Yesterday I went to a Ralph Nader rally in Cincinnati. With me came a most amazing woman, Anita Ron Schorr, a holocaust survivor who flew in all the way from Connecticut just to beg Nader to reconsider his being on the ballot in swing states.
Losing her entire family at the age of nine, Anita lived the horrors of Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen, standing naked before Dr. Mengele as he chose who would live and who would die. She came to bear witness to Nader that she is terrified that religious fundamentalism is knocking on America’s door and that her past could be her children and grandchildren’s future.
"I came, Mr. Nader, so that you could see my face, hear my voice, even look at my number if you would like, when I ask you to reconsider what you are doing in Ohio."
Nader, of course, refused to budge. I understand on some levels. He really does have some incredible things to say and there is a dire need in this country for a viable multi-party system. It just seems, now even more than in 2000, too much is at stake to let Nader be the spoiler. Ohio is so close right, even 50,000 votes for Nader could make the difference.
I know there are creative solutions. In 2000, people started developing vote-trade internet sights, where folks from Dem-rich states could trade their vote with Nader supporters in swing states, they just appeared on the scene too late to help Florida. The goal for the Nader camp is to get at least 5% of the vote so they can qualify for federal funding. They also want to be heard. Let’s figure out how to make both happen, and happen in a way that drives home to the rest of the country that America is at a dire crossroad; it’s a perfect storm, fanaticism tied to severe economic downturn, coupled with a corporatocracy already in place and growing, and a mercenary army ala Blackwater in the ranks.
Below is the story of Anita and a story of our current times which we gave to all the Nader people. I apologize in advance, it's rather long -- it includes a poem written in her honor that she cherishes -- and also, some ways to frame the religious right crisis that should help everyone put it in perspective (jump down to: How in America? section below) . . . so please be patient.
THIS IS HER STORY . . . .
Born in 1930, Anita grew up in a prosperous and highly cultured family in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Then suddenly in 1939, everything changed. Hitler marched into Prague, seizing Anita’s homeland as a German protectorate and turning Anita’s childhood into a waking nightmare. Her harrowing story of survival shuffled from one concentration camp to another, being marked for life or death by Dr. Mengele himself, is best told in a tribute to her courage written by poet, Stephen Herz:
Marked
at nine
you wore the yellow star,
the Star of David
that marked you Jew,
marked you for the cattlecar;
marked you for Terezin, for Bergen-Belsen,
marked you for Auschwitz
where you lost your name
for a number –
71,569
will the tall chimney roar?
will it belch it’s stench red and black?
will you go to the showers
that aren’t showers?
will you stand without failing
through the long appeals?
will you avoid the dogs, the Kapo’s blows?
will they take your number
at the next selection?
a girl of fourteen
you say you’re eighteen
like your mother tells you,
hiding your undeveloped body,
slipping out of Mengele’s hands,
out of Auschwitz
into Hamburg slave labor,
a red stripe down your back,
the errant bomb burying you,
the German soldier
pulling you out, befriending you,
giving you half his sandwich
every day
until the day the cattlecar dumps you
into Bergen-Belsen
into the living dead, the walking dead;
and the flesh of the dead
some are eating
before the British are coming,
and you tell yourself;
I’m going to make it!
willing yourself to survive
to bear witness
for all of those who lost their names
who lost their lives
simply because
they were marked
like you:
Jew
Anita defiantly made it through six years of hell on earth. The rest of her family perished in the Nazi camps. After the war, the challenges of survival and the betrayal of her country were overwhelming. She was left to wander as an orphan hungry and desolate on the streets of her once beautiful Prague. A survivor at the core, she joined the Haganah (the Israel Army Underground) in 1948 to participate in Israel’s ware of independence and became an original founder of one of the first kibbutzim on the Jordanian border. Anita spent twelve transformative years in Israel and regards Israel as a mother would her child. Married with one son, she moved to America in 1959 and has lived there ever since.
Anita has devoted her life to fighting bigotry, hatred and intolerance in all its forms. The founding of the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC inspired Anita to begin to tell her story. Now, she travels all over the Northeast sharing her past with middle school and high school students, inspiring them with her strength to make a difference in their own lives. With the wisdom of her years, her greatest treasures now are the many letters she receives from the children she meets – they give her hope . . . they are her jewels.
John McCain’s recent sell out to the far right elements of the Republican base is alarming. As we in Ohio have watched events unfold over the past few months, we have become increasingly convinced that America is following a path that could turn the horrors of Anita’s past into a blueprint for our country’s future.
How in America, one must ask, could it happen that the biggest event of the political season, according to Time magazine’s political analyst, Mark Halperin, was Rick Warren’s Civil Forum, a globally televised event held in an evangelical church, where a single evangelical pastor, whose core beliefs are very similar to those of Jerry Falwell, had the exclusive opportunity to interrogate the presidential candidates, each for an hour, on their personal religious beliefs, where the first question was how they took Jesus Christ into their lives on a daily basis?
How in America, one must ask, could it happen that a presidential candidate should give his 100% endorsement to having federally-funded faith based initiatives be allowed to discriminate on hiring, as John McCain wholeheartedly did at the Warren Forum? In Germany Hitler decreed Jewish doctors could not have non-Jewish patients, and Jewish attorneys could not have non-Jewish clients. History has repeatedly shown that allowing any government to control an individual’s ability to participate in commerce based on religious beliefs is the first step to ultimate submission.
How in America, one must ask, could it happen that, according to David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times, John McCain allowed the matriarch of the far religious right, Phyllis Schlafly and her cohorts to re-write the Republican platform so that it is now considered the most conservative platform in the history of the party?
How in America, one must ask, could a candidate for president declare with all absolute certainty that life begins at conception, as if it were a proven fact when it is just a religious belief held by some in our society, but by far, not everyone, not even all Evangelicals?
How in America, one must ask, could a presidential candidate choose to keep as one of his closest foreign policy advisors, Senator Joseph Lieberman, a man who for the second year in a row referred to end-time theo-con, Pastor John Hagee as Moses while speaking to thousands of Hagee’s disciples at the Christians United for Israel annual lobbying event in Washington DC, the same John Hagee who in his bestselling 2006 book, Jerusalem Countdown, wrote:
"Just before us is a nuclear countdown with Iran, followed by the final battle: the battle of Armageddon . . . . The end of the world as we know it is rapidly approaching. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad. The best is yet to be."
How in America, one must ask, could a presidential candidate who valued "experience" so highly as a prerequisite for leading this country, who believes that our biggest threats come from international terrorism and the like, choose as a running mate a person who has zero foreign policy experience just because he wanted a woman who could appeal to the religious right and champion her personal views on abortion and related socially conservative issues?
How in America, one must ask, could a vice presidential candidate be in favor of banning books from libraries and teaching in public schools both 6,000-year old creationism as factual science and abstinence-only as the best way to prevent teenage pregnancy because the bible says to do so?
How in America, one must ask, could a vice presidential candidate attribute the war in Iraq to "god’s task" and a 30-mile gas pipeline in Alaska as "god’s will?" And how could a vice presidential candidate’s husband be a member of a Alaska Independence Party, a radical cessionary group that has direct ties to White Supremacist organizations? (Sarah herself has recorded video speeches for AIP conferences this past year.) And how could the soon-to-be son-in-law of the vice presidential candidate proudly and publicly refer to himself as a "f’ing redneck" and then, for having impregnated the vice president’s daughter, be given the highest VIP status at the Republican convention?
How in America, could all this happen and much more behind the scenes, with but a few voices sounding the alarm that our constitution and its time-honored protection of the separation of church and state are under a direct attack.
Concerned patriotic Americans like Anita feel with great urgency that we as a nation must immediately begin a broad dialog on McCain’s concessions to the Christian Conservative movement. Many of the leaders of his evangelical base (representing a passionate 20% minority of America, and approximately 40% of the Republican party) firmly believe that America must fulfill its alleged role as a "Christian Nation" -- a perspective that challenges America’s primal pledge to plurality that the vast majority of Americans hold so dear.
Since Sarah Palin is clearly the new favorite child of this voting bloc, and since probing into a candidate’s personal religious beliefs appears fair game this presidential season, patriotic Americans like Anita believe we need quickly to aggressively probe Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin’s religious views on the following subjects:
- Which comes first, the bible or the constitution when establishing the law of the land and how people are expected to live on a daily basis? If there is a conflict between the two, how would you personally and professionally resolve that conflict? Would you say that the bible is the inerrant word of God, and if so, what exactly does that mean? Whose "literal" interpretation of the bible do you embrace?
- Can anyone who does not take Jesus Christ as their savior go to heaven and will those who do not embrace the grace of Jesus, burn in hell for eternity, including Anita and all the millions of innocent Jews who died in the holocaust? Is this a personal belief or is this god’s inerrant truth?
- Do you believe you have a moral and religious obligation to work towards fulfilling the Great Commission as all three of the churches you have most recently attended seem to indicate? How will you balance this with your full-time job as Vice President of the United States? How will you separate your personal religious callings from your professional responsibilities when dealing with other cultures around the world? Specifically, do you believe that proselytizing should be allowed within the United States military? Do you agree with the Campus Crusader’s Military Ministry’s mission that: "Our vision is to transform the nations of the world through the militaries of the world. . . .To Win, Build, and Send in the power of the Holy Spirit and to establish movements of spiritual multiplication in the worldwide military community?"
- Do you believe that we are currently living in the end of times? How does your end-time view affect your world view and how will it impact your dealings on the international stage? Do you agree with the 23% of America who say that "peoples and nations of the world can affect the timing of when Jesus Christ returns to earth?" (Source: Pew Forum Survey, 2006)
- Which better categorizes your religious beliefs: a) the absolute truth, or b) personal convictions that could be wrong? If not the "absolute truth," would you say with certainty that your religious beliefs are closer to the "truth" than someone else’s religious beliefs?
- What are your specific associations with Wasilla Assembly of God "The Third Wave" reformation movement that was explored in the Jesus Camp documentary? Do you believe that God wants his followers to prepare an army of warriors to take dominion over the planet? Explain what is meant by "spiritual warfare" and the role it plays in your life.
Anita is scared. She knows how quickly in times of economic crisis a country can go from embracing diversity to condemning it. How even good people with good intentions can be swept up into blind devotion to destructive principles that can, one small step after another, erode rational thought and erupt in genocidal anarchy. She has seen how powerful are the tools of spin and propaganda in the hands of astute politicians. She knows how close is the distance that separates "freedom to believe" from "coercion to believe" when fear is whipped up by powerful leaders who mix ideology with politics.
Anita also has a special relationship with Israel. She is forever grateful for the haven Israel provided, allowing her to re-build her life from the ashes of her past. She loves Israel as a mother loves her child. She would protect it with her life.
That is also why she is so alarmed. She believes that the far-right policies spouted by McCain’s Middle East experts could jeopardize the future of the Israeli state. Their aggressive stance which does not allow for land compromises in return for peace, and calls for a pre-emptive strike on Iran, inflames the hatred and insurrection, putting Israel at even greater risk.
Anita respects Obama and Biden’s unequivocal commitment to Israel and their tough-fisted but balanced approach which includes protecting the rights of innocent Palestinians as well as innocent Israelis. She believes that the Israel’s road to security, peace and sustainability is through diplomacy and difficult compromise, with war only used as a last option in the name of defense.
While the Holocaust is closest to Anita, throughout history there have been countless incidents where zealotry left unchecked has led to untold pain and suffering – among and between Christian sects, Muslim sects, Hindus and others. Religious persecution has been a universal scourge on societies around since time memorial, in fact it is what the original settlers came here to this continent to escape.
The perfect storm is looming on the horizon; our country is suffering a severe economic downturn and religious fundamentalism is on the steep incline. This is a dangerous crossroad in America’s history we must all approach willing to see, and willing to stop.
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
Martin Luther King