Day 45 of Nat'l Emergency: Family Mystery Half Solved

The mystery began for me in the middle of the night. Early Friday morning.

I couldn’t fall back asleep after a nocturnal awakening. I opened Facebook on my iPhone. Laura, a cousin in France, had posted an appeal. She asked for help in translating a short note in Yiddish she had found on the first page of her deceased maternal grandfather’s prayer book, his siddur. She included a picture of the note.

I don’t speak or read Yiddish but the letters resemble Hebrew. Perhaps I could make out some words. I was thwarted in my attempt to read the note. I couldn’t make heads or tails out of it until I turned the picture upside down. I remained stymied for a while until I figured out the one word third line was the family name of her grandfather.

I also deciphered the year of the note. It was written according to the Jewish calendar using letters with specific numerical values. To calibrate it I got out of bed and searched for my 1962 8th grade graduation yearbook from Yeshiva Rambam, hoping it would contain a Hebrew calendar date I could use as a reference. It did. The year of the note was 1959.

Unable to translate more text I sent the note to friends and relatives seeking help. On her side of the Atlantic Laura was similarly engaged.

About the same time, with outside help, we independently configured the puzzle. Here’s the text:

“As a testament to my appreciation to the Borensztejn family,

From Golda Meir

11 Iyar 5719” (May 19, 1959)

Laura believes he received the siddur during a trip to Israel. “He never mentioned that he had met her (Golda Meir) during this trip … If it IS her writing and signature, why ? What did my grandfather do? Or another member of the family?,” Laura wonders. “I am EXCITED but I don’t get it!”

We solved the mystery of what the note said but a larger mystery remained. What did Laura’s grandfather do to merit this personalized, handwritten note from the then Israeli foreign minister and future prime minister?

We may never know.

Foreign Affairs: This is not the first bit of international intrigue involving Laura’s maternal grandfather. Along with his wife and some extended members of their family he emigrated from Poland to Lens in northeastern France, in the 1930s. Before Nazi Germany invaded, Laura’s grandfather urged his relatives to move south. Only his immediate family went with him to Lyons. But they weren’t safe there, either. 

Warned they might be picked up in a roundup of Jews, her grandparents fled with their two daughters to the border with Switzerland. Because Bonnie, Laura’s mother, was a baby, the Swiss allowed the family to enter, but placed them in three separate refugee camps, one for the father, one for seven-year-old Miriam, and the third for Bonnie and her mother. 

For three years they remained in internment. Miriam was able to see her mother and sister from time to time but her father could not see any of his family. After the war ended the family re-united. They returned to Lyons. 

Their family in Lens was killed. The Nazis rounded up the Jews from Lens on September 11th, 1942. It was Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Among them were Laura’s grandmother’s elder sister, Rosalie, and her daughter Betty. They were sent to Belgium, to a place called Kazerne Dossin (now a memorial, museum and documentation center on Holocaust and Human Rights in Mechelen, Flanders). They waited there two days before being shipped out on Transport X, arriving in Auschwitz-Birkenau on September 17. 

There is no archival record of how or when Rosalie died, but official papers show Betty was selected as a forced laborer. She died of unknown circumstances on October 20, 1942. Portraits of Rosalie Fursetzer and her daughter Betty Mohr are part of the memorial and the Memorial Wall at the barracks of Kazerne Dossin.

According to Kazerne Dossin, “X Transport included 1,048 deportees, including 229 children less than 15 years … The youngest was Josef Jozefowicz, aged one month and a half.”  Only 17 survived the war. 

Day 25 of Nat'l Emergency: Living in Epoch Times

Perhaps your postman, as mine did, brought to your mailbox an unexpected publication—The Epoch Times. From its front page it was obvious the special edition of this 20-year-old newspaper was devoted to China bashing, specifically attacking the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for its malevolent actions, particularly as they now relate to the spread of the pandemic COVID-19. 

A quick check of Wikipedia revealed the paper is printed in eight languages. It was founded by John Tang and a group of Chinese Americans “associated with the Falun Gong spiritual movement” that China has attacked. It is a staunch supporter of Donald Trump and other far-right politicians. Indeed, Wikipedia says a 2019 report found that only the Trump campaign funded more pro-Trump Facebook advertising. The Epoch Media Group also is big into conspiracy theories, being among the disseminators of stories on QAnon and anti-vaccination propaganda. 

Well, we can’t expect every publication to be The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times or The Washington Post. That said, I was intrigued by one particular representation that might be a more accurate count of the dead in China from the coronavirus, or what The Epoch Times calls the “CCP virus” (it prefers to tag the China Communist Party with the identification rather than place any stigma on the innocent people of China or Wuhan where the virus originated). 

Instead of the absurdly hard to believe statistic supplied by the CCP that only a little more than 3,000 deaths occurred in China from the virus, The Epoch Times says many more perished as seven cremation centers in Wuhan were operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In addition, open air pits in some villages burned bodies and 40 mobile furnaces were shipped to Wuhan. Such descriptions are reminiscent of Nazi Holocaust measures. 

The Epoch Times says its sources suggest CCP virus deaths have exceeded one million. But then the paper teases the total could be catastrophically greater. As everyone in China by law must have a cell phone, records released by China’s three cellphone carriers reveal that over the last three months the number of cellphone users dropped by 21 million!

Now that I’ve possibly shocked the bejeezus out of you, some provisos: First, I have no way of validating or corroborating anything in The Epoch Times. Second, even the newspaper hedges its bet by stating that since China allows each person to have up to five cellphone accounts, many of the dropped users could be workers who were laid off and chose to disconnect one or more of their lines to save money. 

There’s a world of difference between 3,000 and 1,000,000 and 21,000,000. Based on our country’s  experience, the actual mortality in China probably is higher than the government figure. But then, even our government cannot supply a true figure as it has been reported that many deaths during the time of the pandemic, at home or in nursing homes, have not been attributed to coronavirus because authorities lacked the manpower or facility to autopsy them all to determine if the deceased were infected (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/05/us/coronavirus-deaths-undercount.html?referringSource=articleShare).

One of the more troubling aspects of the national spread of the plague has been some of the comments coming from our elected politicians. I won’t bore you with repeating Trump’s blindness to the pending disaster. He has the excuse, however flimsy it be, that his initial reluctance to believe in the intensity of the danger was because he wanted to give confidence to the public and it was still not clear how bad it would be. What’s more, he hailed his decision to close travel with China. Yet, according to The NY Times, 40,000 entered the U.S. from China in the two months after Trump imposed the ban, including thousands who flew directly from Wuhan (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/04/us/coronavirus-china-travel-restrictions.html?referringSource=articleShare). 

More troubling, perhaps, are the comments from governors and mayors late in commanding shelter-in-place directives for their jurisdictions. The mayor of New Orleans said Mardi Gras was allowed to go on unfettered because the city never received any warnings from the federal government. Georgia’s governor claimed he didn’t know until a few days ago the widely distributed news that people without symptoms could spread the pandemic. Florida’s governor waited until pressure from the Trump administration forced him to act. In each of those cases officials put the health of their area’s tourism economy ahead of the public’s health. Ain’t capitalism grand?

The U.S. Surgeon General has compared the pandemic to the attacks on Pearl Harbor and on September 11, but with higher casualties. He’s right, but probably not for the reasons he wants us to acknowledge. Pearl Harbor and September 11 were thought to be surprise attacks. But warnings were known before they occurred. Known and ignored, or at least downplayed. 

The same is true for the new coronavirus invasion. The Trump administration ignored advice on how to deal with a pandemic and how critical supplies needed to be stockpiled. It also at first refused to believe how vulnerable we were. 

Unlike Pearl Harbor and September 11 we do not have a physical enemy on which to launch a counterattack. Our “wartime” president has nobody to blame but himself and his cronies for how unprepared we have been for this deadly assault. 

Memories from Holocaust Memorial Day

My grandparents—my father’s parents—Moses and Lina Fürsetzer, never made it to Auschwitz. Neither did my Uncle Max. Nor Aunt Klara. Neither did Uncle Willy’s wife and son.

Like almost all the 1,200 Jews of Ottynia in Galicia, in what is now Ukraine but back in 1941 was a small town in Poland, they were taken to a nearby forest and gunned down by Nazis and their local henchmen.

Willy evaded death that day because he already had been hiding in fields and, sometimes, in barns belonging to sympathetic peasants. He hid for some two years until the Russian army liberated the sector at which point he was drafted and sent to Siberia for military training.

In America since January 1939 my father knew nothing of his family’s fate as the few postcards that managed to come from his mother stopped arriving in the mid 1941. The progression of the war can be discerned from their stamps and postmarks. Polish stamps on the first. Russian stamps with CCCP letters on the second reflecting Ottynia’s location in the half of Poland controlled by the Soviet Union as part of the country’s partition with Germany in September 1939. CCCP stamps on the last postcard as well, but a fading postmark of a flying eagle carrying a swastika in its talons conveyed a message of impending doom.

After the war my father reunited with Willy in New York but the two never talked to their American families about what happened in Ottynia. Until one Passover about 30 years ago when my brother Bernie and I videotaped their memories of life in the shtetl and got Willy to recount his harrowing evasion from death.

We have no idea what happened to my mother’s family. Her father, Louis Gerson, perhaps Gershonovitz before being anglicized at Ellis Island, came to New York in 1920. His wife Sarah and their four children—Solomon, Pola, Sylvia (my mother) and Vicky—arrived in 1921. A fourth daughter, Lily, was born in America.

The Gersons came from Lodz, one of Poland’s largest cities. During World War II the Nazis confined Jews from the region in the Lodz ghetto, one of the most populous they established in conquered territories. Hundreds of thousands lived in the ghetto before dying there or being transported to concentration and extermination camps. 

I have no doubt members of the Gerson family were among the dead. My mother and her sisters never talked about it. Louis and Sarah died in 1951 and 1955, respectively.

As I have previously written about our experience at  Auschwitz I had not intended to write anything about the commemoration of the liberation of the death camp 75 years ago Monday (use the search engine at the top of the blog to read past articles about Auschwitz). 

Amidst all the articles on the impeachment trial and international commemorations of the liberation of Auschwitz, perhaps you missed a 5-4 Supreme Court decision that permitted the Trump administration to proceed with a plan to deny green cards to immigrants who might need public benefits like Medicaid, food stamps and housing vouchers. The plan is being contested in court, but the justices permitted interim implementation (https://nyti.ms/2RTmJPf).

Now Trump’s plan should be an impeachable offense. Not on a legal basis. On a moral one. Trump says he is against chain migration yet that is how his current wife’s parents came here. He is against illegal migrants working here but his resorts and golf courses routinely employ illegals.

 How many of our ancestors would not have been granted entry to America had Trump’s heartless guidelines been in effect when they landed on our shores?

From rags to riches is a foundational American story. Yet Trump’s policies would probably kibosh that ever happening again for an immigrant.

Auschwitz and Holocaust Memorial Day are reminders not only of mankind’s potential bestiality but also of what may transpire when people who have the power to help don’t. When people and governments who could extend comfort and protection don’t. When leaders hide behind conventions of government and do nothing instead of rising to the occasion to show their humanity.

Secrets Exposed by The Farewell Span Cultures

“The Farewell,” a new film about extraordinary acts by a family to shield its matriarch from being told she is dying, has received lots of press lately including a piece Thursday by Brian X. Chen, a Chinese-American staff writer of The New York Times (https://nyti.ms/2LDH9Lq). An underlying premise of the film is that Chinese, or for that matter many East Asian cultures, choose to keep secrets, even tell lies, rather than reveal truths that might be harmful emotionally or physically to the uninformed. 

I cannot dispute the notion but I would not limit silence as a tool to just Eastern Asian cultures. Even after my siblings and I grew up and married our parents kept quiet about health issues, about impending hospital stays. They didn’t want to burden us is how they would explain their silence. 

Perhaps it was an Eastern European thing, as well. Our father’s closest friends all emigrated from the same small town, Ottynia, in Galicia, at various times part of Austria-Hungary, Poland and now Ukraine. Many lost relatives during the Holocaust. During their monthly poker games, wives included, nobody talked about Ottynia. Nobody talked about departed, murdered, family members. They kibitzed about the cards, about business, about everyday life. Nothing about the past. Nothing about Ottynia. 

Was it any different from veterans of the Second World War who kept the horror locked inside military-issue chests stashed in attics, basements or garages until their exploits began surfacing after Tom Brokaw’s revelatory 1998 book, “The Greatest Generation,” released their collective heroism and trauma to a nation grateful but mostly uninformed to the sacrifices they made to protect and secure freedom for peoples around the globe? 

I can think of no example of silence more profound than what transpired between my father and his best friend from Ottynia, Charlie Brooks. Charlie was the youngest of three brothers. Adolph the oldest. Next came Harry. All three with their wives were part of the poker game that floated each month from home to home of the eight or so couples who were regular players. 

Eventually, all but Charlie, his wife Lily and my parents remained alive. They would see each other often. They usually ate dinner, then played cards to pass the evening. 

His voice was loud, a combination of a cement mixer with a bad muffler. Charlie was an effusive, stocky man. Always smiling. Laughing. He always was happy to see me. And Gilda. 

Several weeks before Ellie was born in December 1981 we came with three-year-old Dan to my parents’ home in Brooklyn one Friday evening for a weekend visit. Over dinner we asked about Charlie. 

Matter of factly my mother said Charlie had died. What!?! When!?! 

Right there, at the dinette table at which we were sitting, she dispassionately related. During a card game one Saturday night in August he suffered a heart attack. While they waited for an ambulance my father tried to revive him. He couldn’t. 

Lily never forgave his failure. You have to understand. To many emigres from Ottynia my father was an unquestioned leader of extraordinary talents. It was incomprehensible that Charlie could die in his house at his dinner table. That Kopel could not save him. 

I think my parents were caught up in the complex myth, as well. So they kept Charlie’s passing a secret, to be released only because we asked of him. Gilda and I did not have the opportunity to attend his funeral or make a shiva visit. My parents felt it was better to spare us the immediate sorrow of his death. 

Charlie is buried a few yards from my parents in the communal plot assigned to members of the Ottynier Young Men’s Benevolent Association. 

As is the Jewish custom, each time I visit my parents’ graves I place rocks atop their headstones and those of my father’s brother and his wife. And one on Charlie’s, as well. 

Bonding Between Males by Kiss and Hug

Here’s a question intended for just male readers. Do you kiss the adult male members of your family (on the cheek, neck or lips)? Do you kiss your close male friends when greeting them or saying goodbye?

I cannot recall if my father did. I’m sure he kissed me when I was young, but did he continue to show such affection after my bar mitzvah, after I was 13 and presumed a man by Jewish custom? I cannot recall. Neither can my brother or sister.

Hugs. I cannot recall him hugging me as an adult. Bearhugs upon greeting or departing are common among men. They show affection beyond a strong handshake. I don’t recall receiving any bearhugs from my father or his brother, the sole survivor of their immediate family’s annihilation in the Holocaust. I don’t recall ever seeing them hug. Or kiss. Or hug or kiss any of their childhood friends from Ottynia who emigrated to America before and after the Holocaust.

Some years ago, at least a decade I would imagine, I became indoctrinated into the custom of kissing while embracing some of my close friends. It was awkward at first. Like my first time driving on the left side of the road in England. We hug. We kiss each other’s cheek or neck in a much more meaningful manner than the peck on the cheek one dispenses to a female friend. 

I don’t hug and kiss all of my dear male friends. They or I sense it would be awkward. Neither party wants to initiate the exchange. So we shake hands firmly. Or just fist bump. 

It was only after I was initiated into the kissing club that I started to kiss and hug my now 40-year-old son and son-in-law. I sense my son is still a little uncomfortable with it. 

I am sure psychologists or relationship therapists could provide explanations why most men have not embraced the kissing embrace. I won’t insult them by offering my analysis. 

I will, however, strongly suggest this world would be a far better and friendlier place if we all did a lot more fraternal, not sexual, hugging and kissing. 

Will Trump's End Justify His Means?

Maybe, just maybe, Donald Trump has a sense of history. After all, despite all his bravura claims about the efficiency and accomplishments of his presidency, he has yet to claim he has “made the trains run on time” (editor’s note—for those unfamiliar with the claim, google it. You’ll find it under Mussolini or Il Duce). 

Seriously, though, The Trumpster has added fuel to a long simmering debate: Does the end justify the means? 

Are his bluster, his arrogance, his indignities, his lying, his disdain for anyone not a Trump, just for show, to be ignored as long as he secures his objectives? Or, do all his character flaws impoverish the office of the president and the heritage of the United States as the beacon of the civilized world?

For Trump, for all of us, the bottom line, the “end,” is his presidency. When will it end? In January 2021? In January 2025? Or sometime before?  

America used to be known as a country where protagonists debated ideas. Trump has reduced politics to a contest of name calling powered by personal animosity and vengeance. 

Too many respected observers of our political landscape, including former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, have issued warnings about the Trump effect and the world’s and our possible slide into fascism for their misgivings to be ignored (your choice of sources: an Op-Ed piece by Albright in The New York Times: https://nyti.ms/2EpFn8F or or an interview with Terry Gross of NPR’s Fresh Air https://www.npr.org/2018/04/03/599120190/madeleine-albright-warns-dont-let-fascism-go-unnoticed-until-its-too-late).

To keep our heads above a fascist tide requires perspective plus a knowledge of history, science and basic truths. In the extraordinary teenage response to the Parkland, FL, high school shooting, what should we make of the use of the #NeverAgain hashtag? As repulsive as the killing of 17 students and faculty at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was, does it compare to the six million Jewish deaths in the Holocaust often commemorated by the phrase Never Again? (http://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Never-Again-From-a-Holocaust-phrase-to-a-universal-phrase-544666)

Let’s hope the new Never Again movement has more success than the last. Since first promulgated, the world has witnessed genocides in Bosnia, Rwanda, Cambodia, Syria, Chile, Argentina, Myanmar. Given the frequency of school shootings, I am not confident of more success. 

Perhaps the students, even the Jewish students among them, did not know of the Never Again association with the Holocaust. Chalk it up, if so, to the sad condition of American education. We’re seeing that sorry state play out in the teacher strikes in West Virginia, Oklahoma and Kentucky. It is difficult to attract quality teachers for the poverty wages states pay.

When I started as a reporter in Connecticut back in 1972, my immediate supervisor resented teacher pay scales. He reasoned, as too many do even today, that teachers led cushy lives, that they had summers and holidays off, that their work day ended in the early afternoon, not realizing they spend evenings grading papers and preparing lesson plans. And that they often spend their own money to supplement the meager supplies they need to properly instruct their students.

Back then, teachers, like nurses, social workers, police and firemen, were thought to not need higher pay, that they received part of their remuneration in the positive feelings generated by their good works. Ha! Try paying your mortgage or your grocery bill with positive feelings!

Among the signs held up by a student at one of the Oklahoma teacher protests was one stating, “My textbooks are older than me.” Proper grammar would have taught him he should have written “than I,” but the sentiment was appropriate.

Our country’s history is full of less than noble chapters. Slavery. Near annihilation of Native Americans. Robber Barons. Jim Crow Laws. Segregation. Discriminatory laws against Irish, Italian, Jewish, Chinese immigration. Yes, we are a great country, but we must also keep in mind that dangerous precedents inhabited our past.

That’s why it is so important for our leaders to embrace the symbols of our diversity and greatness. Consider just two events of the past week. For the second straight year Trump chose not to attend a Passover seder at the White House. 

On the 50th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Trump did not visit the monument to the slain civil rights leader a short distance from the White House. He merely tweeted a canned video praising King, but his unrehearsed comments of the last two years have exposed him as a bigot, a racist, a xenophobe and a sympathetic friend of budding, if not already, dictators around the world. 

“Instead of mobilizing international coalitions to take on world problems, he (Trump) touts the doctrine of ‘every nation for itself’ and has led America into isolated positions on trade, climate change and Middle East peace,” wrote Albright. “Instead of engaging in creative diplomacy, he has insulted United States neighbors and allies, walked away from key international agreements, mocked multilateral organizations and stripped the State Department of its resources and role. Instead of standing up for the values of a free society, Mr. Trump, with his oft-vented scorn for democracy’s building blocks, has strengthened the hands of dictators. No longer need they fear United States criticism regarding human rights or civil liberties. On the contrary, they can and do point to Mr. Trump’s own words to justify their repressive actions.”

Trump has used his bully pulpit, both in person and via Twitter, to harangue adversaries. His latest target is Amazon and its alleged sweetheart shipping deal with the U.S. Postal Service. Trump further claims Amazon is the reason many Main Streets across America have vacant storefronts (https://nyti.ms/2Gxtkfq).

Imagine that! Sen. Bernie Sanders agrees with Trump that Amazon is getting too big.

Amazon revenues last year totaled $178 billion. But what about Walmart? Its revenues reached $500 billion. Arguably, Walmart has done more to close down rival merchants than Amazon. To my knowledge Trump is not calling for a breakup of Walmart. Sanders, meanwhile, does criticize the Arkansas-based retailer for paying low wages to most of its associates.

Interestingly, while Trump bemoans the growing strength of Amazon he applauds the consolidation of local news outlets under the banner of the Sinclair Broadcast Group, a steadfast supporter of his views. If Sinclair receives approval to purchase Tribune Media it will have entry into seven out of 10 U.S. households. 

Trump also says Amazon should be required to collect state sales taxes to even the playing field with brick and mortar stores. He’s right, but Trump should be the last person to criticize anyone for not exceeding the requirements of the law. For its direct sales Amazon need only collect sales taxes in states where it has nexus. It is not required to collect sales taxes from sales made by its third party vendors. 

As are too many of our fellow citizens, Trump is under the impression that America owes its greatness to settlement by Western Europeans. He fails to recognize the contributions of Hispanics and Africans to our culture and economic growth. He scapegoats them in appeals to white nationalists and those who live in fear of imminent poverty or financial dislocation because America has shifted first from an agricultural economy to one dominated by manufacturing and now to a service-oriented platform.

Trump promises a return to greatness without ever spelling out the time period he wants to return to. His roadmap to wherever and whenever presumes America needs no partners other than on Trump’s terms. 

Will we be willing fellow travelers? Trump wants to get reelected. So do congressional Republican majorities who have mostly sublimated their constitutional obligations in favor of coattail election politics. 

It’s the people, however, who will determine—even in heavily gerrymandered districts—if democratic values will outweigh a strong man’s bombastic rule and attack on  cherished norms of society and politics. 

Melania Has Earned Our Pity

Consider the symbolism of First Lady Melania Trump’s visit to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, Thursday while her husband junkets in Davos, Switzerland, among the corporate and political elites he has long disparaged. 

Consider the visual impact of the ultimate trophy wife staying home, foregoing an international stage, instead visiting a museum with a message of tolerance and engagement to prevent bigotry and its physical consequences.

Consider the humiliation Melania has suffered within the last month. In “Fire and Fury,” Michael Wolff’s tell all about the first hundred days of the Trump administration, she was displaced in bed by a cheeseburger. Even more ghastly was the revelation the philanderer-in-chief not only cheated on their marriage but did so within weeks of her delivering to him a son. Will she ever again be able to look upon Barron without visualizing Trump in his tighty-whities chasing porn star and director Stormy Daniels around a hotel bed, or being spanked by her with a rolled up copy of Forbes magazine featuring Donald, Donald Jr. and Ivanka pictured on the cover? (to those seeking the salacious details, here are three links: In Touch Weekly: http://www.intouchweekly.com/posts/stormy-daniels-full-interview-151788;

Daily Beast: https://www.thedailybeast.com/stormy-daniels-friend-trump-chased-her-in-hotel-room;

Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/01/stormy-daniels-once-claimed-she-spanked-donald-trump-with-a-forbes-magazine/)

Consider the symbolism of visiting the Holocaust museum on the day Trump advanced a program to restrict entry into the United States, entry denied to hundreds of thousands of Jews trapped in Nazi Germany and its occupied territories three-quarters of a century ago. 

Consider this visit to a memorial dedicated to victims who were denied their humanity even as she suffered indignity and humiliation heaped on her by her husband.

Consider a visit to an edifice dedicated to the tragic consequences of denying safe refuge to people persecuted for their religion even as the supposed “leader of the free world” disparages Islam and seeks to deny its adherents the opportunity to seek safety and freedom in America.

Consider the history of American inaction and indifference 90, 80, 70 years ago as refugees sought shelter but were turned away because of racist, bigoted immigration laws even as Trump seeks to close the door to America during the worst ever global displaced person crisis. 

Consider visiting a museum dedicated to the tragic aftermath of American xenophobia and isolationism, to the failure to maintain U.S. global leadership that allowed despots to march unchallenged across continents while Trump and his narrow-minded acolytes reject evidence of Russian interference in U.S. and foreign democratic elections, even as right wing movements, here and abroad, are given succor and retweets by a base and egotistical president with no appreciation of historical context. 

One wonders if Donald Trump has visited the Holocaust museum, not just for a fly-by tour as he did at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem last year, but to study in-depth the disastrous effects of prejudice coupled with an ultra-nationalist credo. Saturday is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. What message should we expect? https://nyti.ms/2FjYbHp

Melania has taken more than her fair share of jabs from late night comedians, some justified, some not. Consider many of the (cruel) comments collateral damage for signing onto the macabre display of Trump’s presidential campaign and time in office. 

She is now seen as the cuckquean of an inveterate womanizer, a man we have come to learn has the temperament and attention span of a child. She has become the object of our pity. No matter how many millions or billions she might be entitled to, we all wonder, is it worth it? 

Memory Unearthed: My Ties to the Lodz Ghetto

Here’s what I know about Łódź (Lodz).

My maternal grandparents were married in that Polish city at the beginning of the 20th century. Separately, they emigrated at different times to New York. First to arrive in America was my grandfather, Louis Gerson. His wife, Sarah, came later with their son, Solomon, and three daughters, Pola, Sylvia (my mother), and Victoria. A fourth daughter, Lily, would be born in New York. Sylvia was four when they landed at Ellis Island in 1921 from one of the last ships before immigration quotas were initiated that would ultimately doom hundreds, thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands even a million Jews who would have sought refuge from the darkness engulfing Europe in the 1930s.

My mother and aunts were too young to remember and pass down details of life in Lodz. Except, that their regal mother would complain that compared to her apartments in the Bronx, her house in Lodz had parquet floors and was staffed with servants. Louis was a jeweler in Lodz, a trade he continued in New York. 

And one more story. Pola was once kidnapped by gypsies, but like the boy in O. Henry’s classic tale “The Ransom of Red Chief,” she was soon returned no worse for the experience. 

Unlike the immigrant benevolent society my father joined in New York from his hometown shtetl of Ottynia, to my knowledge and that of my brother and sister, our mother’s family did not keep up with relatives or friends back in Lodz. Accordingly, I was only aware of Lodz as a big city and would comment casually that my mother emigrated from there whenever mention of Lodz came up in conversation, in a film or TV show. 

So I was deeply intrigued by a recent CBS Sunday Morning segment of an exhibit at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) entitled, “Memory Unearthed: The Lodz Ghetto Photographs of Henryk Ross” (http://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/memories-unearthed-from-the-lodz-ghetto/).

The exhibit would run through July 30. Serendipitously, Gilda and I would be visiting the Boston area last week. Last Friday, we went to see the exhibit with Allison, our daughter-in-law. (There are no immediate plans for Memory Unearthed to tour other cities. The exhibit will return to the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, where its condition will be assessed, and a determination made whether another venue is in the best interest of the collection, according to an AGO representative.) 

As TripAdvisor notes, “The third-largest city in Poland, Lodz’s historical and global significance is largely due to the ghetto that was built there during World War II.” 

Lodz fell to the Nazis on September 8, 1939, one week after Germany invaded Poland. According to Wikipedia, “The Nazi authorities soon established the Łódź Ghetto in the city and populated it with more than 200,000 Jews from the Łódź area. As Jews were deported … for extermination, others were brought in. … Due to the value of the goods that the ghetto population produced for the German military and various civilian contractors, it was the last major ghetto to be liquidated, in August 1944. ...

“Prior to World War II, Łódź's Jewish community numbered around 233,000 and accounted for one-third of the city’s total population. The community was almost entirely wiped out in the Holocaust. By the end of the war, the city and its environs had lost approximately 420,000 of its pre-war inhabitants, including approximately 300,000 Polish Jews and 120,000 Poles. ...

“When the Soviet army entered Łódź on 19 January 1945, only 877 Jews were still alive, 12 of whom were children. Of the 223,000 Jews in Łódź before the invasion, only 10,000 survived the Holocaust in other places.”

Two of those 877 survivors in Lodz were Henryk Ross and his wife Stefania. A photographer, Ross had been tasked by the Nazis to chronicle the “good” life in the ghetto, but he also surreptitiously focused his lens on the inhumane conditions in the ghetto and the cruel life its inhabitants endured and succumbed to. 

Ross buried more than 6,000 negatives hoping someone would unearth his documented history after the war. After he was liberated Ross himself dug up his cache. Water had damaged about half of the negatives. The MFA exhibited about 200 negatives and prints. (For a more complete background on Ross and the exhibit, follow this link: http://www.mfa.org/news/memory-unearthed.)

My mother and her sisters never spoke of any surviving relatives. In truth, they never spoke of Lodz, other than the comments noted above. 

Perhaps I was imagining a connection, but there in Negative 268 of Ross’ treasured records, a face hauntingly stares out at the camera. It is of a woman on a bed taking off or putting on a nightshirt. It is a face that to my eye resembles that of my mother and her sisters. A relative? I will never know. It doesn’t really matter. Jews have a saying, “All Jews are related to one another.” 

In Poland Trump Snubs Jewish Memorial to Warsaw Ghetto

So here’s what Donald Trump said, and didn’t say or do, in Warsaw Thursday:

According to the transcript of his remarks in front of the Warsaw Uprising Monument in Krasinski Square, Trump’s speech included the following: 

“In 1920, in the Miracle of Vistula, Poland stopped the Soviet army bent on European conquest. Then, 19 years later in 1939, you were invaded yet again, this time by Nazi Germany from the west and the Soviet Union from the east. That’s trouble. That’s tough. 

“Under a double occupation the Polish people endured evils beyond description: the Katyn forest massacre, the occupations, the Holocaust, the Warsaw Ghetto and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the destruction of this beautiful capital city, and the deaths of nearly one in five Polish people. A vibrant Jewish population—the largest in Europe—was reduced to almost nothing after the Nazis systematically murdered millions of Poland’s Jewish citizens, along with countless others, during that brutal occupation.”

Later in his speech he recalled the heroism of the Polish resistance during the Warsaw Uprising.

“In August of 1944, Jerusalem Avenue was one of the main roads running east and west through this city, just as it is today. Control of that road was crucially important to both sides in the battle for Warsaw. The German military wanted it as their most direct route to move troops and to form a very strong front. And for the Polish home army, the ability to pass north and south across that street was critical to keep the center of the city and the uprising itself from being split apart and destroyed.

“Every night the Poles put up sandbags amid machine-gun fire -- and it was horrendous fire -- to protect a narrow passage across Jerusalem Avenue. Every day, the enemy forces knocked them down, again and again and again.

Then the Poles dug a trench. Finally, they built a barricade.

“And the brave Polish fighters began to flow across Jerusalem Avenue.

“That narrow passageway, just a few feet wide, was the fragile link that kept the uprising alive. Between its walls, a constant stream of citizens and freedom fighters made their perilous—just perilous—sprints. They ran across that street, they ran through that street, they ran under that street, all to defend the city.

“The far side was several yards away, recalled one young Polish woman ... That mortality and that life was so important to her. In fact, she said the mortally dangerous sector of the street was soaked in blood.

“It was the blood of messengers, liaison girls and couriers. Nazi snipers shot at anybody who crossed; anybody who crossed, they were being shot at. Their soldiers burned every building on the street and they used the Poles as human shields for their tanks in their effort to capture Jerusalem Avenue.

“The enemy never ceased its relentless assault on that small outpost of civilization. And the Poles never ceased its defense. The Jerusalem Avenue passage required constant protection, repair and reinforcement.

But the will of its defenders did not waver even in the face of death.

“And to the last days of the uprising, the fragile crossing never, ever failed.

“It was never, ever forgotten. It was kept open by the Polish people.

“The memories of those who perished in the Warsaw Uprising cry out across the decades. And few are clearer than the memories of those who died to build and defend the Jerusalem Avenue crossing.”

All very appropriate. But as the Associated Press reported Thursday morning, “Poland’s Jewish community is expressing deep ‘regret’ that President Donald Trump has not scheduled a visit to a memorial honoring those who fought and died in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising during his short visit to Warsaw.

“The community issued a statement late Wednesday noting that all U.S. presidents and vice-presidents visiting Warsaw since 1989 had visited the monument, a tribute to the Jews who took up arms against all odds against the Nazi Germans in the Warsaw ghetto.

“The statement said that, to the Jews of Poland, ‘this gesture meant recognition, solidarity and hope.’

“It added: ‘We deeply regret that President Donald Trump, though speaking in public barely a mile away from the monument, chose to break with that laudable tradition, alongside so many other ones.’”

It seems that even when Trump tries to act presidential and respectful he winds up dissing Jews. (Here’s a wacky notion: Could Trump have thought that Jerusalem Avenue provided Jewish cover for his failure to visit the Warsaw Ghetto memorial? Given his penchant for crazy ideas, I could be right.) 

Too many times he or his minions disrespect anything of Jewish heritage or symbolism. Compared to previous presidents, when he visited Israel he made a short, perfunctory pilgrimage to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem. The note he left there was short and perfunctory compared to previous presidents. Prior to his visit to Jerusalem an aide tangled with Israeli representatives saying the Western Wall was not Israel’s. Barack Obama hosted Passover seder meals at the White House. Trump did not. Trump leaked Israeli intelligence information to Russia. During a press conference he was disrespectful of an Israeli reporter and an obviously Jewish reporter who wanted to know how his administration would counter rising anti-Semitism. 

Trump extolled the 150,000 Poles who died in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 but didn’t mention by number the near 400,000 victims of the Warsaw ghetto or their heroic struggle against Nazi SS troops from mid-April to mid-May 1943 when some 7,000 perished and another 50,000 were sent to extermination camps. 

For Trump, everything and anything Jewish seems to be an afterthought. Yes, his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner visited the Warsaw Ghetto memorial, but they are not the leader of the free world (who seems to be trying to transfer that honor to Angela Merkel of Germany or Emmanuel Macron of France or Justin Trudeau of Canada or anybody with a sense of history and sound judgment). 

Perhaps I’m being too tough on The Donald? Some might think I’m making too much of these slights. But when you’re a member of a minority, no matter how high a profile that minority enjoys, I believe you have a right to be sensitive. Here’s a headline (and article link) from an analysis by Ofer Aderet in Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, of Trump’s Warsaw visit: “By Sidestepping Jewish Victims of Holocaust, Trump Helps Polish Government Rewrite History” (http://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/.premium-1.800025). 

That history recalls how the Polish Underground during World War II did not support the Warsaw ghetto uprising. That history recalls virulent anti-Semitism in Poland before and after the war, including pogroms against the survivors of Nazi genocide after the war ended.  

To quote an often-used Trump commentary, “Sad!

Lessons Still To Be Learned From the Holocaust

Donald Trump landed in Poland Wednesday but he was not the only bombastic Republican to make news in that country. As you might have heard, Congressman Clay Higgins of Louisiana had to apologize for making a selfie video inside the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, specifically inside a gas chamber and crematoria where visitors are requested to be silent to honor the memory of the thousands who suffered and died there (https://nyti.ms/2tNmcDW).

For his part, Higgins thought his video would convincingly portray the need for vigilance and greater deterrence of outside threats to America. “This is why Homeland Security must be squared away, why our military must be invincible,” he said, adding at the end of the video, “It’s hard to walk away from gas chambers and ovens without a very sober feeling of commitment, unwavering commitment, to make damn sure that the United States of America is protected from the evils of the world.”

Higgins completely misunderstood the meaning of Auschwitz. It is not a call for more armaments. It is a memorial to what happens when governments demonize the vulnerable, different religious and ethnic minorities and enable persecutions and restrictions on their personal liberties. It is a memorial for the living to remember the past in all its barbaric detail so that “Never Again” is more than a catchphrase.

Auschwitz is a reminder of what could happen when evil thoughts are legitimized by an election, when a leader’s often repeated bigoted statements are discounted by politicians sworn to uphold democratic values, when a populace allows itself to be succored by false promises and jingoistic jargon meant to incite passions not principles.

Higgins apologized for disrespecting the solemnity of Auschwitz-Berkenau and for violating the memorial’s specific admonition not to talk (much less film) inside the gas chamber and crematoria areas.

But if you managed to view his video before he took it down you will be struck by an even more egregious sin. Not once during his five minute film (which might still be viewed by clicking on the previously linked Times article), while recounting the horrors more than 1 million “poor souls” went through, did Higgins say almost all of them were Jews. Not once!

Yes, he ended the video standing before American and Israeli flags, but he was silent, SILENT, about exactly who were the victims—Jews, Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war. 

It is that type of selective memory that undermines the commitment government officials have to the lessons of the Holocaust. Higgins was as tone deaf to the Jewish genocide as Trump was earlier this year when on Holocaust Remembrance Day his official message failed to mention Jewish victims. 

Well, Trump is now in Warsaw, Poland. He will give a speech commemorating the 1944 uprising in Warsaw against the Nazis. But will he also mention the Warsaw Ghetto rebellion by Jews in 1943? 

I wonder …

Six Day War Memories 50 Years Later

Where were you 50 years ago today, June 5, 1967? 

A freshman at Brooklyn College, my normal routine was to drive from my parents’ home to school and plant myself at the Knight House table in the cafeteria in the basement of Boylan Hall. There I’d sit for the better part of the next six to eight hours, schmoozing with friends, only occasionally vacating my seat to attend class.

Around 10 that morning, word started to trickle in that war had broken out between Israel and its Arab neighbors. This was not the era of instant worldwide communications, of CNN or cell phones, of 24-hour news cycles. Israel controlled the dissemination of news from its territory. In those first, terrifying, stomach-churning hours, the only reports we heard were those coming from Egypt, communiqués about Arab troops advancing on Tel Aviv, of Zionists falling in a jihad of epic proportions.

The 1967 crisis in the Middle East had been building for months. Egypt expelled United Nations peacekeepers who guarded the Sinai border with Israel. It closed the Straits of Tiran to ships bound for Eilat. A blockade is considered an act of war. Arab countries vowed to drive Israelis into the sea, to dismember the Jewish state. 

Jews the world over feared another Holocaust. Anyone with relatives or friends in Israel were doubly worried. My sister, Lee, was in Israel, studying at Hebrew University.

All day my friends and I held small transistor radios to our ears. It was not until well into the afternoon or early evening that the true picture of the day’s events became known. The startling revelation of Israel’s air power superiority, coupled with its armored division successes, exceeded even the most optimistic expectations of the 19-year-old country’s supporters. 

I tapped into Lee’s memory bank earlier today, asking her to recall the period before and during the Six Day War. Weeks before June 5, Israel called up military reservists including her boyfriend, Hanan, a fellow student at Hebrew U. in Jerusalem, who asked her to take good notes so he would be up to speed with classwork once he returned from service. Instead of hundreds attending a political science class, just 30 or so students, mostly Americans or other foreign born, Arabs and those physically unable to serve in the military, showed up in the  lecture hall. 

One student, Lee remembered, asked the professor what would happen if Israeli troops were able to succeed in capturing Cairo. His response—they should get out as quickly as possible for it would be difficult if not impossible to rule over any area where Israelis would be a minority.

About two weeks before war began the university closed down. Lee went with Nava,  an Israeli roommate, to her home in Ramat Gan, outside Tel Aviv. They worked in her father’s Matzot Aviv factory packing k-rations, hard crackers Lee said were harder than bullets. They joked they could be used to throw at an enemy if hand to hand combat were necessary.

Going out for a walk at night Lee observed how empty the streets were of youths. All the young men and girls had been called up for military reserves duty.

Just as in America, Israelis were in the dark as to the progress of the war when it began. Lee could hear the constant roar of jets. She could not understand why so many planes were flying overhead with no shooting or bombing, not knowing at the time that Israel’s air force had achieved air supremacy in the first hours of the war.  

To relieve her tension, Nava’s mother cleaned, re-cleaned and cleaned again her refrigerator, inside and out. When the battle for the Old City of Jerusalem started on the third day of the war, Nava’s mother kept up a steady lament (“Oh how many boys we lost”) for the soldiers who died in the battle to take Jerusalem during the War of Independence in 1948.

Proficient in Hebrew, Lee could follow radio broadcasts once news of Israel’s successes became known. But when descriptions of battles in the Galil, where she thought Hanan was stationed, were transmitted, she inexplicably could not comprehend what she heard. Panic had muted her comprehension. It was only after he returned from the war that she learned he was in the Sinai, not the Galil, during the fighting.

By June 7, some normalcy had returned. People went shopping in Tel Aviv. Lee bought her first bikini that day. As memorable was a scene she witnessed on the bus ride from Ramat Gan. A horse drawn cart was by stopped on the side of the road, the horse injured. It would have to be put down. Amid all the trauma of war, passengers on the bus expressed their grief and pathos that a creature not involved in the existential war that surrounded their prayers and hopes would lose its life. 

Sometimes it is hard for contemporary observers to fully appreciate the fragility of Israel’s existence in 1967. From being considered a David facing the Arab Goliath in 1967, the roles have been reversed in the ensuing 50 years. Yet even today a visitor to Israel cannot be anything but wary when hostile borders surround the state, which is but a speck of green in an otherwise sandy expanse. Artillery fire could easily reach Israel’s population centers back in 1967. As it can today. It’s too much to expect friendly neighbors. Secure, peaceful borders, however, are legitimate demands. 

Tired of Too Much Trump? Fatigue Factor Sets In

The fatigue factor is setting in. Donald Trump and his gang that couldn’t shoot straight is overwhelming me. There’s too much to write. If I miss a day the accumulated copy weighs me down. So here’s a “in case you missed it”  blog including random thoughts on news of the days of jaw-dropping, head shaking awe …

Did you see Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross wax ecstatic about the lack of protesters and dissenters in Saudi Arabia during Trump’s transactional relationship building trip to the desert kingdom?

“[The] thing that was fascinating to me was there was not a single hint of a protester anywhere there during the whole time we were there,” Ross told a global audience on CNBC. “Not one guy with a bad placard…”

Even after the CNBC newswoman suggested Saudis do not have the freedom to protest, Ross maintained his devotion to the repressive regime. 

Here are two reports you might want to read about the incident: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/wilbur-ross-trumps-saudi-visit_us_5922dd3ce4b03b485cb31054 and http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/22/news/wilbur-ross-saudi-protests/index.html …

Bibi’s Slip of the Tongue: After Trump’s visit to the Western Wall, Israeli prime minister Bib Netanyahu lauded him for being the “first acting president” to stand before Judaism’s holiest site. 

Bibi had it right. Though he meant to say “sitting president,” Trump’s presidency is an act, an act of arrogance, idiocy, cruelty, meanness and braggado. 

Trump’s buffoonery was on display during their press conference when he volunteered that he didn’t mention Israel during his meeting with the Russian foreign minister and ambassador in the Oval Office, thus providing tacit recognition that he spilled confidential information to our adversaries. 

Compare Notes: After visiting Yad Vashem, the memorial to six million Jews slain during the Holocaust, in Jerusalem Tuesday, Trump left the following note signed by him and his wife, Melania: 

“It is a great Honor To Be Here With All of My Friends.

So Amazing & will Never Forget!”

After his July 23, 2008, visit to Yad Vashem, candidate Barack Obama wrote:

“I am grateful to Yad Vashem and all of those responsible for this remarkable institution. At a time of great peril and promise, war and strife, we are blessed to have such a powerful reminder of man’s potential for great evil, but also our capacity to rise up from tragedy and remake our world. Let our children come here, and know this history, so that they can add their voices to proclaim “never again.” And may we remember those who perished, not only as victims but as individuals who hoped and loved and dreamed like us, and who have become symbols of the human spirit.”   

CBSnews.com provided more context: “Then-president George W. Bush inscribed a brief message-- ‘God bless Israel’-- a few months earlier, in January 2008.

“Bill Clinton, who visited the memorial in his first term, was optimistic about the prospects for Middle East peace when wrote this in the book:

‘Today we have come one step closer to the time when the people of Israel will live in peace with all of their neighbors, when the awful events of death and destruction memorialized here will be banished to the past.’ 

  

“During her time as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trump’s Democratic presidential opponent in the 2016 election, left the following note in March 2009:

“‘Yad Vashem is a testament to the power of truth in the face of denial, the resilience of the human spirit in the face of despair, the triumph of the Jewish people over murder and destruction and a reminder to all people that the lessons of the Holocaust must never be forgotten,’ Clinton's note said. ‘God bless Israel and its future.’”

Okay, our current White House occupant is not a wordsmith. You’d think, however, that someone, someone in the administration would know better, would know the proper way to convey a message that is more than just “amazing.” 

Apparently not.

Killer Eyes: Last month Arkansas, with the approval of the U.S. Supreme Court, rushed to execute as many death row inmates as it could before its lethal chemical cocktail mix could no longer be used. 

I’ll forego commenting on the appropriateness of capital punishment, but I would suggest one change to the execution protocol. I would like any district attorney, governor and judge who favors an execution to have to witness the administration of said death penalty. It might not cut down on the number of executions but it would remove any shield they may have in meting out the ultimate punishment.

Comp Time Blues: There was a time several years back when human resources consultants advised that employees wanted more free time than more wages for overtime work. That idea is being incorporated in the Trump Administration’s proposals that comp time replace overtime pay.

Back when I worked for The New Haven Register chalking up comp time was the norm. There was, however, one flaw, a big flaw, in that practice—I was still required to file all the stories I would normally have to submit. 

Channeling Presidents: Unless I missed it, I must admit I was surprised Trump did not channel President Harry S. Truman when it came to defending his daughter’s creative talent. 

Truman’s daughter Margaret received less than flattering reviews for her singing from The Washington Post, prompting the plucky president to write the music critic, “Some day I hope to meet you. When that happens you’ll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below!”

To my knowledge Trump did not similarly respond to savage reviews of Ivanka’s book “Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules for Success” (http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5907a3f8e4b05c3976819069?section=us_arts&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=culture+shift+05-05-2017&utm_content=culture+shift+05-05-2017+Version+A+CID_420012b2802ea993f727cb880db1ee08&utm_source=Email+marketing+software&utm_term=READ+MORE&ncid=newsltushpmgspecialculture+shift+05-05-2017)

We should also hope Trump does not channel one of his presidential heroes, Andrew Jackson, who defied a Supreme Court ruling, famously stating, “(Chief Justice) John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.” 

Given all his judicial involvements Trump may well have to confront judgments not to his liking. 

He might find comfort in conjuring up the image of Woodrow Wilson, often considered a great president for “making the world safe for democracy,” but who discriminated against Afro-Americans and immigrants he thought were a threat to national security.

“I am sure the country is honeycombed with German intrigue and infested with German spies,” Wilson wrote in 1915 to one of his advisors. 

Once America entered the war against Germany, Wilson signed the Sedition Act of 1918 which restricted speech and the expression of opinion that criticized the government or the war effort. Convicted offenders could be imprisoned for five to 20 years.

Perhaps it is a good thing Trump is not a student of history.

Lessons We've Learned in 100 Days, Just 7% of a Presidency

What’s the betting line on Donald Trump hoping, wishing, praying that TV writers go on strike May 2, thus silencing his many late night television critics including Samantha Bee, Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, John Oliver and Trevor Noah? 

The last strike, from Nov. 5, 2007, to Feb. 12, 2008, gave President George W. Bush a little breathing room, a 100-day respite from nightly deprecation, disdain, ridicule and humiliation.

100 days. Hmmmm.  Where have I heard that time span before?  Oh, yeah—100 days, as in the first 100 days of a new presidency.

The obsession with Donald Trump’s first 100 days sitting behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office is suffocating. The media, naturally, have a stake in advancing this obsession. It makes for good copy. Strong ratings. But let’s not give the bloviator-in-chief a pass. He, after all, last October at Gettysburg outlined in detail what he would accomplish during his first 100 days as president. He even issued a contract with the American voter.

Given that Republicans have tricameral control of the government—the White House and both chambers of Congress (actually, now that Neil Gorsuch has donned his supreme black robe the GOP has quatracameral control)—I would rate Trump’s tenure in office a solid B, not for achievement, but rather for the learning experience it has accorded us.

Let’s face it. Any Republican elected president was going to nominate a conservative justice to the Supreme Court. As well, a GOP president would cut funding to Planned Parenthood and international abortion providers/counselors, as Reagan and Bush I and Bush II did. And he (a she is still not possible) would be dismissive of climate change, though probably not as ignorant as Trump is. And he’d suck up to the NRA.

What Trump has provided is a civics lesson on checks and balances as intended by the Constitution. Moreover, he and his cadre of acolytes have shown us what autocracy and dictatorship can sound like, as when Stephen Miller said the president can do what he wants, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions denigrated a state (Hawaii) and a judge for thwarting the administration’s plans to punish sanctuary cities. 

It was reprehensible during the campaign when Trump maligned a federal judge involved in a lawsuit alleging fraud at Trump University. Trump is not a lawyer. He reacted tempestuously, as he does whenever confronted. But Sessions is a lawyer; he’s supposed to be the nation’s top lawyer. For him to question the checks and balances role of the judiciary as defined by the Constitution is a clear reflection on what the Trump administration thinks.

We also cannot ignore the lesson we have been given on the Holocaust, first by Trump not including any mention of the six million Jews killed by Nazi Germany in his statement on Holocaust Memorial Day, but also by Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s outrageously inept explanation of why Bashar al-Assad’s chemical warfare attack on his people was worse than what Hitler did during World War II. 

Trump and family and his appointments are a continuing lesson in conflict of interest examples. Be honest—had you ever heard the word “emoluments” before Trump? 

We’ve also come to appreciate the insidious actions Vladimir Putin and Russia have inflicted on our democracy and other elected governments around the world.

For his part, Trump’s near 100-day tenure has enlightened him to the complexity of government, from his difficulty getting Obamacare repealed and replaced to the layered relationship between China and North Korea. It’s not as easy as he thought, he has admitted. Too, while he criticized President Obama for issuing executive orders instead of working with Congress to pass legislation, and for excessive golfing outings, Trump has fallen into the same trap. But unlike Obama, his party controls both houses of Congress.

Populism helped transport Trump to Washington. Populism also is behind resistance to Trump, though maintaining a high level of involvement will be difficult to sustain for four years, or even 18 more months until the next congressional election cycle.  

Perhaps the saddest lesson of Trump’s nascent presidency is the susceptibility of a vast segment of the public to fake news. A recent Washington Post-ABC News poll found slightly more than half of Republicans (52%) believe Obama wiretapped Trump Tower despite there being no evidence it happened and numerous statements by heads of intelligence and law enforcement agencies that it didn’t happen. They believe it because Trump repeatedly said it did. 

It’s the “big-lie-repeated-often-enough-becomes-truth” syndrome. How sad that the American public has lost faith in traditional media to expose falsehoods. How sad that the American public has become so bifurcated that extremists on both sides of the divide set the national dialogue. How sad that “compromise” has become anathema to politicians. How sad that gerrymandering has negated the need to compromise. Perhaps not since the Civil War have families been so divided on the outlook for domestic tranquility.

It may seem longer, but Trump’s first 100 days is just 7% of his term of office (assuming, he’s not re-elected). How much damage could he do? David Brooks of The New York Times ended his Friday column calling Trump a “political pond skater—one of those little creatures that flit across the surface, sort of fascinating to watch, but have little effect as they go.”

I disagree. Trump will have an effect that may not be reparable in four or eight years on the global environment, on domestic clean air and water, on America’s standing in the community of nations, on our internal ability to work together as a people toward a common good. 

If ever we needed the escape of political satire to get us through the next 100 days and beyond it is now, so please, let’s not have a TV writers strike.