An Open Letter to the Organizers of the Next Holocaust

To Whom It May Concern;

I am writing to you because a friend sent me a link to a recent article by Franklin Foer about how everyone hates Jews and we’re all fucked (I’m paraphrasing). My friend was terrified by the article, and he thought he’d share that terror with me and the other dozen or so lucky Jews on the email list. To be sure, Foer’s is not the only article about how we Jews are terrified these days, but Franklin’s a better writer than most, so I am now as certain as my friend that Holocaust Two: The Gentiles Strike Back is just a few days away.

It is in this spirit of utter panic amplified by the relentless fear factory of modern news that I submit this letter to you. I hope you can accommodate the following requests:

1.

I would very much prefer not sharing a bunker with my mother. We are estranged, and it’s going to be super awkward if we have to room together, especially since she’s been warning me about this since 1975 – that everyone hates the Jews, that we’re fucked (I’m ad-libbing), that another Holocaust is going to happen, and that I’m a fool for trusting people that will always hate me.

“Be afraid,” said Mom, “be very afraid. (I’m not ad-libbing)

I know it’s going to be a logistical nightmare without personal requests further mucking up the works, but if I can please be in a separate bunker, or preferably a separate death camp altogether, I would really appreciate it.

2.

When I was a young boy in the ultra-Orthodox Yeshiva of Spring Valley, no older than seven or eight, my rabbis showed me and my classmates film footage of the Nazi death camps. Hours of it. They showed us mass graves, corpse piles, mountains of teeth pulled from Jews to extract the fillings. I couldn’t sleep. When I did, I had nightmares. I hid scissors under my pillow in case the Nazis came back while I was sleeping. I hid a knife in the bathroom in case they came back when I was showering. I made nunchakus out of an old broom handle and hid it in the woods behind the house in case I had to run while my family was being slaughtered. When the films were over, my rabbis turned to us and asked, “Why did such a thing happen?”

Because a charismatic sociopath rose to power?

No.

“Because,” the rabbis said, “God turned his face.”

He looked away, they explained.

This seemed like a pretty shitty thing for someone to do, let alone God.

Why did God turn his face? Because, said my rabbis, the Jews in Germany assimilated. Because they stopped being observant. Because they didn’t keep Sabbath. Because they ate cheeseburgers.

Thus, Auschwitz.

“And if you assimilate,” the message was, “you’re going to cause another Holocaust.”

If the articles I’ve been reading are right, and God is getting ready to turn his face again, I figure once the next Holocaust starts, I might as well eat the fuck out of cheeseburgers, because how much worse can it get?

So make mine a double.

With bacon.

And a milkshake.

3.

I hate to return to the bunking situation again, guys, but I wonder if you could put me in a camp away from my father, too. If he’s anything like he was when I was a kid, I just know that when I collapse from malnutrition, he’s going to shake his head and say, “They don’t make ‘em like they used to,” and that’s just going to make a bad situation worse.

4.

My right-wing rabbis were not fans of America, but they weren’t fans of Israel, either. This is because of some line in some ancient book that declared that after the Messiah arrives, Israel will be the Jewish homeland again. In the twisted logic of their religious minds, this therefore means that until the Messiah comes, there can’t be a Jewish homeland in Israel. Don’t try to make sense of it, you’ll hurt yourself. But the conclusion they came to was that this meant that the state of Israel was against God, and therefore a sin, and therefore we Jews would be punished for it.

“Everyone will hate Israel,” they said, “and then they will hate the Jews.”

I’m not going to defend their logic here – they were already telling me that everyone already hated Jews, so how was Israel going to make that worse? – but if this whole Holocaust Two thing hasn’t gone too far yet, if you guys are still in the planning/Powerpoint/funding stage, I wonder if you would consider abandoning it. Not because I don’t want to die, but because I don’t want my extreme right-wing rabbis to have been right.

5.

I don’t know what your schedule is, but if another Holocaust means Netanyahu can no longer campaign on the fear of another Holocaust, then I for one wouldn’t mind if you bumped the whole thing up a bit before he fucks things up even more.

The shrieking messengers are on our phones, our laptops, our TV screens… they’re driving the whole planet mad with fear and hate, so forgive me if I want to shoot a messenger or two.

6.

When I responded to my friend and thanked him for scaring the shit out of me, he replied that I was “shooting the messenger.” That old expression, as you probably know, imagines a deluded leader shooting the messenger who brings him bad news. But we live today in a world overrun with messengers, highly-paid messengers, messengers with tremendous messenger platforms, messengers who know that the worst news is the only news anyone will listen to, perhaps because they listen to it themselves, all day, every day, that’s their whole job, and so maybe the messengers are more terrified and deluded than anyone. The shrieking messengers are on our phones, our laptops, our TV screens, the messengers are breaking the windows, they’re kicking in the doors, they’re driving the whole planet mad with fear and hate, so forgive me if I want to shoot a messenger or two.

Which brings me to my last request.

I didn’t read Franklin’s article the way my friend did. I didn’t read it as messengering at all - most of the incidents Franklin mentions are those we’ve been hearing about since the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally seven years ago. Rather, I read it more as a personal essay – as the reluctant admission of someone who has been trying to control his fear but finds he no longer can.

And that’s fine, and that’s honest.

But then the question isn’t about anti-Semitism, or even Jews, it’s about fear.

It’s about how a persecuted people (and there are many) with understandably severe PTSD can live without letting that PTSD control them.

So perhaps there at two types of PTSD – one, like my friend’s, that results in fear even when it isn’t warranted, and one, like mine, that results in a refusal to be afraid even when it is.

So maybe the next Holocaust is around the corner.

And maybe I’m just tired of being told to be afraid for fifty years now, and that each time, THIS was the REAL one.

So if this is the real one, one final housing request:

please, for the love of God, don’t put me in a bunker with the friend who sent me the Foer article. Because even if I can survive your genocide, the bastard’s gonna “Told you so” me to death, and I’d rather expire in a less painful manner.

Yours in the fetal position,

S.

illustrations by Orli Auslander