justice – Jewish Independent

Justice visits Richmond

Justice Richard H. Bernstein, of the Michigan Supreme Court, speaks in Richmond on Nov. 17. (photo from Chabad Richmond)

Michigan Supreme Court Justice Richard H. Bernstein will speak at the Hilton Vancouver Airport Hotel in Richmond on Nov. 17. The event, co-hosted by Chabad Richmond and the Jewish Learning Institute, is called Blind Justice.

“It will feature the inspiring life story and remarkable achievements of this brilliant, blind justice who has overcome countless challenges,” said Rabbi Yechiel Baitelman, director of Chabad Richmond. “Aside from his many legal accomplishments, Justice Bernstein has run 23 marathons and completed an Ironman triathlon, the Israman triathlon’s half Ironman in Eilat.”

Blind since birth, Bernstein became the first blind justice elected to the Michigan Supreme Court in 2014. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Michigan, he earned his juris doctorate from Northwestern University School of Law. Even prior to becoming a justice, while working as an attorney for the Sam Bernstein Law Firm, he was known for being an advocate for the rights of people with disabilities.

Bernstein’s cases often set national standards protecting people’s rights and safety. He successfully partnered with the United States Department of Justice to force the City of Detroit to instal wheelchair lifts in city buses, establishing a precedent for accessibility in public transportation. In a landmark settlement against Delta Airlines and Detroit Metro Airport, Bernstein gained accessibility for travelers with disabilities, helping set the standard by which airlines and airports are to be covered under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

Bernstein also challenged the City of New York to make Central Park and all parks safer for visitors and accessible for individuals with disabilities, including those with visual impairments. This came after he sustained a serious injury in 2012, when he was struck by a speeding cyclist while walking in Central Park.

The justice’s honours include Michiganian of the Year from the Detroit News; one of Crain’s Detroit Business 40 Under 40; and recognition by CNN as a leader in keeping government honest. He was selected by the Young Lawyers Section of the State Bar of Michigan as the 2003-2004 Regeana Myrick Outstanding Young Lawyer Award recipient for exceptional commitment to public service, and is the recipient of the 2008 John W. Cummiskey Pro Bono Award from the State Bar of Michigan, in recognition of his leadership as an advocate and activist.

Michigan Lawyers Weekly named Bernstein a 2009 Leader in the Law and the University of Michigan presented him with the James T. Neubacher Award in 2011, for his commitment to equal rights and opportunities for people with disabilities. Also in 2011, L. Brooks Patterson, Michigan’s Oakland county executive, selected Bernstein as one of the region’s Elite 40 Under 40. In 2013, Bernstein was inducted into the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.

On Nov. 17, Blind Justice starts at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $25 in advance, $35 at the door, and $15 for students; the cost for preferred seating is $40 and the VIP meet-and-greet is $180 per couple. To register or for information, call 604-277-6427 or email [email protected].

People are not bricks in a wall

Shabbat, Nov. 2
Noach, Genesis 6:9-11:32
Haftarah, Isaiah 54:1-55:5

W.C. Fields said, “Never work with animals or children, [they steal the spotlight].” Though no one ever accused him of being a Torah scholar, his insight was certainly applicable to last week’s Torah portion.

Parashat Noach, the second portion in the Book of Genesis (and my bar mitzvah portion) is perhaps the most universally known and, at least by children, most adored portion in the entire Torah. This is in part, no doubt, because it has not one animal, but all animals – and they come in pairs! So beloved and recognizable is this Torah portion that we tend to forget that there is more to it than the animals coming on the ark, two by two, the dove sent to find dry land, the rainbow, and our ancient ship builder, Noah. Tucked in at the end of the portion that bears his name is a small, poignant story about how the people (Noah’s descendants) focused their energies after the waters and fear receded, and they were once again on dry land.

We are told: “All the earth had the same language and the same words … they came upon a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there…. Then they said, ‘Come, let us build a city with a tower that reaches the sky, so that we can make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over all the earth!’” (Genesis 11:1-:4)

A midrash explains: “Many, many years passed in building the tower. It reached so great a height that it took a year to mount to the top. A brick was, therefore, more precious in the sight of the builders than a human being. If a man fell down and met his death, none took notice of it: but, if a brick dropped, they wept, because it would take a year to replace it. So intent were they upon accomplishing their purpose that they would not permit a pregnant woman to interrupt herself in her work of brick-making when she went into labour. Molding bricks, she gave birth to her child and, tying it round her body in a sheet, she went on molding bricks.” (“Yashar Noah,” in Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, 1909)

How do you measure your day? I once asked my friend who is a bricklayer this question, and he explained that the universal standard for a good day of bricklaying is 1,000 bricks day. It got me thinking, what would my 1,000-brick-day look like? What is my universal standard for a successful day?

As a parent, I could say it’s getting all the kids washed, fed, off to school and then to soccer or hockey, and back home again. Then it’s getting them to do their homework, brush their teeth and get to bed at a reasonable hour.

As a working adult, I could say it’s getting to work on time and responding to all my emails and messages – the modern-day equivalent of bricks. Then it’s meeting with constituents, handling synagogue programs and business, and getting home in time for dinner with my family.

What makes those days good days is not the quantity of work I do or the number of interactions I have, it’s the quality. The bricklayer, if reasonably competent at his task, can be irritable, antisocial, half asleep and day dreaming as he lays each brick. He can take his anger out on the bricks; he can curse at the bricks as he shleps them up the wall. He can listen to music, talk on his cellphone; it doesn’t matter. As long as the wall is solid at the end of his day and it contains 1,000 new bricks, it’s a good day of bricklaying.

But people are not bricks: we can’t take out our anger on people without consequence. We can’t ignore them or tune them out if the purpose of our day is to interact with them with care, compassion and attention. The great sin of the Tower of Babel’s builders was that they treated people like bricks and bricks like people. They wasted the one thing that set them apart from machines, which, had they existed in ancient times, could have helped build the Tower even better – they neglected their own humanity. When the bricks of our life become more important than the people in it, we, too, build a tower that is an affront to the purpose of our creation.

The midrash continues that, after God confounded the people’s language and scattered the people throughout the globe, the tower

remained: “a part sank into the earth and another part was consumed by fire; only one-third of it remained standing. The place of the tower has never lost its peculiar quality. Whoever passes it forgets all he knows.” (ibid., Ginzberg)

When we treat people like bricks, we forget what we know about ourselves and about others. We forget that the measure of our day is not how many bricks we lay, how many emails we answer, how many lunches we pack, how many children we shlep: the measure of our day is whether each person we touch, including ourselves, feels valued as a person, a blessing and a gift from God in our lives – not a brick.

Rabbi Dan Moskovitz is senior rabbi at Temple Sholom and author of The Men’s Seder (MRJ Publishing). He is also chair of the Reform Rabbis of Canada. His writing and perspective on Judaism appear in major print and digital media internationally. This article originally appeared on reformjudaism.org.

Vital, relevant culture

Tale of the Eastside Lantern’s Shon Wong and Rosa Cheng. (photo by David Cooper)

Among the many artists participating in this year’s Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival is Jewish community member Elliot Polsky. The multi-percussionist joins the Son of James Band in Tale of the Eastside Lantern, a workshop presentation of a new hybrid Chinese rock opera.

From Oct. 30 to Nov. 10, the annual Heart of the City offers 12 days of music, stories, theatre, poetry, cultural celebrations, films, dance, readings, forums, workshops, discussions, gallery exhibits, mixed media, art talks, history talks and history walks. More than 100 events are scheduled to take place at more than 40 locations throughout the Downtown Eastside. This year’s theme – “Holding the Light” – has emerged from the need of Downtown Eastside-involved artists and residents to illuminate the vitality and relevance of the Downtown Eastside community and its diverse traditions, knowledge systems, ancestral languages, cultural roots and stories.

Tale of the Eastside Lantern is one of the top festival picks: “In the streets and shops of Vancouver’s Chinatown, Jimmy wrestles with his personal demons and sets out to solve a mystery that is guarded by Chinese opera spirits of the underworld. Jimmy is led by the sounds of rock music and motivated by the oldest feeling in the world … love.” Written and composed by Shon Wong and directed by Andy Toth, the rock opera is produced by Vancouver Cantonese Opera and Son of James Band in partnership with Vancouver Moving Theatre. Performed in English and Cantonese, the workshop presentation takes place Oct. 31, 8 p.m., at CBC Studio 700. Tickets ($15) are available at the door or in advance from eastsidelantern2.eventbrite.ca.

Another top pick is Sis Ne’ Bi -Yïz: Mother Bear Speaks, written and performed by Taninli Wright (Wet’suwet’en) about her Messenger of Hope Walk – she walked 1,600 kilometres across British Columbia to give voice to First Nations children and other marginalized youth. Developed in collaboration with Laura Barron, Jason Clift, Julie McIsaac and Jessica Schacht, the play is produced by Instruments of Change. There are several performances Oct. 30-Nov. 3 at Firehall Arts Centre. For advance tickets ($20/$15), call 604-689-0926 or visit [email protected].

Written and performed by Yvonne Wallace (Lilwat) and directed by Jefferson Guzman, ūtszan (to make things better) follows the journey of a woman to reclaim her language; in the process, she uncovers indigenous knowledge, humour, strength and resilience. The play has three shows at the Firehall Oct. 31-Nov. 2, with tickets ($20/$15) available at the door and in advance.

Of special interest to the Jewish community, whose oral histories form part of Daphne Marlatt and Carole Itter’s Opening Doors: Vancouver’s East End, is the dramatization of that book, which was first published in 1979. Directed by Donna Spencer and co-produced by the Firehall and Vancouver Moving Theatre, Opening Doors has several performances Nov. 6-9 at the Firehall, with tickets $20/$15.

While there are these and other ticketed shows, most of the festival events are free to attend. For example, on Nov. 2, 11 a.m., at CRAB Park, there is a mini-landing of canoes, featuring a welcome ceremony, after which paddlers and guests journey on land to the Police Museum and the exhibition Healing Waters, an exploration of how communities heal through connecting to cultural practice. This landing, in honour of the inaugural Pulling Together canoe journey in 2001, launches a year of story gathering and history sharing in preparation for the 20th anniversary celebration of the Pulling Together Society at next year’s Heart of the City.

In Speaking in Tongues, guests Woody Morrison, David Ng, Grace Eiko Thomson and Dalannah Gail Bowen discuss mother tongues and how their interactions can give birth to hybrid languages such as Japanese Pidgin, which is unique to the West Coast of Canada. This conversation is part of Homing Pidgin, an interactive installation by Haruko Okano, and takes place on Nov. 2, 1 p.m., at Centre A (205-268 Keefer).

Meanwhile, Irreparable Harm? is by Sinister Sisters Ensemble – activists and theatre folk, young and old, First Nations and settlers, many of whom were arrested in the protests against the twinning of the Trans Mountain Pipeline. It uses videos, transcripts of the court proceedings and statements that were read in the courtroom to shine a light on the justice system. It is at Carnegie Theatre on Nov. 8, 3 p.m.

For full festival details, visit heartofthecityfestival.com.

Will jail curb hater?

The sentencing of a notorious hate promoter in Toronto last week is, in some ways, evidence that our country’s laws and norms against targeting identifiable groups are working.

James Sears, editor of Your Ward News, a propaganda sheet distributed periodically to 300,000 households in Toronto and area, was sentenced to two consecutive six-month terms in jail. His paper is filled with bigotry and hatred, especially targeting Jews, women and LGBTQ+ people. He is obsessed with the Rothschild family, denies the Holocaust, dabbles in bizarre racial theories and celebrates rape. One issue invited volunteers to join an Adolf Hitler Fan Club. He and a co-conspirator, publisher LeRoy St. Germaine, were found guilty in January of promoting hatred against women and Jews. St. Germaine is yet to be sentenced.

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, among others, praised the judge’s sentence. In fact, the judge openly expressed his wish that he had the legal power to hand down a harsher sentence.

Unlike the United States, where constitutional freedoms make it legal to express almost anything but overt death threats or yelling fire in a crowded hall, Canada’s laws place limits on acceptable discourse. This is, it has seemed, a consensus position that we as a society have accepted as justifiable limits on our freedoms for the greater good. In practice, convictions on the basis of hate speech are exceedingly rare. More common are hearings and decisions via our network of human rights commissions, which provide a quasi-judicial recourse for victims. Neither of these systems is perfect. But cases like Sears’ indicate that, when necessary, they can have the appropriate outcomes.

We hesitate to call this good news, however. Justice may be served but, in the long run, what is gained? A happy ending would have been a society in which ideas like Sears’ are nonexistent. A more realistic world might be one in which some form of restorative justice is the sentence, some construction in which Sears and St. Germaine learn from their victims about the harm they have inflicted and perhaps come to see the humanity of the people they vilify. Instead, Sears will spend a year (or four months, depending on parole) stewing over what he doubtlessly interprets as some heinous injustice perpetrated against him by the imagined forces of evil. Justice is served, probably, but is the larger cause of social cohesion and mutual understanding?

Erice Dee joins Vines festival

Erica Dee curated the show Weaving Voices, which takes place Aug. 9 at CRAB Park at Portside. (photo from Vines Art Festival)

Weaving Voices features Jewish community member Erica Dee, Tonye, Miss Christie Lee, Janelle Reid and Sara Cadeau, with instrumentalists Sean Mitchell and Jonny Tobin. The performance at this year’s Vines Art Festival on Aug. 9 is based on Dee’s singing workshop, Sing for the Soul.

Dee has been offering the group singing classes over the past two years. “This has been one of my favourite projects I have ever created and it has inspired me to write a whole new album and live performance,” Dee told the Independent. “Sometime in 2020, I will release this new project with a new name and it is very different from anything I have performed. It will be a live, multi-sensory experience that is meant for listening rooms and theatres, or parks. And I will activate the spaces with my singing workshop prior to the show and then include the participants in my live performance. I won’t share the name yet, but it does include my family’s name in it.”

Dee’s cultural heritage includes Jewish and Italian roots, and jazz on both sides of the family. Her paternal grandparents are Evelyn Stieglitz (z’l) and Murray Landsberg, who she described as “the sweetest Jewish couple, who met in the Bronx in the 1930s. They were 13 and 15 and they were together until my grandmother past away a couple years ago. My father, Paul Landsberg, is a prolific jazz guitarist, who started his career teaching at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Mass. My mother, Rita Marie, was born to Rita Shirley Dallesandro and Jim Smith. Rita Shirley’s brothers, Frankie and Arthur, started a jazz big band in the ’50s called the Dellasandro’s, where they played saxophone and clarinet.”

Born Erica Dee Landsberg in Boston, Mass., Dee goes by only her first and middles names. She grew up “in the mountains of the Sinixt Territory (Nelson, B.C.). My mother, father, sister and I moved to the Kootenays in 1989 because my father helped start Selkirk College’s music program.”

Expressing her gratitude at being a Canadian citizen, Dee said she first moved to Vancouver in 2005, a couple months after graduating high school. “I followed my passion,” she said, “as I had already been performing and writing and I was ready to move to the big city to expand my artistry. I also followed my heart here, after falling deeply in love with a female DJ and producer who was running Vancouver’s only lesbian bar at the time.”

Dee is a vocalist, DJ, writer and producer. She released her first recording, Golden Mixtape, a combination of remixes and original work, in 2011. Her debut album, New Skies, came out in 2016.

“I am firstly a singer,” she said, “which means I get to connect to my instrument (aka my body) in such a deep and intimate way. I usually have some burst of inspiration come to me, whether it’s a hook, or a bass line, or a drum beat. Then I spend time developing the tone, feeling and resonance. Words usually come after, as I find when I add words to my art, it brings it into the mind and I like to stay in the body for as long as possible.

“As far as production goes, I have been producing music for over 10 years and have yet to release something that is completely self-produced. I use production as another way to get my ideas out, using drum pads, keys and programs like Logic and Ableton, and then eventually collaborate with other musicians and producers to complete the creation.

“Recently,” she added, “I have been creating on a loop pedal, which has taken my artistry to a completely new level. I started DJing when I was 20, when I realized that I could be my own band mate, and started touring a performance where I would sing and MC over top of my DJ sets, fusing together the music that I love and moves me with my originals and remixes.”

Dee collaborates a lot, both in performances and in the creation of new work. Her bio notes that she has “supported and toured with artists such as Lil’ Kim, Mos Def, Quest Love, A Tribe Called Red and Bad Bad Not Good.” Past guest artists have included Snotty Nose Rez Kids and Desiree Dawson.

“I love the magic that happens when artists share space together,” she explained. “Each person is unique, with their own experience, tone, voice, stories and inspirations. It activates every part of my soul to witness artists coming together in this way, harmonizing, improvising, and the dynamics of different voices coming in and out of the music. I always say, sometimes just having another person in the room is enough, without a word shared. I can feel every piece of music they have absorbed since their creation lighting up the space. It is truly is my favourite part about being an artist.”

For the Vines Art Festival show, Dee said, “I have brought together a group of such powerful artists…. Each of these artists shares their stories and truth in such a real and accessible way.”

Dee said she is honoured to be part of the festival, as she really connects to its core values. Part of the festival’s mission is to offer “platforms for local artists and performers to create with and on the land, steering their creative impulses toward work that focuses on the environment – whether a deep love of nature, sustainability, or climate justice.”

“Growing up, I spent a lot of time outside and I find a lot of my inspiration in nature,” said Dee. “I attended Waldorf School as a kid, where I learned how to use my hands to connect and create with the natural world in a sustainable way.

“Since then, I have always had a very strong connection and appreciation for the land I occupy. Wherever I travel, I always take the time to educate myself on whose land I am on and acknowledge that within my show. I use my platform to share information about the social and environmental issues that I feel are important – I actually got fired from a festival in Calgary for speaking about the pipeline and how much harm it will cause to indigenous communities.”

For the performance at Vines, Dee shared that there is going to be “an extra special element.”

Of that element, she said, “I have never done this before and I am so excited. During the first time I sat down with Heather [Lamoureux, the festival’s artistic director], I had a vision and I am really looking forward to bringing it to life!”

Weaving Voices on Aug. 9 takes place at CRAB Park at Portside, at 7 p.m. Other Jewish performers in the festival include mia susan amir, Ariel Martz-Oberlander and Rabbit Richards, and it features more than 80 artists overall, performing at parks throughout the city. Every event is free admission and more information can be found at vinesartfestival.com.

Managing theft and loss

We’ve seen a huge rise in neighbourhood property crime. We’re still driving a car without a back window (yup, two windows vandalized). We also lost a flower planter in June.

We realized the flowers were gone on Shabbat. We were on our way to services when we saw that we only had one and not two matching flowerpots. This matters for two reasons. First, we use the pots to keep people from parking illegally and blocking our gate. Sometimes, the planters get moved because a truck is parked to do work at our house or at a neighbour’s. Sometimes, big trucks or strangers just run over our planters so they can turn around or park illegally at our house. Despite multiple “private parking” signs, we struggle with these issues frequently. After each run-over or blocked gate, we’re scooping up the soil and repotting the flowers, trying to keep the planters going.

Two weeks after the pot went missing, when I was helping my twins walk their bikes to the schoolyard so we could safely practise cycling without training wheels, we stopped to look at our neighbours’ yards. My kids planted the flower pots themselves as part of their birthday celebrations at the beginning of June (reason #2 for their importance). They knew exactly which colours they’d put in each planter. And – surprise – our planter was firmly ensconced in a neighbour’s front yard, a block away from home.

We tried knocking but no one was there. When we returned home, we couldn’t put it out of our minds. My husband filed a supplement to our police report, asking if the cops could help invite these folks to return our flowers. So far, nothing has happened.

One of my kids has taken to doing the early morning walk with me and our two dogs now that it’s summertime. He reflects on the stolen/lost flowers every morning we pass them. On one of these walks, he brought up another story: he’d encountered a lost dog at day camp. Others shooed it away from the grass, into the parking lot, where he feared it would be run over. No one, in his view, helped it get home.

When I mentioned it to adults at camp, I was reassured that someone had found the dog’s owner. It was also pointed out to me that many kids were afraid of dogs; perhaps that’s why it was shooed away. I responded that, even if no one taught kids how to behave around animals, that dog was a “lost item.” Jewish tradition teaches us that it is a mitzvah, a commandment, to return lost items to their owners.

Jewish tradition is full of stories and rabbinic instructions for how we are to manage theft and loss. How we should address theft, punish thieves and figure out the motivations of those who do harm are part of what we should learn and teach as Jews. It’s our responsibility to return things and to help others find that order and closure in the world.

The rabbis recognize this commandment is complex. In some cases, hungry or suffering people may steal, borrow or “find” a lost item that they need to survive. However, we shouldn’t assume that the person who lost something can always make do or be fine without it. If we budget in our household to fill two planters with flowers – so the twins can each plant one – and someone steals one? Our kids feel that one planter is clearly not the same as two. There’s no food involved in this but, aside from contacting the police or directly confronting the neighbours, we run the risk of being seen as the crooks if we “steal” it back.

We have public services – police, courts, animal services – to solve some conflicts. Yet, if public services are delayed or unresponsive, we’re left with the same moral issues. How do we solve these problems without timely intervention or help? What can we do to practise tikkun olam, repair of the world?

We rely on voting in a democratic society, as well as a responsive civil service, to make sure our public services work. (This is a hint – please vote in the next election.) On a personal level, though, my kid suffers when he worries about a missing person, a dog or a flowerpot. He is the same kid who knows what the Red Dress installations mean: I have an 8-year-old who knows these commemorate the loss of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. It’s hard to see a kid learn about this. It’s harder yet to live with loss. Imagine the huge pain of losing a person. For a kid, losing a beloved animal or giving up on something that was stolen seems hard enough.

The rabbis give ways to respond to challenges of theft or loss and it’s up to us not just to study the sources, but to live in a way that carries out their teachings. We must call others to account when they fail to do what’s right. If someone steals, promises to pay for something and doesn’t, or “loses” someone or something, it’s our obligation to ask them to honour their commitments.

It’s not OK to take a loved one, an animal, a kid’s flowerpot or to skip paying the bill. We have limited funds in our household, school and government budgets. Yet, our tradition also teaches a compassionate compromise – if a person truly cannot survive, we must help. The question we’re left with is how to find closure when the world fails us. If no one returns a missing child or animal, if we do not honour our commitments to others, what kind of a place is this?

We have a stake in making this world a better place. It starts with practical steps like helping get a lost person, dog or belongings home safely. Let’s at least honour our obligations.

Joanne Seiff has written regularly for CBC Manitoba and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. See more about her at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.

Accountant in Seattle

Auschwitz survivor Eva Kor forgives former SS officer Oskar Gröning. (photo from TLNT Productions)

The Accountant of Auschwitz is more than the latest documentary to successfully convey the horrors of antisemitic genocide to an audience 75 years removed from those events. It exemplifies the emergence of a coterie of young filmmakers eager to tell the stories of the Holocaust to their peers and to future generations.

For Toronto director Matthew Shoychet and producer Ricki Gurwitz, the trial of nonagenarian SS officer Oskar Gröning in his Lower Saxony hometown in 2015 provided the entry point to explore an ambitious array of historical, legal and moral concerns. The approach they chose for their debut feature documentary, however, was as important as the facts and the message.

“The way we put it together with the editors, we knew we didn’t want to play it chronologically,” the 32-year-old Shoychet explained. “The film opens with fast-paced, happy music with animation, then right into the trial, then back. You’re challenging the audience, but in a fresh, exciting way. You don’t see many Holocaust films that are told that way.”

The Accountant of Auschwitz screened at the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival last fall and is part of the Seattle Jewish Film Festival, which opens March 23.

Shoychet’s path to The Accountant of Auschwitz was unusual in that his family was not directly affected by the Holocaust. He was interested in films about the Holocaust, but he wasn’t instilled with the kind of painful personal history that was (and still is) the catalyst for many filmmakers.

In 2013, Shoychet went on the March of the Living to Poland and Israel, where he received his first close-up exposure to the Final Solution and Holocaust education. A friend he made on that trip went to work for the Neuberger Holocaust Education Centre in Toronto, and that contact led to Shoychet directing the short film Anne Frank: 70 Years Later (2015), which screened at Auschwitz-Birkenau and the University of Warsaw.

Shoychet joined that year’s March of the Living as a chaperone, where he met Bill Glied, a Serbian native who’d been deported from Hungary to Auschwitz in 1944. When Glied remarked that he was going to Germany to testify at Gröning’s trial, Shoychet and Gurwitz put a pitch together to the Government of Ontario, the Rogers Documentary Fund, CBC’s Documentary Channel and a couple of private investors.

“It came together fast,” said Shoychet, who arrived on the scene in Lüneburg, Germany, in the midst of the trial.

photo - For Toronto director Matthew Shoychet, the trial of SS officer Oskar Gröning in 2015 provided the entry point to explore an ambitious array of historical, legal and moral concerns — For Toronto director Matthew Shoychet, the trial of SS officer Oskar Gröning in 2015 provided the entry point to explore an ambitious array of historical, legal and moral concerns. *(photo from TLNT Productions)*

Gröning’s job, as The Accountant of Auschwitz makes clear, wasn’t loading Zyklon B into the gas chambers or machine-gunning Jews. Thanks to a change in German law, it is no longer necessary to prove that a Nazi pulled the trigger. His presence at the scene and involvement in crimes is sufficient to decide guilt.

“Oskar was on the ramp [when the trains arrived and where selections occurred], taking suitcases and calming chaos,” Shoychet said. “But it was all part of the mass murder operation.”

Among the issues that The Accountant of Auschwitz takes on is the purpose and value of trying a 94-year-old man for war crimes. The film makes a convincing argument on multiple grounds, beginning with the extent of the cover-up that took place in Germany after the war.

“Ninety-nine percent of the judges in West Germany from 1945 to 1967 were members of the Nazi party,” Shoychet noted. “Hardcore believers. Of the 800,000 SS officers, 100,000 were investigated between 1945 and today, just over 6,000 were brought to trial and 124 received life sentences.”

That paltry number minimizes the scale of the crimes and serves to bury the past. The film asserts that Gröning’s confirmation under oath of his work at Auschwitz was a public and irrefutable rebuttal to Holocaust deniers and other antisemites.

“Even if you say he’s too old – and even the survivors say they don’t care if he goes to prison – for history’s purposes, the fact that a Nazi perpetrator is sitting in a German courtroom with German judges, saying, ‘Yes, these things happened, I was there,’ that makes the trial worthwhile,” Shoychet said.

A loquacious interview subject, even on the phone from Israel, where he had presented The Accountant of Auschwitz at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival a few months ago and was presently working on a project of the One Family Fund (he’s a board member), Shoychet confided that the process of making his feature doc debut was one of learning as he went. For example, until he went to Germany, he had never heard of John Demjanjuk, a Ukrainian who had been convicted of crimes at Sobibor yet consistently denied any involvement. Demjanjuk’s tangled tale, which, among other things, raises the subject of putting an elderly man on trial, ended up being a 20-minute segment in the film.

The Accountant of Auschwitz is rife with revelations and messages, but one gets the sense in talking with Shoychet that his main goal was conveying his own experiences of discovery, discussion, inspiration and outrage – with respect to Nazis and survivors, as well as contemporary justice-seekers and neo-Nazis – to viewers his own age.

“There may not be an ISIS fighter who will be deterred by a 94-year-old Nazi being prosecuted,” Shoychet allowed. “It’s making the connection of the past to the present. Trying to take a younger person and put them in the shoes of the survivors.”

Shoychet’s affinity for provoking questions and debate among the audience bodes well for his next efforts behind the camera.

“I never actually thought I would make a documentary,” he said with a trace of bemusement. “My passion is scripted narratives.”

For tickets to The Accountant of Auschwitz and the film festival schedule, visit seattlejewishfilmfestival.org. For another perspective on the impact of Gröning’s trial, see jewishindependent.ca/witnessing-her-history.

Michael Fox is a writer and film critic living in San Francisco.

The sad road from Auschwitz

The theme of Reckonings: Legacies of Nazi Persecution and the Quest for Justice (Oxford University Press, 2018), the new book by eminent English historian Mary Fulbrook, is justice. Or, rather, injustice, as she exposes how ex-Nazi perpetrators, and bystanders to their murderous policies, have evaded (and continue to evade) due process and acknowledgment of moral responsibility for their (in)actions.

Every level of strategy open to these criminals and cowards is exposed in Reckonings. Fulbrook reveals all the political, psychological, pragmatic, legal (and illegal), scapegoating, self-serving, self-exculpatory, “we were victims too”-type excuses by which the morally corrupt and unconscionable avoid due process and personal liability.

Fulbrook rightly says, at the end of Reckonings, “there can be no answer to the questions of why and how cruelty on this scale was possible.” So, what, she asks, can the “honest” historian do? Her answer sums up the well-realized objective of this magisterial new book: “Historians can clarify patterns of involvement in and responsibility for Nazi persecution and explore the implications both for those who lived through it and those who came after.”

Nazi criminality is, of course, a hugely complex historical issue, but Fulbrook’s strategy is simple and direct: it is to “reconstruct the ways in which wider social and political developments intersected with individual lives” such that “large numbers of people were mobilized in service of a murderous cause.”

Reckonings is rich with such exploration of “individual lives,” both of persecutors and bystanders, and it rings also with the agonizing accounts of dozens of victims, among whom Fulbrook gives frequent and welcome voice to the rarely referenced persecuted sub-groups of homosexuals, and victims of Nazi euthanasia policies.

Fulbrook’s central focus is, however, justice: justice failed and justice delayed, delayed by silence, by endless rationalization, by foot-dragging, by the pollution of the legal system by former Nazis (described as “themselves swimming in a sea of guilt”) and, no less disturbing, by the pragmatics of (primarily American) Cold War strategists, anxious not to offend a potential ally against the Soviet Union.

Reckonings is unusual history in its welcome lack of “normal” arm’s-length objectivity: Fulbrook is uncompromisingly fierce in her condemnation of those who were responsible for this “maelstrom of murder.” Throughout the book, she remains directly and openly angry, and determined to “nail down” these murderous ignoramuses, just-following-orders immoralists and “I knew nothing” liars. One feels the heat of Fulbrook’s grit and determination: each page rings out with a loud, “they will not get away with this as long as I can help it.”

Reckonings is divided into three parts. Part One, the most “traditional” part of the book, explores the various sites of this “maelstrom of murder,” beginning with Auschwitz, but moving carefully beyond, to less and less better-known killing centres, especially in southern Poland – where there were many forgotten violent “microcosms of violence,” as she calls them.

Part Two is, as Fulbrook’s title suggests, the heart of the book: here, the focus shifts to the attempts to bring perpetrators (both men and women) to justice. She lays out the proceedings of the various major trials – Auschwitz, Sobibor, Belzec, Dachau, Hadamar, the Einsatzgruppen trial, etc., right up to the present – but also includes trials relating to perpetrators of euthanasia and other crimes. She outlines, in fascinating detail, the differences between the ways that East and West Germany approached bringing Nazis to justice: the former being famously more diligent than the latter, leading to a flood of ex-Nazis to the more “tolerant” West in the early years after the war. This flood included all the euthanasia personnel, who left their families behind in the GDR to escape justice. (The West accepted the “just following orders” defence; the East did not. About 400,000 people benefited from this and similar lax standards in the West.)

The third part, “Memories,” is about how survivors remember, and how Nazis forget. It combines a plangent exploration of the personal experiences of individuals living around the world who have survived persecution – most of whom have never received compensation or recognition – with accounts of how perpetrators and their minions managed (and still manage) to cover their tracks, and how this evasion affects their children and grandchildren.

The most memorable chapter of this final part is called “The Commemoration of Shame.” She notes here how the “shame” of the perpetrators is almost always buried in the sea of guilt-ridden commemoration throughout Germany, as is the pain of forced and slave labourers, the acknowledgement of which would still have legal (compensation) ramifications for German industry. Fulbrook also notes here that it wasn’t until 2014 that the first memorial appeared for the victims of Nazi euthanasia policies.

Reckonings ends in despair. “So few perpetrators brought to account; so little justice.”

Ian Kershaw has written that “the road to Auschwitz was built by hate but paved by indifference.” Fulbrook reveals that the road from Auschwitz is not a whit less hateful and, certainly, no less met by indifference.

Graham Forst, PhD, taught literature and philosophy at Capilano University until his retirement and now teaches in the continuing education department at Simon Fraser University. From 1975 to 2010, he co-chaired the symposium committee of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre.

Witnessing her history

In spring 2015, at Luneburg Regional Court in Germany, the trial of Oskar Groening, “the bookkeeper of Auschwitz,” began. Nineteen-year-old Torontonian Jordana Lebowitz, a granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, was among those who witnessed the proceedings. The young adult book To Look a Nazi in the Eye: A Teen’s Account of a War Criminal Trial (Second Story Press, 2017), written with award-winning author Kathy Kacer, is about what Lebowitz experienced before, during and after the trial.

The book has different components and is not structured like a usual biography or historical account. It includes Lebowitz’s recollections as told to Kacer, as well as selections from Lebowitz’s blog, which the then-teen wrote for the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Toronto about the trial. Numerous Holocaust survivors, now living in Canada, speak about their experiences at Auschwitz. They also traveled to Germany for Groening’s trial.

Lebowitz shares her concerns about going to Germany and readers learn how she made the trip come about. After almost every chapter, there are excerpts of Groening’s testimony that Kacer has based on news articles and interviews, as there were no transcripts from the trial itself. These sections allow readers to know what Groening was thinking as his claims were being assessed by the court. Charged with being complicit in the deaths of more than 300,000 Jews, he was eventually found guilty.

Lebowitz epitomizes how individuals from my generation should act. Her main goal was to ensure that the experiences of Holocaust survivors would be recorded so that future generations would be able to access them, and learn from them. Her main purpose in going to the trial was to witness this history and make sure that future generations would know it, too.

Lebowitz had been to Auschwitz on a March of the Living trip. The program takes students from around the world to Poland and Israel, so they can see firsthand and learn about the Jewish communities that once existed in Europe and the tragedy of the Holocaust that wiped almost all of them out. It was on March of the Living that Lebowitz met Holocaust survivor Hedy Bohm, with whom she became close friends. Bohm was imprisoned in Auschwitz for three months and testified in the trial against Groening.

As the bookkeeper at Auschwitz, Groening not only witnessed many Jews coming off the trains, but confiscated their possessions as they arrived. He was not tried for being a murderer, but for helping the Nazis murder Jews. The German government wanted Groening’s trial to occur, as they wanted Nazis who were still living to be brought to justice, even if it was many decades later.

Lebowitz heard about the trial from Bohm, and then set to figure out how she could attend it. The Simon Wiesenthal Centre agreed to fund the trip if she would blog her experience in the courtroom for others to read and follow as the trial was taking place. She managed to convince her parents she could handle what she would face on the trip during the trial, and Thomas Walther, the prosecutor, helped Lebowitz find a place to stay in Germany and procured a pass to allow her into the courtroom.

To Look a Nazi in the Eye is powerful in part because it reveals the compassion Lebowitz initially felt for Groening, in his frailty, sitting in the courtroom each day. He recounted heartbreaking stories of what had transpired in the camp. But, while Lebowitz believed at the start of the trial that he was truly sorry for what he had done, Groening’s stories began to change, and not for the better. He also said he was not guilty because he did not personally hurt or exterminate Jews.

As her daily accounts progress, there are humourous moments that balance out the horrific stories about Auschwitz. For example, purses and paper were not permitted in the courtroom. In order to blog, however, Lebowitz needed a notepad and pen. So, she snuck toilet paper and a pen that was hidden in a place the security guards would not find during a body search. Her persistence paid off, and Lebowitz managed to take notes each day. That her family and others read her blog posts gave her some assurance that she was succeeding in her mission of helping keep the history alive and relevant.

One part of To Look a Nazi in the Eye that is amazing is how Lebowitz interacts with the Holocaust survivors. Bohm, Bill Glied and Max Eisen were among the survivors who attended the trial and were brave enough to recount their experiences at Auschwitz. For them, and others, it was a duty to their family and themselves to ensure that some form of justice was achieved. At first, they seem pretty hesitant of a younger individual being at the trial, but later open up to Lebowitz more. Seeing a person from a younger generation advocating for this cause made them happy, in a sense.

Since returning to Canada, Lebowitz has remained involved in Holocaust remembrance. As the book’s website notes, she “came to understand that, by witnessing history, she gained the knowledge and legitimacy to be able to stand in the footsteps of the survivors who went before her and pass their history, her history, on to the next generation.”

Chloe Heuchert is a fifth-year history and political science student at Trinity Western University.

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The following excerpt was published by CM: The Canadian Review of Materials and can be found, along with a review of To Look a Nazi in the Eye, at umanitoba.ca/cm/vol24/no2/tolookanaziintheeye.html:

“I wanted to leave,” replied Groening again in a voice that had grown increasingly hoarse. “I asked for a transfer to the front.”

Was it Jordana’s imagination or was Groening faltering under the strain of the trial and the intense cross-examination? She hadn’t noticed it before, but he looked decidedly weaker at this point in the proceedings than he had looked in the beginning. His face was haggard, his shoulders slumped, and his hands trembled.

Finally, Thomas [Walther] gathered his notes together and stood in the centre of the courtroom. “Behind me sit the survivors who are here to testify, along with their descendants,” he said. “I ask you, Herr Groening, did you ever think when you were in Auschwitz that the Jewish prisoners might stay alive and eventually have their own children?”

Groening shook his head and closed his eyes. When he finally responded, his voice was faint. “No. Jews did not get out of Auschwitz alive.”

A 22-year-old open wound

Every year on July 18, thousands of people gather to remember the victims of the AMIA bombing, and demand that justice prevails. (photo by Jaluj via commons.wikimedia.org)

After more than 20 years, an entire nation continues to search for answers and justice.

With an estimated population of 330,000, Argentina’s Jewish community is the largest in South America and, outside Israel, the sixth largest in the world. First arriving in Argentina in early days, Jews have continued to immigrate ever since. During its “golden era” (1900s to 1950s), an estimated 500,000 Jewish people lived there.

The vast majority of Jews in Argentina are Ashkenazi, from central and eastern Europe. From the start, this active, prosperous and engaged community has left its mark in local business, infrastructure, culture and politics. My family was part of this group; Argentina was the place we called home and where four generations of my family were born. AMIA (Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina or the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association) is the central support organization for all Jews in Argentina, tracing its roots back to 1894.

Everything changed the morning of July 18, 1994, at 9:53 a.m. While I was attending a history class, more than 600 pounds of explosives hidden in a vehicle were detonated in front of AMIA. The explosion was followed by a cloud of smoke and dust seen for miles. In seconds, along with the iconic Jewish organization in Argentina and everything surrounding it, the building housing all of Argentina’s rich Jewish history was, simply, gone. This tragedy was followed by panic, mayhem, sirens, ambulances, calls for help, deaths totaling 85 and hundreds more victims, severely injured and traumatized, transported to hospital.

At my school, phones started to ring. The principal rushed into our classroom to have a private word with our teacher, who then broke the news that AMIA in Buenos Aires was bombed. We were in shock. The same black dusty cloud that could be seen above AMIA descended upon the student body, the teachers and the administrative staff. Frantic activity ensued and, within a few hours, the school was deserted.

My first reaction was concern for my family and friends, many of whom worked at AMIA. I would soon learn that, although one miraculously survived under the rubble and a few others were spared, having not yet arrived at the time of the attack, three died in the explosion. I would learn of the tremendous cultural and historical loss of books, manuscripts, community records, art, pictures and more. I would learn of the disorientation felt by so many who could not comprehend the magnitude of the attack. And I would learn of the rage of those who survived their loved ones. To this day, I will never forget the conversations around the dinner table that revealed the pervasive feeling we were no longer safe.

Some of my friends were immediately withdrawn from the private Jewish school I attended and transferred to the public school system. I would learn of sentiments such as “Jews should be concentrated in one place and live together so innocent Argentines would not suffer.” Yet, in my mind, we were all Argentines.

Over the following years, as I transitioned from my teenage to adult years, I would learn of government cover-ups, of the miscarriage of justice, and of injustice done in the name of greed and corruption. I would also learn of Hezbollah, Iran and other terrorist elements suspected of involvement one way or another. And I would be constantly reminded of the pain of those left behind, and the impunity of the perpetrators, which reinforced the sense of insecurity that took over a proud and vibrant Jewish community.

In spontaneous reaction, hundreds showed up to the site where the AMIA building had stood. Many, my father was among them, were volunteering to assist in the rebuilding process. Those were dark days. The community needed to reorganize. Within a week of the attack at Pasteur 633, a community building a few blocks away began to function. As the temporary head office of AMIA, the Ayacucho 632 site became the place where families sought information about the victims of the attack and where AMIA resumed essential operations, especially those pertaining to social services and community relations.

The Ayacucho building also became the place in which I started my journey as a Jewish community volunteer and where I later decided to pursue a professional career serving the Jewish community.

Five years after the attack, on the original site, a new building was opened that symbolized the creative drive of a community willing to preserve the heritage of a cultural tradition that honors life and collective memory.

This July 18, as every year, the bombing was commemorated with a ceremony in front of the new, now heavily fortified, AMIA: This year’s ceremony marked 22 years since the attack, Argentina’s deadliest bombing ever.

The AMIA bombing was an assault on all society and one that has left deep political scars, not just upon Argentina’s Jewish community. It is a symbol of the entire Argentine state and a society still searching for the truth. And the truth – about a sophisticated terrorist act of mass murder that sent a brutal message of destruction and death – must come to light. The attack is a wound that remains open to this day.

I vow to neither remain silent nor rest until those guilty of these attacks are apprehended, and I hope that the Argentine government will make every effort to ensure that the terrorists responsible for this horrendous act are brought to justice.

Viviana, Cristian and Guillermo, I will never forget. Porque tenemos memoria, exigimos justicia. Because we have memory, we demand justice.

Nico Slobinsky is director, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, Pacific Region. He was born and raised in Argentina before immigrating to Israel and, later, to Canada.