My parents Tamara Greenspan- nee Epstein (Mom) and Jacob Greenspan (Dad) were Victims of the Holocaust.

These two individual human beings, Miss. Tamara Epstein and Mr. Jacob (Janek) Grunspan were Survivors of the Holocaust; specifically, they were part of the ten percent (300,000 /3,000,000) of Polish Jews who survived. 

My Mother at age 18, along with her sister Estera (Esther) who was a successful lawyer, survived the horrors of the Nazi Genocidal dogma. On September 3, 1939 2 days after the Nazi Germans invaded Poland, my mother and her sister left their home in Czestochowa and traveled by bus to Warsaw. After the Polish army surrendered the Capitol, they returned to their hometown. Two years later in 1941; they experienced forced transfer to a large ghetto, then small ghetto, separation from mother, father and brothers, “selection”, slave labor for 2 ½ years, walking 1.5 km to and from the Hasag-Pelcery factory with the barest of clothing and wooden clog shoes, internment in concentration camps, a final death march from Dachau, escape, and liberation by American troops in April 1945. My mother had just turned 24 years old. 

After liberation, my mother and her sister were taken in by German Nuns at a sanitorium in Wiesbaden Germany for rehabilitation; afterward they lived in Munich. I found documents requesting immigration to Palestine (pre-1947) and then Israel, post 1948 recognition. They eventually embarked from Bremen, Germany on the USAT General R.M. Blatchford (United States Army Transport), turned their backs on Europe and docked in New York City in 1949. My mother became a naturalized citizen on April 26, 1955.

I do not know what changed their minds as to destination.  I do know that my mother and her sister were together throughout and each must have given the other necessary encouragement in spoken and unspoken ways.

My mother and her sister were the only two of her immediate family of eight who survived the Holocaust/Shoah.

• Mother and Father: Frajdla Hinda, age 65 and Icek Mendel Epstein, age 69, were “selected” from the large ghetto, deported to Treblinka and murdered in the gas chambers one day after Simchat Torah, October 5, 1942.
• Brother: Dawid (Ducio), age 24, was robbed and shot-murdered by a Wehrmacht soldier outside of the ghetto, October 14, 1942.
• Brother: Jakub, age 39, wife Gutka, age 37, son Miecius, age 4½, and daughter Lilusia, age 2½ were selected, shot-murdered at the Jewish cemetery by Ukrainian collaborators under Nazi supervision, July 21, 1943.
• Brother: Nuchem (Natek), age 40, at Buchenwald concentration camp, was locked in a barn with others and burned alive just prior to the liberation of the camp by the US Army, April 1945.
• Brother: Gustaw (Gutman), Died before the Nazi occupation.

My Father was the youngest of four children, 2 brothers and one sister. He survived the horrors of the Nazi Genocidal program by escaping Nazi occupied Tarnow, Poland in 1942 after finding that his wife Regina, 30 years old, and child Yeshayahu Baruch (Olus) 6½ years old, were murdered while he was searching for a place of safe haven. He and his two brothers made their way to the east, Russia, and eventually became Stalin’s guests in the Central Asia camps of the Gulag. After the war, they were released from the camps. My father’s brother Naftali died in Central Asia. My father and his brother Abraham, headed westward back into Europe. They were Stateless persons and resided at the Displaced Persons camp in Salzburg, Austria, under American administration. My father had a difficult time securing documents for a new homeland, he told me his first choice for relocation was Australia, but he eventually received papers for the USA. He made his way to the USA in 1952; his surviving brother Abraham (Romek) and his wife had already immigrated to New York. My father became a naturalized citizen on July 9, 1957.

His sister Rosa Einhorn nee Grunspan escaped from Antwerp to England where she was deported to the Isle of Man as a suspect person (Polish/Jewish). She eventually found her way to British occupied Palestine in 1946. My father’s nephew and other relatives eventually found their home in Palestine/Israel. 

I do not know why my father did not join his sister and other family in Israel. He did travel to Israel many times throughout his post-war life and held close relationship with family in Israel.

My Parents:

I never thought of My Mother and Father as Heros, but rather as extraordinary in being able to survive and carry-on.

My parents did not discuss what “kept” them going, and unfortunately, I was too young and self-absorbed to reach out and enter into that discussion topic. They must have had “courage” to carry on, must have possessed emotional and physical strength and had the “luck of the draw”, so to speak, to be able to exit from their sojourn in hell on earth and make their individual ways to the USA. 

They met, married, conceived me, raised me in a home they made together, with the love they could give, each doing the best they could living with, and at times, living under, the aftermath of their earlier life experiences.

My parents did not play the victim card, they struggled as immigrants with accents who had to learn  English; they were not given preferential treatment by the government and were not offered “hand-outs”. They took jobs where they could, my father started out as a janitor; pre-war, he was a successful businessman. My mother took a job as a maid, eventually working in the women’s wear industry capitalizing on her European post-war rehabilitation training in fashion design. They worked hard, they were patriots of their new Homeland and at times during the 1960’s -1970’s, were as confused as every other American adult. Their close friends were all survivors; they joined a survivor’s club, the 1939 club which became their social conduit. My parents attended many club events during the year; I was often dragged along. They did not participate in outreach Holocaust education. My aunt Esther and her husband “Uncle” Andrew were active board members in the club and were very involved in documentation and outreach education; my aunt was a co-founder of the Los Angeles Holocaust Museum. 

Me, My Experiences:

I was born Melvin Alexander Greenspan, AKA Menachem Mendel Yeshayahu ben Yaacov, in the borough of Queens, New York City in a hospital that has since burned down. I feel that my Hebrew name weighs with the heaviness of an expectation that I will live in a way that gives honor to my family who perished. Maybe that is not such a bad thing, but I go easier with Melvin Alexander, there is no context, and just Menachem in my non-secular world. My first steps at 9 months old were in Rancho Park, Los Angeles. For the first few years of my life, I was bicoastal. In Rego Park, Queens, I went to public school then attended Yeshiva for a little bit (I think against my mother’s wishes).

We finally set roots in Los Angles just after the Watts riots of 1965. I went to public school and attended afternoon Hebrew school, the family belonged to a Modern Orthodox congregation, Beth Jacob. On Shabbat morning my father and I would walk the five blocks to get there, until I got my license to drive. It was our together time. My father talked about politics, the economy, world events, and not so much about sports, cars, comics or me. Well, he did focus on my bad posture. My close friends were either non-Jews or Jews by default. I was different, at home I was in Jewish Europe, when I stepped out the door, I was just another LA kid growing up in the 1960s and 70’s.

As that LA kid, I never experienced blatant antisemitism. As a young adult and college student my universe expanded. While a student at UCLA I was working in the bowling alley, I had a co-worker from Michigan, he was of German ancestry, he would purposely push my buttons by making comments regarding the Holocaust. Most of the time I would tell him to F.ck-off, one-time, I had enough, and punched him-out. I was a member of ZBT fraternity-the Jewish fraternity, it was not unusual to hear anti-Semitic comments from certain other fraternities’ members. One -time, I went on a date with a friendly, red haired, fair skinned sorority girl, she asked me with sincere interest, to please show her my “horns”. I think she said she grew up in a place called Mars or Central California. When I was a student at UC Davis the mini-series “Holocaust” aired in 1978; I learned that many, many classmates and neighbors had no idea about the real “Holocaust”, this was their first exposure.  Mostly, I was an oddity, being Jewish and living in places where many of my classmates, neighbors had never met another “Jew” before.

I moved to a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia to attend dental school at Emory University.  I remember my first “culture shock”; an upper classman took me to a deli, the man who took my order was wearing a Kippah and had a “Southern” accent, very weird to me. As a student at the school, I faced a similar situation as I had at UCLA. One of my classmates, a Cajun from Louisiana starting referring to me, behind my back, as a “Jew” with various descriptors added. He also was expressing his prejudice against another classmate, a Black Jamaican. At the end of a lab session I confronted him, I was not going to let his bullshit continue unchallenged. The situation got super- heated, physical, another classmate, his closest friend, also from the Bayou country, though not a Cajun, intervened and forcefully pulled his friend away. I could hear that he told him that he should “shut the F.ck up,” and if he really could not stand being around people who were not like him, that he should consider transferring. Reminiscing, I really enjoyed my time in Atlanta, at least I wasn’t a “Yankee”.

I could have had it much worse. I found out after I returned to California, through a classmate of mine from Tennessee, that Emory University during the late 1940s-early 1960’s had participated in systematic discrimination against Jewish students at the School of Dentistry. It was very difficult for Jewish students to make it through to graduation, many were “failed”-out or dropped-out. In 2012 the University president offered a sincere and formal apology for the anti-Semitic practices of the dental school. 

As an adult, facing normal adult problems, I found it difficult to give my own life challenges any credence at times. I felt ashamed when I thought about the challenges my survivor parents went through; what have I got to whine about? It took time and focused intention to pardon myself from the unaccused guilt. I certainly inherited an inter-generational trauma, a distrust of the goodness in my fellow humans-collectively, and a basic cynicism. I have a hard wired zero tolerance for Jew hate.

In April 2023, two days before I met up with the group from HMLA to attend The March of the Living Gathering I made a trip to visit Czestochowa, Poland, the birthplace and hometown of my mother, Tamara. My goal for the visit was to see what my mother saw, walk where she walked, hear the spoken language and smell the smells.  I stayed in a very nice boutique hotel attended to by friendly staff. The hotel was located in the former Jewish section of the city. At the time of the Nazi occupation, the Jewish population of the city was approximately 35,000 persons out of 135,000, Jews have been citizens of the city for over 400 years. The former Jewish section which became the large Ghetto during the occupation, is now a very undesirable piece of real estate. Buildings have been boarded up, neglected and vandalized. There is no obvious reminder that the area once had a vibrant Jewish community. The lack of visual cues was blinding, the silence was deafening.

The hotel had been converted from apartments, my room had previously been part of a Jewish family’s living space, long since abandoned, not by choice. I had the good fortune to be in the city over Shabbat; I was able to join in Torah Study with my community in Los Angeles through Zoom. I placed my kapelle and tallit on said the brachot and studied the parsha with intention. I had the opportunity to honor the memory of our people who 81 years earlier lost their ability to live as Jews, keep the Sabbath and study Torah. It was a very emotional experience, sadness and joy, back and forth.

The next day I was taken to Czestochowa’s only Jewish cemetery by my guide and her husband. I saw many tomb stones in various states of disrepair, neglect and renovation. As we walked into an open space within the rows of tombstones, the guide pointed out the many bullet markings on the tombstones, she told me that many Jews were shot in this area when the ghetto was being liquidated. I had known about the killings from prior research; I knew that my uncle and his family were murdered in the cemetery. As I looked around, I noticed a demarcated rectangular area abutting a wall, the wall had plaques displayed. The area may have been 15 ft. x 20 ft. in size, covered with low grass. I walked into the area and walked toward one of the plaques, close enough to read what was written.

“In this very place on July 21, 1943 Germans and Ukrainians shot over 200 Jews of Czestochowa. With the passing of time only these individuals are still remembered.”  I stopped breathing when I saw the names of my uncle, his wife and two young children listed. Where I was standing, was literally where they were murdered, on their blood-soaked soil, where their lifeless bodies fell. My head was spinning, I find it very hard to describe the emotions that ran through me; I was in emotional shock. It was the first time I felt the pain of personal loss at such a deep visceral level. 

My mother last saw her brother Jakub, sister in law, nephew and niece at the ghetto, she knew what selection ultimately meant; I stood where that selection of her-my kin was completed, I stood where my mother had not stood. I said Kaddish, took a slow deep breath and silently left. 

One day later, I left Czestochowa to meet up with the group in Krakow. I had a good primer into what was coming up in our journey into the actualization of Nazi German game plan. I had already been hit with a knock-out punch, visiting Krakow, Tarnow- my father’s hometown, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Majdanek and Warsaw was like being hit with a series of combination punches, no knock-out, but hits that take a toll on you.

What the Nazi Germans and their collaborators unleashed, with the reticence of the rest of the world, to our people and other marked groups ranks as the undisputed champion winner of all hate motivated destruction; the industrialization, mechanization and documentation of Genocide. 

October 7, 2023.  Jew Hatred on steroids.

“In each and every generation they rise up against us to destroy us.”  Passage from the Haggadah.

The horrifying systematic wanton brutality that was perpetrated on October 7th, 2023 on sovereign Israel soil against the young and old Israelis, Jews and non-Jews by the Palestinians of Gaza under Hamas guidance sent shockwaves through my nervous system. That same day, many, in nations all over and in the USA, celebrated while many others turned their heads away or kept them planted in the sand.  The immediate and lingering responses of doubt, and “what about the Palestinians, what do you expect…” by many “well meaning”, “good people,” and “Humanitarian” organizations throughout the world made my head explode.

Palestinians who perpetrated the attacks, abductions, systematic murder, rapes, mutilations and other acts of sadism in the name of “Allah”, documented their actions on social media platforms. In their euphoric state they called mom and dad and others, from the victims’ cell phones, to describe the good deeds which would bring honor to their family. Palestinians celebrated in the streets, and the governing representatives, Hamas and Palestinian Authority, applauded the “resistance” on the world stage and promised ongoing continued attacks. These were not AI created scenes, but were sickeningly real. The United Nations Security Council sat with its collective thumb up its ass.

During the course of the Shoah, there were those who recorded their “activities” by photographs and film, for official Nazi propaganda and for personal reasons. What if contemporary social media was available back then; would we witness the same expressions of unadulterated excitement and pleasure as we saw on October 7th 2023?

Thank God my mother and father were not alive to witness how the greater world abandoned sanity and chose hatred, again!

On October 10th I was participating in a rally to support Israel at the Federal Building in Westwood, CA. Late in the afternoon when most rally goers had left, just before I was going to leave, a young, college aged person rode past me on a bicycle and yelled “Free Palestine” at me. He was a coward, without the balls to stop and yell the indoctrinated chant in my face. This was before the IDF started its major response operations. I did not know at the time how pervasive the indoctrination had become.

Over the last decade or more my antennas sensed change. Student and faculty complaints of anti-Israel bias expressed in various social science curricula at major universities became issues of public notice, but apparently, with little honest administrative inquiry. Anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist tropes and manifestations used by the Soviet leadership found their way into the higher centers of learning in the west. 

On campuses, anti-Zionism protestors were calling for global Intifada-violence. These expressions of hate and calls to violence were masqueraded under protected free speech and were supported by faculty and by the university administrations. Pro-Palestinian physical encampments of hate were erected and were provided campus security. Targeting students who were Jewish and or Zionists and subjecting those students to ridicule, harassment, physical assault and blocking entry into campus buildings was apparently, a protected right and did not conflict with the code of conduct and Mission of the university. 

I was angry, I felt betrayed by “my” University system. I thought honest academic discourse and intellectual growth were explicitly valued in the system. I thought that student safety on campus was an explicit obligation of the Campus administration.

What these well meaning useful idiots probably do not know and maybe do not care to know, is that the atrocities that were carried out on October 7, 2023 were based on ideologies that pre-empted the 20th century Anti-Jewish Nazi platform. Specifically, Islamist fundamentalism and pan-Arab nationalism ideologies are central to the Hamas- Muslim Brotherhood doctrine.

Of course, none of these anti-Israel protestors acknowledged the sexual violence and other atrocities that were committed; nor did they acknowledge the Two Hundred Fifty -Two human beings who were abducted, all tortured and many murdered. Why would they, when the UN, an organization which exists to promote maintaining international peace, promote cooperation, improve the lives of people around the world and respect the sovereignty of other states, did not.  Black lives matter, other lives matter, Jewish/Israeli lives don’t matter much, if at all. Maybe, one day these Woke persons will wake up and realize that they have embarked on a misguided path to creating a better world.

It is 1.5 years into the most existential threat to Israel and the Jewish people since the Shoah. Fifty- Nine human beings who have names and families, who are alive and dead are still in Hamas/Palestinian captivity. Those of the initial 252 persons have been freed described conditions so dehumanizing, that I, a second generation of Shoah survivors and very aware of the multitudes of Nazi depravity, am shocked and sickened to my core. The Pro-Palestinian demonstrations continue in the West. The pain I feel for the abducted and their families, for the State of Israel and for all OUR people is something I have not felt before. I am uneasy, I realized that I really do not like being a minority, even in a country that has a constitution in which there are laws to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority.

What about  Zionism?:

I am Jewish, and if it was May 13, 1948, I would be a Zionist. On May 14, 1948 when the British mandate ended, David Ben Gurion established the Modern state of Israel (after the United Nations adopted Resolution 181, the Partition Resolution, on November 29, 1947). Today I am not a Zionist.

I am not a Zionist in the same manner that I am not a Chinaist or United Statesist. China exists, the United States exists and it is a fact, that the Zionist dream for Jewish national self-determination, for a homeland of the Jews has come true in modern day Israel. In my opinion, any discussion of Zionism should be relegated to legitimate academic discussion in a historical context.  I believe that we live in a post – Zionist world and we need to stop entertaining discussion about the legitimacy of Israel’s existence; and to be “anti-Zionist” or “anti-Israel” is the same as calling for the eradication of all Jewish people.

For me, it is ok that Israel has not yet solved all of its problems as a 77 year old sovereign nation; which nation has?  It is ok for me to believe in a better Israel, to voice my frustrations and share my ideas on how to make a better Israel happen. I feel comfortable in my Jewish shoes, and when necessary find it important to identify my positions vis-a-vis Israel clearly and demonstratively, even if it makes some of my “friends” and colleagues uncomfortable.  Their shoes did not stand next to mine in Czestochowa and their feet did not dance at the Nova festival.

Where am I today?:

I believe that We humans were, are and always will be tribal beings; we all will never “just get along” and there will be consequences, brutality, pain, suffering, loss. Even as cynical as I can be, I do hold hope on an individual basis; though I struggle to disengage from the cold essence of my natural being and embrace my warm essence. I do look to our foundational text, the Torah, and two thousand years of commentary by some very smart people to guide me and I reflect on my memories of my Aunt Tusia and Uncle Andrew for their loving kindness to me and to each other. I must allow myself to believe that good can come out of bad. I must allow for true dialogue in times of disagreement. I must take care of myself, follow an ethical way of life, love my family and those close to me, and guide my children, hopefully by example, as best I can.  Perhaps by doing so, I may alter the path of one person who may then alter the path of another and so on and so forth. In that way, maybe the future will hold light more than darkness and the children of my children and their children will live in a world where Jew hatred no longer has a place at the table.