Although I write every year to commemorate Eva Levine's birthday on July 6, this year has even more significance for me, because our nation's birthday - and the principles upon which it was founded - stand out in sharp relief against the backdrop of fear, prejudice and fierce nationalism that is playing out in the U.S. right now.
Normally I consider fierceness to be a positive attribute, a quality that serves us well when we need to face the world head on. Certainly Eva Levine was fierce when the Gestapo broke into the house in Poland where she and her husband lived, and slapped Eva's father-in-law around. Eva herself confronted the Germans, fiercely defending her home and family.
Eva Levine was fierce when she was deported to Ravensbruck, a concentration camp in Germany. Her mother was so weakened by starvation and disease that she died on the floor of her filthy barracks, two days before the British liberated the camp in April 1945. Eva, her own health broken, had survived through her fierceness. She immigrated to the United States in 1950 - because she could - and she never saw any members of her family again.
Eva Braun Levine immigrated to the United States because, by 1950, she could. This was not always so, however, even as the world was becoming aware of the transports, the death camps, the fierce nationalism of one man who was able to whip his supporters into a frenzy, in part because of his country's economic downturn. Adolf Hitler was effectively able to demonize an entire ethnicity, a whole religion and con his followers into implementing his Final Solution.
So, this year, as I contemplate the 240th anniversary of the birth of the United States of America, I am chilled by what I am witnessing in my country. And although the circumstances are different (for which I am fervently thankful), the parallels are there: policies that would require an entire ethnicity, a whole religion, to register because they are Muslim. Talk of patrolling Muslim neighborhoods, and of punishing - legally - people who don't report on their neighbors' package deliveries. How far away are we, then, from internment camps when xenophobia reaches a fever pitch, whipped up by Donald Trump and his ilk?
Yes, I understand that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. And I also understand that thugs who call themselves Muslims are currently carrying out terrorism around the world.
But the Japanese-Americans who spent years in internment camps had nothing to do with Pearl Harbor. And the Muslim-Americans who practice their faith and go to work and pay their taxes and feed their families are no different today.
It is we who must be different. We who must put a stop to rampant stereotyping, which defies the very principles of liberty that are the foundation of our great nation. We who must continue to stand up for people whose lives are torn apart by war, as both my mother and father did when they served in World War II.
This is a time and a reason for fierceness, and if now is the time, the reason is to stand up for human dignity and turn away from ignorance.
Andrea Doray is a writer who desperately wants to help find the balance between liberty and security. Contact Andrea at a.doray@andreadoray.com.
from Lakewood Sentinel - Latest Stories http://lakewoodsentinel.com/stories/It-is-time-to-be-fierce-about-human-dignity,224617
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