Watch This Space

source: www.cartoonstock.com

I'm preparing a long blog post.

Tentative title: "Bieganski and the Crisis in Polonian Leadership: What You Can Do About Both."

If anyone reads this blog post, it will be controversial.

I keep going over every word, every anecdote, every conclusion.

Should I really say this?

I'm telling true stories about my real life experience, and yours and yours and yours.

I'm disguising details – who, what, when, why, where, how – so that no one can identify the specific people I'm talking about.

These stories should be told, I think, because they clearly indicate obstacles we need to overcome. We should stop allowing these obstacles to continually trip us up and thwart our progress toward desired goals we all say we want to achieve.

I'm suggesting roadmaps for action toward a better future.

If anyone reads this blog post, it will be controversial.

Is there anything I should not say?

Is there anything I should be sure to say?

ADL Poll: Anti-Semitic Attitudes on Rise in America

source

I've been feeling for a while now that anti-Semitism is increasing. "Feeling" is a terribly imprecise measure. I wondered if I were being alarmist, for example in my reaction to the Occupy Wall Street / Patricia MacAllister video.

On November 3, The Anti-Defamation League released the The 2011 Survey of American Attitudes Toward Jews in America. The ADL argues that anti-Semitic attitudes are on the rise in America.

Here is an excerpt on the ADL page:

"Among the more disturbing findings, the ADL survey shows that at a time of high unemployment and economic uncertainty, age-old myths about Jews and money and Jewish power in business endure.

Nineteen percent (19%) of Americans answered 'probably true' to the statement 'Jews have too much control/influence on Wall Street,' an increase from 14 percent in 2009.

'The sterotypes about Jews and money endure, and the fact that more Americans are now accepting these statements about Jews as true suggests that the downturn in the economy, along with the changing demographics of our society, may have contributed to the rise in anti-Semitic sentiments,' said Mr. Foxman. 'Once again the old anti-Semitic standbys about Jewish loyalty, the death of Jesus and Jewish power remain strong.'"

The most depressing excerpt, for me, is below:

"A surprisingly large number of Americans continue to believe that 'Jews were responsible for the death of Christ.' Thirty-one percent (31%) of Americans agreed with that statement. One-quarter of Americans believe that Jews 'still talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust.'"

Many people falsely believe that it wasn't until Vatican Two that the hierarchy of the Catholic Church taught that the entire human race, not Jews, was responsible for Jesus' crucifixion. In fact, that's not true. The hierarchy of the Catholic Church announced as early as the Council of Trent in 1566 that humanity, not Jews, is responsible for Jesus' crucifixion. That people persist in believing that Jews are responsible for Jesus' death is very depressing to me, and a sign that Christians need to work harder on eliminating this toxic heresy and lie.

One aspect of the poll is naïve. The ADL reports:

"According to the ADL poll, the most educated Americans are largely free of prejudicial views. Less educated Americans are more likely to hold anti-Semitic views. The poll found that 22 percent of [those] who graduated high school or completed some high school harbor strongly anti-Semitic views, as compared to 13 percent among those who completed some college, and 9 percent among those who graduated from college."

This is the fallacy that formal education improves people morally. In fact, it is probably simply true that those with a more sophisticated education know how to respond to polls in an expected manner.

Hispanic Americans born outside the US are more likely to be anti-Semitic. African Americans are more anti-Semitic than the population at large.

From the ADL:

"The steady growth of the Hispanic population, now at 15 percent of the adult population, means that Hispanics and African-Americans together now comprise 27 percent of the American population, a number that is sure to grow in the coming years. This population increase of the cohorts with a substantially higher percentage of anti-Semitic beliefs than the total population also means that anti-Semitic propensities in the coming years will be a challenge, according to the ADL poll.

'At a time when you have conflicting trends in American society – on the one hand the rise of an African-American president, on the other hand a rise in anti-Hispanic and anti-Muslim sentiment – the question is whether this uptick in anti-Semitic sentiments signals a broader trend in attitudes toward Jews or not. Only time will tell.'"

Those who care about the Bieganski, Brute Polak stereotype will care about this.

"Bieganski" argues that Polish identity is not the problem. Rather, anti-Semitism is the problem.

"Bieganski" argues further that many commentators attempt to make Polish identity the problem, for various narratological, political, cultural, and ideological reasons.

Further, "Bieganski" argues against all stereotyping. It argues against Shylock as well as Bieganski. The arguments in the introduction of "Bieganski" could be used by activists who work against anti-Semitism as well as prejudices against Poles and other Bohunks.

Full coverage can be found here.

Bieganski at Brandeis University

View of Boston from Brandeis campus. Source.

How many times can a writer use words like "wonderful," "delightful" and "lovely" before losing her audience? I face that challenge now because accepting Prof. Antony Polonsky's invitation and speaking about "Bieganski" at Brandeis University on Thursday, November 3 was a wonderful, lovely, and delightful experience.

My traveling companion, Robin Richman Schaffer, took time off from work – sort of. She brought along her blackberry, which is actually white, and hammered away on its tiny keyboard as I drove, and even sometimes while she was driving.

We were blessed with sunny and cool weather. There was none of the apocalyptic special effects that Mother Nature has been generously distributing throughout the northeast in recent months. No floods, no freak snowstorms, no locusts. We did see evidence of the damage done by the October 29^th snowstorm, an unseasonable, heavy, wet snow that fell on trees that kept their leaves unseasonably late into a very mild fall. Those leaves, which stayed on too late, trapped snow, which arrived too early, and broken branches and split trees were visible everywhere from New Jersey to Boston.

I became an admirer of Prof. Polonsky's work long before I met him. Now, many years later, life experience has made me realize what a unique treasure he is.

Too many commentators on Polish-Jewish relations have exploited that relationship, and even the Holocaust itself, in order to reduce life to a zero-sum game of two mutually exclusive sides. One side must lose and the other side must win. This is a mistake. The proper lesson to draw from atrocity is this: we can't change the past. We can't rescue the dead. Living our lives in anger, in vengeance, or in mourning, for those who were slaughtered accomplishes nothing.

That doesn't mean that our ancestral loved ones' deaths need be meaningless. We can honor their loss by humbling ourselves, and resolving never to take even one step toward the hate and bigotry that inspired their martyrdom. We honor our ancestors' pain when we allow ourselves to be affected by it to the point where we reject continuing the cycle of pain, and by insisting on Biblical values like justice, faith, and love. Humanity can never be split into two exclusive teams. We are all in the same boat, and the hole you drill in my side of the boat will drown you.

For me, the one author on Polish-Jewish relations who best exemplifies this approach is Antony Polonsky. I came to "know" him through his writing. In those early days, decades ago, it never occurred to me that I might meet him, any more than it occurred to me that I might meet other authors I admired, including Charlotte Bronte. We did meet, though, and through God's great blessing, we have kept in touch. Writing about Polish-Jewish relations has introduced many challenges into my life. That I've been lucky enough to call Prof. Polonsky a friend is one true blessing.

I was a bit nervous, as one is when one is traveling, and when one is in the company of a hero. I wasn't sure if Robin would be bored. When we stepped into Prof. Polonsky's Greek revival, Boston-area home, I felt immediately comfortable, happy, and secure. I could smell cabbage cooking! There is nothing that warms the cockles of this Bohunk's heart like the smell of cooking cabbage. Arlene Polonsky served up the best golabkis I've ever tasted, and that's saying a lot, because I've eaten a lot of stuffed cabbage.

After dinner we sat around the table and talked about how our families came from Eastern Europe to America. Every one of the four of us there had roots in the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth. Our paths had taken us to Africa, Asia, and Israel. I wondered if our ancestors had ever crossed paths in the Old Country. I noticed, again, the physical resemblance between Prof. Polonsky and my late Polish father. It's a small world.

Brandeis University has a proud history. Its founding was part of an effort to resist anti-Semitism at other American institutions of higher education. I greatly admire this. Brandeis' founders did not respond to bigotry with empty hand-wringing, defeatism and hostility. Rather, they responded by creating a university that would accept and educate Jewish students and prepare them for high achievement. Their efforts have been very successful. Brandeis is highly ranked among US universities.

Though a young university, Brandeis can be proud of its highly accomplished faculty and alumni, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Abbie Hoffman, Deborah Messing and Thomas Freidman.

Prof. Polonsky's office is very near Boston Rock, the spot where Governor John Winthrop surveyed Boston back in 1631. Both the city and the university began with this sentiment: "We knew we were pilgrims." This spot affords a spectacular view.

My talk included a brief introduction to the Bieganski stereotype, and a concrete example of how it works. I emphasized that Poles, Polish-Americans, and Polonians must rouse themselves in order to address this stereotype through a national organization that effectively identifies Bieganski for what it is, and eliminates it through school syllabi, higher education hiring, strategic, nationally coordinated activism, and popular media, culture, and politics. I admitted that Polonia is not yet near reaching this level of activism. I will address this in a future post, tentatively titled, "Bieganski and the Crisis in Polonian Leadership – And What You Can Do About It." Watch this blog for that post.

During the question-and-answer period, I emphasized: "Please feel free to say anything you want. I've been working on this stuff for a long time, and I've heard everything. Speak your mind, and I'll respond as best as I can."

I said this because we must acknowledge the dark side of Polish-Jewish relations. We must acknowledge nightmarish events like Jedwabne and Kielce.

My audience was gracious and did not hit me with very tough questions. One audience member asked about Menachem Daum's "Hiding and Seeking," a documentary I liked a lot, with reservations. My Amazon review of it is here.

"The Deer Hunter" came up, a movie I talked about in "Bieganski." That chapter can be found here.

During the discussion period, I stopped myself while using the standard terms, "Poles" and "Jews." I pointed out that Prof. Polonsky would be identified, in this nomenclature, as a "Jew," and I would be identified as a "Pole," but Prof. Polonsky speaks Polish fluently, while I do not, and I am half Slovak and actually best identified for what I am – American.

I reminisced about a common event in my childhood. My mother's friend, Dave, would visit, and she and Dave would sit around the kitchen table telling stories about life in the Old Country. I remember Dave's stories in detail. These are very fond, warm, vivid memories. When I sat around that brightly lit table in our small, dark house, I felt what one feels when one feels connected and at home, one with a larger, loving, inclusive, community. During these evenings, I knew that my mother, Dave, and I were part of a group that was "us." The world outside, the world that didn't know about cabbage and poppy seed, villages and thatch roofs, chicken thieves and muddy roads, was "them." Dave was Jewish and my mother was Catholic.

My point was this: there is an authentic, Eastern European peasant, Catholic identity that is not at war with Judaism or Jewishness. I mentioned the scholarship of Annamaria Orla-Bukowska, who has documented this theme.

Robin told me an interesting story. In our recent apocalyptic weather events, Route 46 had become flooded. Robin was stopped dead. Her car, with hundreds of others, could not progress.

With nothing else to do, drivers got out of their cars and socialized with each other. They became comfortable and friendly.

After some time, maybe hours, the flooding receded enough so that police allowed vehicles through.

Robin reported that when people from "her" "group" – the people who had bonded by socializing – were finally allowed to move, they were courteous and helpful with each other. When "outsiders" who had not participated in the spontaneous bonding began to break into the stream of traffic, Robin felt violated and resentful – "Hey! You're cutting off my friend!"

Robin observed that this event taught her much about how the human mind creates communities of "us" and "them."

After the talk we had a long, enjoyable conversation with Miriam, a writer, Josh, interested in community work, and Drew, working on a fan of Celine. Prof. Polonsky talked about words one cannot translate from Polish into English, including "Zydek." The word could be translated as "Jew boy," he said, but that doesn't begin to cover the complexities of the word in Polish.

My only regret is that we didn't have more time.

While enjoying Brandeis' warm hospitality, I thought again of the truly remarkable experience I had in the relatively small and remote Polish town of Markowa.

The people I met in Markowa were profound, gracious, and insightful. Markowa is far away, though. It would be so wonderful if a Polish or Polish American leader with resources and expertise would arrange for a dialogue between the citizens of Markowa and, for example, students at Brandeis.

As I mentioned above, there are voices out there who want to exploit Polish-Jewish relations to prove that people can't get along, that Poles can't get along with Jews, to prove that Christians and Jews can't get along, to prove that the world is a horrible place.

My real life experiences utterly defy this dark view. Most people want to get along with their neighbors. Most people don't want to exploit differences. Most people choose peace over war. I say that not just about Poles and Jews, but about all my neighbors here in multi-culti New Jersey: rich and poor, black, white, Hispanic, Muslim.

Too often, those who insist on hostility have control of the microphone. Why not bring average, everyday Poles and Jews to the microphone, and let them have the spotlight?

Please, someone with resources, connections, and the technical expertise to make it happen, think about a videoconference between the citizens of Markowa and students at Brandeis.

"The Horror, The Horror": Hollywood Films or the Human Heart: Which is Scarier?

From "Triumph of the Will," one of the scariest films ever made.

"The Haunting" 1963. It's even scarier when you realize it's not really about ghosts.

I love Halloween. I'll be wearing a costume while teaching class on Monday, and I've encouraged my students to wear costumes, as well.

I love movies.

I hate horror movies.

I try to watch them because I study popular culture, and because films, to me, are a pathway to understanding the human heart.

"The Haunting," 1963, starring Julie Harris and Claire Bloom, is widely considered the scariest movie ever made, including by Martin Scorcese. It's based on a novel by the brilliant Shirley Jackson, who also gave us "The Lottery."

"The Haunting" is, on one level, a ghost story. It is also a very profound exploration of The Dark Side in all its manifestations.

I walked out of "The Exorcist."

"Blair Witch Project" did not scare me, nor did "Psycho." The alleged scariest scene in "The Shining" seems, to me, to be a scene about how sissy girls are. I mean, come on, Shelley Duval.

1944's "The Uninvited," starring Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey, is a perfect film.

I find the original "Manchurian Candidate" and the first Bela Lugosi "Dracula" too scary to watch all the way through.

Bela Lugosi as Dracula.

Back in 1999, I was a graduate student at Indiana University. Evil had entered my life: I was attacked by an IU professor. I was then asked to testify against that professor, and I did so, for the end of my first semester at IU and the entirety of my second semester at IU. Probably from the stress, my inner ear burst. I was very sick, and intermittently paralyzed. I was poor, so I could not get health care. I struggled for SSDI, and a truly evil man, a judge, denied my claim. I was penniless and without any hope or friends or money or future. I was doomed.

At the same time, I was writing a dissertation that addressed the Holocaust.

I was reading and writing about great evil.

I was confronting real evil in my day to day life.

A friend asked what I think of horror films. The response I wrote to him back in 1999 is below.

***

The other day I was reading an article about the Kielce pogrom.

On July 4, 1946, citizens of Kielce stoned, bayoneted, and shot to death more than forty Jews living in their midst. I was reading a scholarly article about this event, an article meant to be cool-headed, and yet many sentences in it read like horror literature.

"They made rumor sound like truth and fanned the crowd's emotions ... when the crowd had swelled to about one hundred, people began gathering stones."

And more than forty Jews, who had survived the Holocaust, were murdered. Why? Someone spread the Blood Libel. Shirely Jackson's "The Lottery" comes to mind. As does "The horror, the horror," from Heart of Darkness.

When I experience horror while reading stuff like this, I think, why go to a horror movie? Why inject more of this feeling into my life?

I recently had a hearing in front of a judge.

The judge, in spite of my inches-thick file of medical records, and inches-thick file of medical journal articles, and corroborating testimony from a civil rights attorney and a nun, for heaven's sake, wrote, in his decision, that I was "faking bad" (sic).

I've been on the phone to lots of local lawyers who have appeared before this particular judge. I've been told by folks who interact with this guy professionally that he is an "evil" man who enjoys denying benefits, especially to women, and, most especially, to articulate women – and that he has been suspended from the bench for the unfairness of his decisions, and that he just recently returned from this suspension, and asked, specifically, to be assigned to this particular work – hearing SSDI cases, although it is notoriously low prestige and low pay.

In my confrontations with this man, and with the illness in general and with the experience of being poor and sick, I feel fear and horror all the time.

I really dislike feeling both fear and horror.

I much prefer the feelings I get from even a bad romantic comedy, and, most preferably, from a great romantic comedy like "It Happened One Night."

In trying to understand why some like horror, I've thought – who is the most likely audience for a really scary horror movie?

Certainly other cultures have had works of art that produce fear and horror, but often these couldn't best be compared to American horror movies. Usually, folk tales or dramas that incorporate fear and horror also contain humor, uplift, long, boring, exposition that emphasize the importance of tribal values. The concentration of fear and horror in American horror films is a diagnostic characteristic of the genre.

Who are the biggest audiences of such movies?

American teenagers, no? Why would this sheltered, protected audience choose to plunge into fear and horror? Is it a hunger for emotions that don't occur in sheltered, protected lives?

I think the stock answers are that teens are losing control of their bodies in ways that gross them out or intimidate them. Hair growths, wet dreams, bleeding, voices changing, etc. The lack of control over the material body, and the trajectory of one's life, is mirrored in the lack of control of the victims on the screen. And, the scare factor breaks down barriers to sex. The guy you are dating may seem most appealing when you can squeal and jump into his arms during a scary scene. And you may be most feminine at that moment.

Roman Polanski is a Holocaust survivor. He made a couple of highly praised, scary and horrible movies: "Knife in the Water" and "Rosemary's Baby."

My illness and encounters with individuals like this judge has hammered home to me at every turn, since I got sick, anyway, what I suspect people feel, and choose to feel, while watching horror movies: that the human body is not integral, that our convictions of our own autonomy are delusions – no, I've never quite turned into Linda Blair as a possessed kid, but, I can't, single handedly, hold back disease and keep my body from changing in ways I don't like.

I am constantly reminded that apparently innocent scenes and people can, without warning, erupt into terror and threat.

There is a mindlessly destructive, death-hungry, pain-hungry urge in the human make up, and that urge occasionally has its way, while rationality and compassion are made impotent and thrust to the sidelines.

If you're not a sheltered American teenager, and you feel you have quite enough fear and horror in your life, thank you, does a movie like "The Blair Witch Project" have something to offer? The movie advertises itself by announcing that all the protagonists are dead, or at least missing. There's no triumph of the human, the rational, the compassionate, over fear and horror. Fear and horror win. Why is there an attraction to that?

Or, is there a sense of triumph because the viewer assumes he'll be alive when the movie is over? Could it serve as does the Tibetan Book of the Dead, or even initiation rituals – this is how bad it gets. Let go of your attachment to the goodies of life. After you've completely let go, go back into life, acknowledging that all you love and rely on is an illusion, or, maybe, a choice, a product of your moment to moment choice making? And that very choice making makes you heroic and triumphant?

Roman Polanski's "Rosemary's Baby." She sees something horrible -- literal or metaphorical?

What I'm trying to understand is this: after my encounters with the judge from hell, after reading about the Kielce pogrom, I don't understand why I would pay money to plunge into more horror.

And it is exactly the encounter with that particular judge, perhaps one of the most evil persons I will ever encounter in my mundane life, that has made this something I think about a lot.

Do horror movies, as an art form designating themselves as the art form that does the work of dealing with horror, offer me any tools in my interaction with this judge that other art forms, that do not address horror in such a head on fashion, do not offer me?

Or is there no connection at all between the horror on the screen and the horrors of real life?

I can say that Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" offers me tools to deal with the Kielce Pogrom.

A friend said that she liked horror movies because they desensitized her to the real horror in real life. I exactly don't want to become desensitized.

***

A choice scene from 1963's "The Haunting" may be viewed here.

Anyway, Happy Halloween!

"The Way" Martin Sheen, Emilio Estevez, The Camino de Santiago de Campostella. See It.

"The Way" has just about nothing to do, directly, with Polish-Jewish relations.

It's a good movie. My imdb.com review is below:

My eyes were wet and I laughed out loud in the first fifteen minutes of "The Way," and I continued laughing and crying throughout. I left the theater feeling the generous glow that a good movie inspires. I'll now be telling everyone I know to see this film, on a big screen, and I'm already looking forward to seeing it again.

I was a bit anxious about "The Way." I anticipated so many ways a movie that features backpacking, pilgrimages, and religion could go wrong. Would it be excessively pious and maudlin? New Age-y and Christophobic? Simply a bad movie? There is a reason so many films focus on graphic, intimate scenes and explosions: those are easy to shoot and they arouse viewer interest. "The Way" rapidly calmed my anxiety. It's a honey of a movie.

Tom (Martin Sheen) is a sixty-something ophthalmologist. His son Dan (Emilio Estevez) dies in an accident. Tom travels to France to retrieve his son's body. Learning of his son's attempt to walk the camino, Tom decides to cremate his son's remains and carry them as he fulfills his son's plan.

Tom walks through picturesque, mountainous countryside and through the plazas of old towns. As happens when one is traveling, Tom encounters an assortment of eclectic characters. Joost (Yorick van Wageningen) is a corpulent, talkative, pot smoking Dutchman who is walking the trail to lose weight. Sarah (Deborah Kara Unger) is a sharp tongued, very angry Canadian blonde. Jack (James Nesbitt) is an Irish travel writer with the gift of gab – he didn't just kiss the Blarney Stone, he went steady with it. There is a priest with a brain tumor who distributes rosaries, and pilgrims debating the roles of the French, the Spanish and the Basque in ancient battles against invading Moors. Waiters take very strong stands on tapas. Gypsies defend their honor.

The pilgrims sleep in spare hostel dormitories with snoring, coughing, shooshing roommates. They visit churches and enact rituals.

There was a moment in this movie in which I, a traveler and backpacker, was one hundred percent engaged. In superhero movies, I don't really care if the superhero gets the dilithium crystals to the giant spider. In this movie, a backpacker drops his pack into a rushing river that rapidly sweeps it toward the sea. THAT scene commanded my full engagement. The backpacker's pack contains his entire world, his heart, his safety, his entertainment, his identity, his survival. I was on the edge of my seat.

What happens in the movie is what happens when you travel, and when you pray. The demands of travel bring forth bonding rituals – I'll listen to your rant; you'll bail me out of jail – that create intimacy with unexpected, and all too temporary, companions. There are sudden and heart-wrenching confessions that make two strangers more intimate than family members. There are little triumphs that make it all worthwhile – finding orange trees laden with fruit after a night of sleeping on cold ground, one night in a five-star hotel after punishing weeks of self-denial.

Martin Sheen is so convincing as Tom I really lost the sense of watching a movie. Tom is a man of few words or gestures, and Sheen's every subdued facial expression carries weight and feeling. I had the sense of those who interacted with Tom that I would appreciate a mere word from him more than a paragraph from someone less grounded and sincere.

I really disliked Joost at first, and, come to think of it, many of the other characters, as well, but the film, without any visible effort, brought me to appreciate them the way you can come to appreciate someone you've shared the road with. When Joost is asked why he is walking the trail and he finally tells why, it is a very poignant, precious moment, so utterly believable it could have been in a well-made documentary. Van Wageningen will receive many love letters from women who cannot separate him from Joost, a fictional character so believable he makes you want to hug him. James Nesbitt could be extemporizing his lines, they feel so lived-in. Deborah Kara Unger gives new life to an ancient prayer.

I wish the movie had done a couple of things it did not. I just did not believe that Tom could immediately begin walking the camino in anything but a halting fashion. Many non-hiker friends have called me the day after a hike with me to tell me that their feet are so covered with blisters they can't put on shoes, and their muscles are so sore they can't move (the big babies.) I would have liked to have seen Tom breaking his body in to the demands of the trail. I also would have liked to have seen even just a brief scene where he purchased footwear. Very few ophthalmologists cross the Atlantic with the proper footwear for a walk hundreds of kilometers long, and footwear is a big deal for a walker. I would like to have seen the walkers interact with their packs, something that all hikers do – a tightening of the belt strap here, a loosening of the shoulder strap there. They become a part of your body.

I wish the direction and cinematography had done something more with the countryside and the historic plazas and churches, which are always shown in a way that is pretty, but not innovative. I wish we learned a bit about the keepers of the refugios, the hostels where pilgrims spend the night. To the pilgrims, the towns change every day. To the towns, the pilgrims change every day. How do these dovetailing experiences illuminate each other? And I wish more had been said about religion, although what little is said is intriguing and implies worlds of meaning. I wish more had been said about the alleged sacredness of some places.

Hitler's Mountain Home in Homes and Gardens, November, 1938

The Bieganski stereotype rests on concepts of peasants as inferior and ideas of educated, rich, elites as superior. In the pre-war era, American Scientific Racism inspired Nazism. In the post-war era, film gave us Sexy Nazis.

And Hitler certainly had very impressive decor.

Issue of Homes and Gardens, November, 1938 (the time of Kristallnacht) 

You can see this article celebrating Hitler's Mountain Home in greater detail here. 

Interior of Berlin Synagogue after Kristallnacht, November, 1938, when the above article was published. 

Yue Yue

Yue Yue's last moments 

Disney's It's a Small World After All

Yue Yue. Yue Yue.

I don't know her real name. On the internet, they are calling her "Yue Yue."

I just watched the video. I won't post a link because youtube keeps locking access to the video. If I post a link, youtube may block it and you won't be able to see it, anyway.

Here's what you see, if you watch the video: a market. A two year old girl wandering aimlessly. An oncoming truck.

The truck runs over the little girl. First his front wheels, then, with effort, his back wheels.

She lies there, bleeding, no doubt screaming.

Passersby approach. And – do nothing.

Another truck runs over the little girl again.

More passersby.

They say the person who finally took notice of the mangled, bleeding, dying child was a poor, old, scavenger – a nice word for someone who goes through trash and perhaps gets a few cents on recycled cans, or gets to eat someone's unfinished sandwich. A dumpster diver. Full disclosure: I've done that. Not a lot, but I've done it.

The scavenger is called a "Good Samaritan." News coverage says that China may pass "Good Samaritan" laws. I don't know if "Good Samaritan" is really the phrase used in China. Cause, of course, the teacher who gave us that phrase was a first century Jew. I don't know if the story is known in China.

***
TheBieganski, Brute Polak stereotype rests on a very provincial view of the world, a view I've never had. My mother was born in Czechoslovakia, a hard country to spell. In school, I was assessed as a kid with a funny name (by kids with names like "Palatucci" and "Gramegna"!)

I've always known that I am in the world, not just in NJ or the USA -- the world. My favorite thing, as a kid, was, "It's a Small World After All." It still is one of my favorite things.

I've always known that the provincialism that makes Bieganski make sense is without intellectual merit or truth, and that the only way to understand, say, the Polish szmalcownicy who betrayed Jews to Nazis, or those citizens of Warsaw – however many there were – who responded callously to the Nazi destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto – the only way to understand alleged Polish indifference in the face of the Holocaust – was also to understand Kitty Genovese and Milgrim and Zimbardo and Tuol Sleng and the Interahamwe and Polish Jews – however many there were – who greeted invading Soviets with bread, salt, and flowers.

These unspeakable things – these are things WE do. And we won't understand them as long as we insist, "Well, Polish culture … " or "Urban culture…" or "Jewish culture … " We have to understand human beings. We can't be satisfied with demonizing one ethnic group, any ethnic group, not even the Germans.
***
Psychology Today published an article that talks about those who passed by Yue Yue as she was bleeding to death. It tries to explain their behavior in light of Chinese culture. Maybe that's right. But even if the indifferent find justification for their indifference in Chinese ideas, we have seen this kind of indifference elsewhere. Yes, even among members of our own ethnic groups.

The best thing I read about Yue Yue was an internet poster who wrote, after news broke of her death, "Yue Yue, you are now in a better place. Where people care."