VCC Magazine Spring 2019

V irginia C apitol C onnections , S pring 2019 28 No child comes into this world hating another person; it’s a learned trait. “ ” An American Unaware By Nancy Wright Beasley I was born the day General Douglas MacArthur signed the peace treaty with Japanese, endingWorldWar II. My father was exempt frommilitary service, but I remember him pointing out where he used to deliver cattle, which would feed soldiers. As a child, I didn’t know the rest of the story. I didn’t know about the Holocaust. I didn’t know then that I would embark on a 20-year journey into writing about it. When I began my research into the Holocaust, I turned to my mother for her insight. What she told me left me speechless: She initially had no knowledge of the concentration camps in which millions of Jews and countless others died during the Holocaust. My mother cried when she told me she was unaware of the atrocities until later. It wasn’t the last time we cried over the subject. In 1997, an editor for the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star , asked me to write a feature on the one-year anniversary of the Virginia Holocaust Museum in Richmond. I adamantly refused; the subject of the Holocaust was horrifying to me. But my editor and friend, Gwen Woolf, pressed, and out of respect for her, I attended a Kristallnacht ceremony—a memorial service held each November at the Emek Sholom Holocaust Memorial Cemetery in Richmond to honor lost Jews and pay homage to liberators of the camps. Not knowing a single Jew in Richmond, I listened to strangers recount how some relatives survived and others died during the infamous nights of November 9-10, 1938. Thousands of Jews were brutalized and arrested, approximately 100 killed, and their homes, schools, and synagogues destroyed, leaving glass shards so voluminous that the time became known as “The Night of Broken Glass.” The service closed with survivors reciting names of lost loved ones, some whose only memorial was their names inscribed on the monument at Emek Sholom. I stayed composed until the last man, Alan Zimm, a Polish Jew who survived five concentration camps, approached the microphone. Zimm reverently said a name and then gave it an identity: a name, my mother; a name, my father; a name, my brother; a name, my sister. I counted the names on my fingers as he spoke, running out of fingers before he ran out of names. I was sure I heard my heart break. I wrote the article, and seven years later, also wrote and published Izzy’s Fire: Finding Humanity in the Holocaust , a book about a Catholic family risking their lives to save 13 Lithuanian Jews. Their story is recreated at the Virginia Holocaust Museum. Since writing Izzy’s Fire , I’ve done more projects on the holocaust, including a second book, “The Little Lion: A Hero in the Holocaust,” which was adapted to a play and a video. These works will be available to school librarians, in the hope that they will be shown at schools to help discourage anti-Semitism, discrimination and bullying. It will be made available to religious organizations and civic organizations. You can find more information on the website below. Today, there is no reason for any American to be unaware of the Holocaust. The subject is mandated in Virginia schools, as well as in several other states, offering an opportunity to use that wretched history to formulate a different future. I marvel at the opportunity that researching the Holocaust has provided to me, a Christian. I am particularly appreciative of the multitude of Jewish friends I have made. While I still find the subject unbearable, I’m determined to do my part to foster reconciliation. I am spurred on by the seemingly endless violent acts, the latest perpetrated by a hate-filled white supremacist in New Zealand. No child comes into this world hating another person; it’s a learned trait. Please join me in giving serious thought to what you do and say; a child could be watching; a child could be listening; a child could be trying to make up his or her mind. NancyWright Beasley, an award-winning journalist, lives in Richmond, Virginia, and is available as a presenter. Her books can be ordered through customary channels. Contact her at nancy@ nancywrightbeasley.com . Photo by Jay Paul Virginia Capitol Connections Magazine Subscribe for 1 or 2 years or order back issues of this quarterly political affairs and public policy magazine. 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