Remembering a friend and hoping

MEMBER COLUMN

Lynne Burt-Jenkins LW contributor

When I was a little girl, my parents had a friend, Dave Smith. He used to come to the house now and then. I heard talking and laughing when Dave came over.

When I was a teen, I found out that Dave’s last name was not Smith. He came to America from Germany when he was about 19 and changed his name to a more American-sounding one.

In the very early 1920s, Dave realized bad things were starting to stir in Germany, and he decided to leave. He tried to persuade his parents it was becoming dangerous to be a Jew in Germany, that there were forces ramping up crazy charges and hate.

But his father, who had served in the German Army in WWI, said it was ridiculous to think the German people would allow that to happen. He was a patriot, after all. He had worn the uniform of his country, and had fought for it, risked his life for it, as did many other Jews. But Dave was right, and his father was wrong. It didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was the hate that Adolf Hitler was generating, based on lies and false charges against people who had done nothing to earn that hatred except to exist. The hatred came solely, at first, from Hitler, from the Brown Shirts marching in the streets. Then it spread. We know, now, that there was an intense campaign of falsehoods, aimed at a portion of the German people who could be categorized as being “different.” Because Hitler said they were, not based on any fact.

Some time after Dave left, he again tried twice to get his family to leave Germany. But it was too late; they could not get permission to leave. I sometimes think of Dave and wonder how he lived life after that. And as I remember Dave, I hope history is not repeating itself.