When I was a teenager, we moved to Maplewood, a town in New Jersey that had a large Jewish population. We lived in the last cul-de-sac before the Irvington border. On the next cul-de-sac lived about half a dozen Jewish families with children our ages, so we met the Fried sisters (not their maiden names), Holocaust survivors whose number tattoos you could see when they wore sleeveless housedresses in the summertime. Frieda was the one who I liked best. Her son Paul was my brother’s closest friend on the block, and her son Jerry was a bit older than I, and fun to talk to. Plus, Frieda spoke the most out of her two sisters. But she never said a word about her experiences in the Holocaust. I asked Jerry about it once, and he said she never said a word to her children about her experiences. None of them did. It had traumatized them all beyond words.
One summer evening I sat on the Frieds’ porch, chatting. Frieda asked me if I had a boyfriend. I told her no. Then she said, “You will marry a Jewish boy?” and I said, “Well, I guess, if I fall in love with one.” She got very agitated at that, and started saying, “You must marry a Jewish boy. Do you know what a gentile will do? The first time you get into a fight, he will call you a dirty Jew!”
I nearly laughed, until I saw how upset she was. I couldn’t understand why she was so bothered about a saying that would barely raise my eyebrows if someone called me that. There were much worse things to be called than that, I thought. But she was upset, and I liked her. So I told her I would marry a Jewish man. Definitely. She was right. Frieda calmed down, and the conversation moved on to other things.
I was too young to really understand what she meant, and why she was so upset. I remember being very puzzled over that conversation, which is probably why it has stuck in my mind all these years. But now I understand it. I understand it very well.
This story brought it all back to me: A group of Hungarian soccer fans chanted anti-Semitic slogans during a game with a team that used to be associated with Jews. Jewish organizations protested, and the Hungarian soccer federation fined the team whose fans chanted the slurs. The chant? “Dirty Jews.”
To Frieda, who survived the Holocaust but was unable to verbalize the horrors that she went through, the phrase “dirty Jew” stood for all the Jew-hatred she endured. The phrase “dirty Jew” spoke for the untold horrors she went through. She was about my mother’s age, born around 1930. That phrase, no doubt, was one she heard again and again as a child in the camps. God only knows how she survived, or where she was. I haven’t seen the Frieds in years, and have no idea if she ever opened up to her children.
But now I know why she got so upset about being called “dirty Jew.” And why she got so upset at the idea of my not marrying a Jewish man. “Dirty Jew,” to Frieda, was the only phrase she could use to express the hatred she endured.
Your first link is hosed … one too many “Http”s in the url string.
My friend’s mother, who was from Hungary, told of similar things happening to her — not a boyfriend’s name-calling, but schoolmates turning against her when the Nazis came to power. She told us that it didn’t take much at all for the veneer of civility to erode.
One of the stories from the holocaust involves a German Jew who married a nonJew. During the war he survived because everyone had forgotten that he was Jewish. Forgotten that is, until his wife and children turned him in.
There are also stories to tell about gentiles who protected Jewish relatives, friends, and total strangers. Not that that has much to do with what we’re talking about here.
Dirty Jew? Hmmmm… That seems to me to be an oxymoron. Especially if we are talking about food preparation.
Maybe people who talk like that need some classes in logic and rational thinking just as compulsive gamblers need classes in statistical analysis.
I understand totally, My parents were holocaust survivors and marriage to a Jewish women was absolutely imperative to them.
Unfortunately, it was not critical for me at that time. One experience I had with a non-Jewish live in GF proved the point. After things had gone bad, and she left, I asked for the return of about $700.00 I had lent her, her comments were “I always knew you were Jewish.” Later, she called to apologize but it was too late, her true nature had come out.
I finally realized what my parents had been trying to tell me, and eventually married a wonderful Jewish woman!
cond0010–
Hygiene has nothing to do with it. It’s about continuity.
As to which, Meryl’s work teaching in a religious school would no doubt please the Fried sisters very much.
Thanks for pointing that out, Balabusta.
I’m not going to argue with a Holocaust survivor’s right to be afraid of gentiles, for all too obvious reasons. And a little healthy skepticism among Jews is always a good idea, when it comes to the majority culture. Erring on the side of caution is a good thing.
But there are positive gentile anecdotes out there, too – not only the good, sympathetic people who helped during the Holocaust, but even the mundane crowds of intermarrieds here in the States.
Jews wouldn’t be so worried about intermarriage, after all, if it *always* came down to Anti-Semitism. The phenomenon would peter out on its own.
This morning, near the end of a NPR report on Jack Abramoff, a politician linked to him was quoted as wishing that Abramoff “had never been born.” That struck me as awfully strong language.
Would the same remark have been made regarding a Protestant lobbyist? Maybe. But I think I hear “dirty Jew,” even if the speaker was too smart to use those words.