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In This Issue
Advanced Women Moving Forward®
One Open Space In Sept. WLR®
My Lived Experience As A Jew
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MY LIVED EXPERIENCE As A Jew
By way of some context; I was born in 1946. After the Holocaust and only years after my father returned from the war. He had served in Europe.
So the Holocaust and it’s consequences were very real to me. My friend up the street’s mom had numbers on her arm and she had come to the US directly from a Displaced persons camp in France.
During Hebrew School (I was 8 I believe) I was shown the military liberation films. You know, the ones with the dead bodies piled up as they liberated Concentration Camps. And the film of the US military greeting what looked like walking skeletons; The Survivors.
The Army expressly made the films because they and Eisenhower were acutely aware that future bad actors would deny it ever happened. Sound familiar to anyone?
So I could not, as a young Jewish Girl escape what had happened to 6 million of my people and 5 million others.. Nor did I want to. It was imperative, I believed , that I remember all the data, the gruesome pictures and the names of those who did this to US. Yes to me it was “US.” I felt it deeply not as sadness but as action. I vowed it would not happen again if I could do anything about it.
It turned out to be fortuitous that I should suffer in the short term with this because I and my people were to continually suffer in the long term. And we are still suffering.
In 4th grade I met the “Rodgers Twins” They would call me Christ Killer every day and chase me to Hebrew School twice a week after school yelling the same and worse. As I remember there was a little” blood libel” sprinkled in there.
That was just the beginning of my torture by “Alleged Christians.” As I got older, boys would tell me they couldn’t date me because I was Jewish and I could “steal their souls.” I really wanted to know how to do that to those idiots. Kids would come up to me and ask to see my horns and tail.
My friends who were not Jewish & were White could not understand what I was experiencing or sharing with them. Remember this was during the Anne Frank Diary having been published and becoming a best seller. Even though most of those girls read the diary they still didn’t get what was happening to me in real time. The only friends who could remotely “get it” were my Black friends who knew from their own lived experiences what this torment felt like. They inspired me.
Fast forward to Oct. 7 2023. The single most slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. I purposely use that terminology because it was a slaughter. Children were slaughtered and then their bodies were used for sex. Women & Men, held in captivity , were repeatedly tortured and sexually abused. Most of you don’t know the extent of the horror because you didn’t get to see the films. Which by the way were made by the rapists and terrorists themselves so they could capture their treatment of Jews and brag about it. I dare you to look up those films and watch them. I will bet you cannot.
Then within a short period, maybe after Israel retaliated (cause as you know Israel is never allowed to retaliate for a mass slaughter of it’s people EVER) there came an onslaught a tsunami if you will of Antisemitism like never before in my life. Yes that’s right what I had dealt with before was nothing compared to what I see and feel every day since Oct 7, 2023!
People who I had supported before came at me as if I was an IDF soldier. Organizations I had supported with thousands of dollars a year took incredibly outrageous antisemitic stands.
Almost no one said they were sorry for what had happened. Or for the suffering I and my fellow Jews felt. We were all lost and alone in the reactivation of our Holocaust nightmares.
Luckily that next weekend I was accepting an award for my business at the Ventura County NAACP Banquet. I shared some of what I was feeling that night. Again Black men and women I knew and some I barely knew came up to me and shared their condolences with me and their support! That Black-Jewish alliance runs deep.
So if you think that almost 3 years later we Jews are Ok we are not. In 2025 the data was clear; Jews had more violent attacks against Us then any other group. Let that sink in. In NYC, LA and Chicago places with large Jewish populations we are still being attacked. And that doesn’t count what our children now deal with on College Campuses!
All of this is to remind you, your Jewish employees and friends and clients are still not OK and they need to hear from you. Not with antisemitic tropes and slander of The State of Israel but with true humanity. Nothing less is acceptable now.
This is where I usually say let me know what you think. Not this time . I truly don’t care what you think unless you are actively doing your part to stop the spread of antisemitism around you.
Susan
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