious. The world's gravity escapes her.
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