Juden Rusch!

My family and their friends, all Holocaust survivors, rarely discussed their wartime experiences with their children. They were too recent, too traumatic. They had no words, I suppose, to describe what they had seen.

Nearly all are gone today, having passed on. Strangely, most of them lived into their nineties in good health, then, when “they had no more time” (as my mother would say), rapidly declined and died.

That is why I was surprised to read of an 85 year old Holocaust survivor who was banned from speaking at a Boerum Hill (Brooklyn) Middle School. One, that there was a survivor still alive and two, he was willing and able to speak about what he had witnessed.

I was wrong on both counts.

Sami Seigmann, born in Czernovitz, Bukovina on December 21, 1939, was a child survivor of the Holocaust. Somehow, he lived, a rarity among children so young. They died of brutality, exposure, starvation and execution. Most of their parents died with them. I remember hearing whispers about my aunt who worked in “Canada”, the Auschwitz sorting room where she went through victims’ clothes and belongings. It was said that she occasionally found a baby hidden among the possessions in a last ditch effort to save the child.

Perhaps, Seigmann’s youth somewhat protected him against recollections of the war but he probably has some memories. I can recall the candles on my fourth birthday cake, the oversized satin bow pinned to my hair which I wore to my uncle’s wedding, the raised velvet polka dots on the white organza dress sewn by my mother for a studio portrait. Steigmann could have remembered things including the frigid cold, the hunger, the fear.

And second, that he was willing to speak about his memories and the events that impacted his life.

My parents had one friend who spoke at high schools. She was looked at, at least by me, as a Columbus’ translator of sorts. I sensed a degree of admiration among my family members that she would do it. It didn’t seem to change her. She was as bubbly after her engagements as before. She continued to participate in her friends’ “pool parties” (described in my memoir “Greener Acres” at https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/greener-acres/), play cards and dance at simchas. If I wondered what her experiences had “cost her” I kept it to myself as did she.

Fast forward, 2025.

Eighty years after the end of the war.

And we once again hear “Judson Raus!”, the antisemitic German slogan and rallying cry.

“Jews out!”

Imagine being in a Vienna apartment building and hearing the thunder of jack books on the marble stairs or huddling in the attic or cellar of a wooden dwelling as door is smashed open.

It could never happen here, we would shudder.

But a version of it did.

In Brooklyn, a borough of New York City, home to the largest Jewish population outside of Israel.

In a public school paid for by tax dollars, subject to Civil Rights laws, both state and federal.

Boerum MS 447 Principal Arin Rusch banned survivor, Steigmann from speaking because, as she announced in her email to parents, she had examined his social media and found he was pro-Israel.

“In looking at his website (sp) materials I also don’t think Sami’s presentation is right for our public school setting, given his message around Israel and Palestine”, she wrote.

Her bigotry was initially defended by the Mayor’s office. Subsequent reporting indicates that Mayor Eric Adams has decided to personally support Steigmann being allowed to speak.

Now, what?