I was
invited to attend The International Holocaust Remembrance Day in Taipei this Sunday, Feb. 19th. The deadline to RSVP passed
three days ago. I let the fate of winds blow, asked to be
admitted to the Holocaust Remembrance, and bought my HSR train tickets.
My friendly detractor, called me a “bumbler” for a non-kosher religiosity and not one “humbled” by going to the Holocaust Memorial Day Ceremony in Taipei. Any event that makes me wear a suit is humbling to me! I wrote back:
“After the Nazi high
school role-play parade in Taiwan last year, the need for bumblers like me who
can bridge the gap of misunderstanding Jewish people was better served than by
hearing a righteous holy moldy vegan or a Lubavitcher rabbi, ken-a-hurra.
The revolutionary thoughts that brought fear to goyum ruling classes is what is
needed in the white supremacist world today; not a spectator correcting
everyone's English grammar. Call me a bumbler, but at least I'm not a
crumbler.” We banter back and
forth but we’re still friends.
I headed north to Taipei to the event sponsored by the Israeli Economic & Cultural Office, Deutsches Institut, the Taiwan Ministry of Education, and the National Central Library.
This is not the first Holocaust Remembrance Day in Taiwan; it was observed last year, but it the first time I am attending one since, in 2005, the United Nations recognized January 27th, the day the Red Army liberated the Nazi German Concentration and Extermination Camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, as the day of recognition in a unanimously adopted resolution.
What made this event most timely and poignant was an embarrassing incident a few months ago in which the principal of a Taiwan school allowed teachers to have students at Hsinchu Kuang-Fu Senior High School stage a Nazi parade on International Culture Day, the teacher popping out of the hatch of a cardboard tank, he and students dressed in makeshift uniforms with swastikas, giving the Nazi salute to adoring parents and classmates who lined the school running track to watch. In the days afterwards, the incident was exposed via Facebook and picked up by local TV newscasts. The principal defended himself, the students claimed they were being picked on, and the Taiwan government had no power to release the principal of the private school; finally he resigned under pressure. At the event Sunday, one of the school's students spoke eloquently, in English as two dozen of her remorseful classmates sat respectfully behind the VIP's and general audience of two hundred.
Rabbi Shlomi had not responded to the blogs or power point presentations I gave to students and teachers at four public schools last year. As far as I know, he has done no sensitivity training in the Taiwan community about our culture. At this event, he read a prayer and lit six candles.
The representative from Germany was quite to the point in saying that those who survive must use the lessons of their nation's tarnished past to insure that it never happens again. The rep from Israel brought a film about a Russian Holocaust survivor from a ghetto just down the road from Grodna, the town where my Bubby and Pop emigrated to America from. Avraham Aviel's fractured family had immigrated to Israel, the Zionist destination and not the Internationalist Jewish Bund that the diaspora supports.
When President Tsai Ying-Wen spoke, she concentrated on the education still needed in Taiwan to sensitize adult educators to the plight of oppressed people. A program to do so will be brought into the Taiwan educational system through the Israeli Economic and Culture office.
The somber ceremony, without applause, was two hours long. The musical interludes were tender, the presentation was generally well-done. In the lobby outside the Library's auditorium was a display of Holocaust photographs and bilingual literature.
I hope that, in this time of regression of civil rights and a rise in hate, nationalism, and antisemitism in the United States and Europe, Taiwan and Asia can continue to champion tolerance and inclusion, but it has a way to go. This remembrance day was a step in the right direction.
no one alive on my side
in the seats to the left and right
victims not here to speak for
Jews from the twentieth century
Muslims from the twenty-first
all else wear business attire
all else came with friends
even the rabbi of remembrance
how unknown i am in his prayer
how thankless to him my outreach
obsessed with his in-reach
how long will antisemitic Israeli
prophetically walk with Christian millennials
a path worn deep
in a trench along a wall
where murders repeat
without missing a beat
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