The Received Anguish of Anti-Semitism

"Love. That's why I did it. Love as an action is more powerful than words, and love in the face of evil gives others hope. It demonstrates humanity. It reaffirms why we're all here ... I could care less what Robert Bowers thinks, but you, the person reading this, love is the only message I wish to instill in you."
"I didn't see evil when I looked into Bowers's eyes. I saw something else. I can tell you that as his nurse, or anyone's nurse, my care is given through kindness, my actions are measured with empathy, and regardless of the person you may be when you're not in my care, each breath you take is more beautiful than the last when you're lying on my stretcher."
"I don't know why people hate us so much, but the underbelly of anti-Semitism seems to be thriving."
"When I was a kid, being labelled 'The Jewish [anything] undoubtedly had derogatory connotations attached to it. That's why it feels so awkward to me that people suddenly look at it as an endearing term ['The Jewish Nurse' in the fallout of the Tree of Life synagogue atrocity]. As an adult, deflecting my religion by saying 'I'm not that religious', makes it easier for people to accept I'm Jewish -- especially when I tell them my father is a rabbi. 'I'm not that religious', is like saying, 'Don't worry, I'm not that Jewish, therefore I'm not so different from you', and like clockwork, people don't look at me as awkwardly as they did a few seconds beforehand."
Ari Mahler, Allegheny General Hospital, Pittsburgh

People gather by the stacks of flowers near memorials outside the Tree of Life Synagogue after a service, in Pittsburgh. A Jewish nurse who treated the suspected shooter of the massacre inside the synagogue says he chose to show the shooter empathy and compassion in the hospital. Keith Srakocic—AP/REX/Shutterstock

So -- the nurse who took care of the medical needs of the mass murderer who killed 11 Jews at prayer on October 27 has identified himself. The Jewish Allegheny General Hospital president Jeffrey Cohen divulged to the press that it was a Jewish nurse and Jewish doctor among the first to treat the man who had no remorse over killing and wounding worshiping Jews and responding police officers. The shooting came as no surprise to Nurse Mahler. He knows the FBI revealed that Jews were victimized in 54 percent of all anti-religious hate crimes though they represent two percent of the U.S. population.

The man who wrote on social media that Jews should be killed was treated by a Jew who explained: "I chose not to say anything to him the entire time. I wanted him to feel compassion. I chose to show him empathy. I felt that the best way to honour his victims was for a Jew to prove him wrong. Besides, if he found out I'm Jewish, does it really matter? The better question is, what does it mean to you?" To me, personally as a Jew, this man's reasoning and attitude is his and his alone. It is not one I would share, feeling no compassion, only rage that a racial bigot could destroy the lives of so many people and plead not guilty.

The President of the United States stated his grief and abhorrence at that dreadful act. So did the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau. As little regard in which I hold Donald Trump, I feel his sentiments to be far more sincere than those of Justin Trudeau's who is preparing to offer an apology to Canadian Jews on behalf of a Canadian government's decision a lifetime ago not to permit Jewish refugees desperate to escape death in Nazi-occupied Europe, to disembark in Canada from the German ship the MS St.Louis. This is the government that saw the completion of a Holocaust memorial in Ottawa initiated by the previous Conservative government and which failed to acknowledge on its central plaque that it was Jewish lives that were annihilated.

Canadian Jews felt that following the Holocaust things would change, and they did not, not for Canadian Jews where in Canada signs warning that Jews and dogs were not permitted entry to private clubs, seaside resorts, and only a limited number of Jews were allowed to enter universities. Restrictive covenants on selling land and properties to Jews were in vogue, and were completely legal. But all is well now in Canada, Jews have the protection of guaranteed equality under the Canadian Rights and Freedoms legislation.

And this is the same Canada where incidents of hateful anti-Semitism are on the rise, where BDS activists screech out their hatred of Israel and Jews, where Canadian citizens of Middle Eastern descent launch protest marches flying the flag of Hamas, and agitate on university campuses where Jewish students face unprecedented harassment; another way of informing them they're not welcome. Where B'nai Brith registered close to two thousand anti-Semitic incidents of vandalism, harassment or violence in 2017.

"...In the spring of 1943 German authorities, with Ukrainian assistance, began to recruit a Waffen SS division in previously Polish-governed Ukraine. While the division's name went through a series of changes, it is most commonly called the Galicia Division, or, among Ukrainians, the Halychyna Division ... There proved no shortage of recruits. Within weeks, 82,000 men came forward of whom 13,000 were assigned to the three divisional regiments which made up the Galicia Division. The Division was dispatched to the eastern front. [The Division wore Nazi uniforms] it was part of the SS, albeit the Waffen SS. Each recruit did swear an oath of personal loyalty to Hitler, not to the Ukrainian national cause."
"..There is no doubt that some Ukrainians, like collaborators elsewhere, helped in the round-up and transport of Jews to concentration camps, that Ukrainians served at the concentration camps and perhaps in the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto. Once again, the question of whether these Ukrainians were the cutting edge of widespread pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic Ukrainian sentiment, as many Jews believe, or anti-social individuals, criminal types and street hooligans common to all peoples, as some Ukrainians have argued, remains to be resolved..."
"By early 1952 members of the Division began arriving in Canada, but their arrival did not end the matter. The episode left a legacy of bad feeling between the organized leadership of the Ukrainian and Jewish communities, a legacy sustained by mutual mistrust informed by a sense of historical wrong that each community laid at the doorstep of the other. While individual Jews and Ukrainians might live and work side by side as friends, community organizational life was separate, all too often punctuated by conflict."
Old Wounds, Jews, Ukrainians and the Hunt for Nazi War Criminals in Canada: Harold Troper and Morton Weinfeld

Tomorrow Justin Trudeau plans to apologize to Canadian Jews at Canada's historical lack of interest in saving a relative handful of Jewish refugees from the catastrophic Final Solution. Back in the 1970s when his father was prime minister he expressed no interest whatever when the Canadian Jewish Congress and other Jewish groups approached government to root out the presence of Nazi war criminals living in Canada, among them Ukrainian Nazis, an initiative vehemently denied and fought by the Ukrainian Canadian Congress; Pierre Trudeau considered it an unfortunate episode from another era in another continent, best forgotten.

It was a Conservative government led by Prime Minister Mulroney who responded to requests by the Jewish community to see justice done and the presence of Nazi war criminals exposed, individuals identified and investigated and charged with their crimes to be extradited to their countries of origin or the countries where the atrocities they were involved in occurred, or charged with their crimes against humanity and tried in Canada. He began the process by striking a Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals in Canada, headed by Mr. Justice Jules Deschenes in 1985.