Responsibility over Grievance: What My Parents Taught and the West Has Forgotten

In the summer of 1951, 75 years ago, my parents, with my two older brothers, landed on American shores. They had departed Europe, by ship, about 10 days earlier.

My parents, may they rest in peace, were Holocaust survivors.

My father, born in Kolomea, Poland, spent much of World War II in a forced labor camp in the Soviet Union. When the war ended, he returned to Poland to search for his family. He discovered that no one had survived. His parents and six siblings had all been murdered by the Nazis. Totally alone, he made his way to a Displaced Persons (DP) camp in Germany.

My mother was born in Tarnopol, Poland. After betrayal by a neighbor, she was arrested by the Nazis and put to work in a kitchen. Warned of the impending liquidation of the Jews in the surrounding ghetto, she escaped with three other Jews and was hidden for nine months by a Polish Catholic woman, until liberated by the Soviet army. She also went back home to search for her family. Her parents and two younger brothers had been murdered by the Nazis. Her oldest brother had been taken to the Soviet Union and spent the remainder of his life there. She never saw him again. Another brother had moved to Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel) in the mid-1930s. It would be 25 more years until they would meet again in his home in Tel Aviv. My mother also made her way to a DP camp in Germany.

My parents met in one of the DP camps and, after a short courtship, were married. My two older brothers were born in two different DP camps.

In 1951, my parents immigrated to the United States and were sent to St. Paul, Minnesota—hardly a center of Jewish life.

Although my parents came to American shores with no material possessions, no formal skills, no knowledge of English, no family, no friends and deep emotional scars, they also brought with them Jewish values that would guide them through the immense difficulties of beginning their new life in America. They brought the values of integrity, honesty, self-reliance, responsibility and faith in G-d. They retained their Orthodox Jewish lifestyle despite the challenges of doing so. They never spoke nor behaved as victims.

What gave my parents, my wife’s parents, and millions of other Holocaust survivors the courage and strength to begin a new chapter in their lives and a new future for the Jewish people?

No people have endured such sustained persecution across so many centuries as have the Jewish people. We have suffered 2,000 years of exile, second-class citizenship, expulsions, pogroms, massacres, and the Holocaust. The most tragic day on the Jewish calendar is Tisha B’Av. It commemorates, among other calamities, the destruction of the first and second Holy Temples in Jerusalem. Rabbinic tradition teaches that the cause of the destruction of the second Temple by the Romans was sinat chinam—“baseless hatred” of one another (a problem that tragically still exists today). In other words, we are taught that it was within our power, as Jews, to have prevented the Temple’s destruction and consequent Exile. As a people, we acknowledge and accept responsibility. We have not spent 2,000 years of exile whining: “Those good-for-nothing Romans. It’s all their fault.” We, as a people, are imbued with a sense of freedom and a sense of purpose and, as such, cherish our responsibility and ability to fulfill our mission to bring light to the world. Despite being oppressed for much of our history, we are not victims. We have succeeded despite all of the obstacles. It is this culture of purpose, responsibility and faith that gave my parents and countless other Holocaust survivors the strength and resilience to move forward.

In 1951—the same year my parents arrived in America—an estimated 600,000 to 700,000 displaced Arabs from Mandatory Palestine filled dozens of UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, and Judea and Samaria. These camps were established following the 1948 Israeli War of Independence—in the aftermath of the Arab Nakba (Catastrophe)—the “catastrophic” failure of the Arab world to annihilate the Jewish inhabitants of Eretz Yisrael.

Beginning with its rejection of the 1947 UN partition plan (which led to the 1948 war), Palestinian Arab leadership has refused every attempt at peaceful coexistence with Israel and Jews. They have turned their loss into an ideology of permanent rejection. They have developed an education system that focuses—not on nation-building—but on Israel’s destruction. Schools, mosques and media have cultivated a culture of grievance, rejectionism, and glorification of all acts of terror against Jews.

My parents devoted their post-Holocaust lives to raising a Jewish family. They kept open the channels of Jewish light and life. Their grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren are living fully engaged Jewish lives on five continents. Many of them are leaders in their communities. This is the legacy of a purposeful and responsible life.

Where are the descendants of the original refugees in the UNRWA camps? Their numbers have now grown to a reported 5.7 million refugees and they live in those same camps and, for lack of space, in the surrounding areas. They remain determined to undo the Nakba through the genocidal destruction of the Jews and Israel. This is the legacy of a culture that breeds grievance and hatred, rather than responsibility and growth.

Even more disconcerting—one might even say sickening—than this culture of darkness is the mindless and uncritical support provided to it by much of the Western progressive world. Having lost their moral bearing, progressives predominantly subscribe to the preposterous proposition that every underdog is a victim and every victim is morally unassailable. No longer anchored to the principles and values of liberal democracy, much of the progressive West—as seen in such institutions as academia, media and government—has slowly drifted from a commitment to intellectual honesty and rule of law to promotion of simplistic “oppressor/oppressed” narratives.

Because of this penchant for the perceived underdog, most progressives have elevated Palestinian Arabs to the status of innocent victims. As “innocent victims” they are beyond moral reproach. Every act of terror—including the horrific barbarism of October 7—is reflexively denied, excused or even championed.

Palestinian terror, however, cannot be made morally acceptable simply because the perpetrators or their supporters invoke Palestinian victimhood. Nor should Palestinian suffering be treated as evidence that Palestinian actors bear no responsibility for their choices. Compassion must not negate accountability. Yes, Palestinian Arabs are underdogs—they keep losing. But, to leap to a conclusion that they are morally unassailable victims is morally obscene.

My parents could not change what had happened to them. They could choose how they would respond. Having lost everything, my parents and countless other Holocaust survivors chose responsibility over resentment and growth over grievance—teaching us all an enduring lesson. Tragically, by accepting a Palestinian narrative that denies Jewish indigeneity, advocates violence against Israelis and Jews, and erases Palestinian agency, much of the Western progressive world has chosen the opposite. They have chosen to support a culture of darkness and hatred. Not only will this choice perpetuate the conflict and continue to foster the staggering rise of antisemitism, but, as we already see around the world, the hatred it fosters will expand to include attacks on Western civilization itself.

Darkness will dissipate with the shining of moral light. Much of the West has lost its way. As Jews, we must continue our mission to bring spiritual light to a world that is groping in a deep darkness of ignorance, naivety, cowardice and profound moral confusion.