Kol Nidre Commentary

Sim Lesser       10/1/06

Harry Bingham

Ernst Leitz

Irena Sendler 

Not very familiar names to many of us. Yet their stories are compelling and precious to all Jews and to all humanists.

Harry Bingham came from an illustrious family.  His father (on whom the fictional character Indiana Jones was based) was the archeologist who unearthed the Inca City of Machu Picchu, Peru, in 1911.  Harry entered
the US diplomatic service and, in 1939, was posted to Marseilles, France, as American Vice-Consul.  The USA was then neutral and, not wishing to annoy Marshal Petain's puppet Vichy regime, President Roosevelt's government ordered its representatives in Marseilles not to grant visas to any Jews.   Bingham found this policy immoral and,
risking his career, did all in his power to undermine it.

In defiance of his bosses in Washington, he granted over 2,500 USA visas to Jews and other refugees, including the artists Marc Chagall and Max Ernst and the family of the writer Thomas Mann.  He also sheltered Jews in his Marseilles home, and obtained forged identity papers to help Jews in their dangerous journeys across Europe.  He worked with the French underground to smuggle Jews out of France into Franco's Spain or across the Mediterranean and even contributed to their expenses out of his own pocket. In 1941, Washington lost patience with him. He was sent to Argentina, where later he continued to annoy his superiors by reporting on the movements of Nazi war criminals.

Eventually, he was forced out of the American diplomatic service completely. Bingham died almost penniless in 1988.  Little was known of his extraordinary activities until his son found some letters in his belongings after his death.  He has now been honored by many groups and organizations including the United Nations and the State of Israel.
A few months ago, former US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, gave a posthumous award for "constructive dissent" to Hiram (or Harry) Bingham and very recently, the United States Postal service created a stamp in his honor.

 
Ernst Leitz ,was the head of the photographic empire in Germany. His story is one that many had never been heard before - a tale of courage, integrity and humility that is only now coming to light, some 70 years after the fact.

As soon as Adolf Hitler was named chancellor of Germany in 1933, Ernst Leitz II began receiving frantic calls from Jewish associates, asking for his help in getting them and their families out of the country.

As Christians, Leitz and his family were immune to Nazi Germany's Nuremberg laws, which restricted the movement of Jews and limited their professional activities. To help his Jewish workers and colleagues, Leitz quietly established what has become known among historians of the Holocaust as "the Leica Freedom Train," a covert means of allowing Jews to leave Germany in the guise of Leitz employees being assigned overseas.

Employees, retailers, family members, even friends of family members were "assigned" to Leitz sales offices in France, Britain, Hong Kong and the United States.

Leitz's activities intensified after the Kristallnacht of November 1938, during which synagogues and Jewish shops were burned across Germany.

Before long, German "employees" were disembarking from the ocean liner Bremen at a New York pier and making their way to the Manhattan office of Leitz Inc., where executives quickly found them jobs in the photographic industry.

Each new arrival had around his or her neck the symbol of freedom - a new Leica camera.

.The refugees were paid a stipend until they could find work. Out of this migration came designers, repair technicians, salespeople, marketers and writers for the photographic press.

The "Leica Freedom Train" was at its height in 1938 and early 1939, delivering groups of refugees to New York every few weeks. Then, with the invasion of Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, Germany closed its borders.

By that time, hundreds of endangered Jews had escaped to America, thanks to the Leitzes' efforts

Irena Sendler, was a non-Jewish social worker who had gone into the Warsaw Ghetto. She talked Jewish parents and grandparents to give their  children into her keeping, rightly saying that all were going to die in the Ghetto or in death camps. The children were taken past the Nazi guards sometimes in body bags, sometimes claiming they were ill, or using one of the many means of escape from the Ghetto. She then saw that they were adopted into the homes of Polish families or hidden in convents and orphanages. Irena Sendler made lists of the children's real names and put the lists in jars, then buried the jars in a garden, so that someday she could dig up the jars and find the children to tell them of their true identity. The Nazi's captured her and she was beaten severely, but the Polish underground bribed a guard to release her, and she entered into hiding.

It is interesting to note that all three of these stories have just recently come to the attention of the public”. The Harry Bingham story was brought to light as a result of Colin Powell’s efforts and the postal stamp commemorating Bingham’s action

The Leica freedom train story has come to light as the subject of a book, "The Greatest Invention of the Leitz Family: The Leica Freedom Train," by Frank Dabba Smith, a California-born rabbi currently living in England.

The Irena Sendler story has come to light as a result of students in Uniontown, Kansas who wrote a performance called “Life in a Jar” in which they portrayed the life of Irena Sendler. They have performed this program for numerous clubs, religious organizations and civic groups in the community, around the state of Kansas, all over the U.S. and in Europe (170 presentations as of October 2005). The community of Uniontown, Kansas has little diversity and no Jewish students in the school district. Yet the community was inspired by the project of these students and sponsored an Irena Sendler Day. The students began to search for the final resting place of Irena and discovered she was still alive and living in Warsaw, Poland.

Recently our congregation purchased and showed the film “Paper Clips” in which non-Jewish middle school students learned about the Holocaust and felt bound to teach an entire non-Jewish community about this tragedy and build a memorial to the story.

Harry Bingham, Ernst Leitz, Irena Sendler some of many non-Jews who came to the aid of our people in trouble—true humanists. And there were many more who rescued Jews at the risk of their own lives. Some of whose stories we will never know.

True humanists—They believed that the freedom and dignity of the Jewish people must go hand in hand with the freedom and dignity of every human being. Sound familiar? That is one of the affirmations of the Society for Humanistic Judaism, our parent organization. But as true humanists do we believe in the reverse: that the freedom and dignity of every human being must go hand in hand with the freedom of the Jewish people?

As we begin this new year, there are questions to ask ourselves:. Are we really Humanistic Jews? That is, do we believe that we need to come to the rescue of those in the world who are in difficulty? Do we act or do we play ostrich?

Perhaps we need to make sure this year that we practice the three C’s”

Compassion. Connection and Courage

Does compassion play a significant role in the lives of Humanistic Jews in Sarasota? Do we feel the hurt of others and if so are we prepared to go beyond mere words and do something concrete to aid those in difficulty? 

Should we merely go on living in Paradise and not respond to the cries of others and to the new atrocities that are heaped upon the innocent? Do we close our eyes and ears to the news about Darfur and decide that the problem is not ours since it is so many miles and cultures away? 

 Does connection play a significant role in the lives of Humanistic Jews in Sarasota? Our newsletter is aptly named “The Connection? Do we connect to our congregants who are ill or in crisis? Do we connect with the local Jewish community? Are we connected to the larger Jewish community in significant ways? Do we connect to the state of Israel and its people in both times of severe crisis as well as in times of relative calm? 

Are we concerned and do we act when hearing of the new waves of anti-Semitism in our own country and in the world?  Do we at the very least belong and support the various organizations that keep watch on these renewed dangers.  

Do we have the courage to act in some way to demonstrate our beliefs about the freedom and dignity of all persons? When we read the Sarasota Herald Tribune, we see that many of our members write letters to the editors expressing their viewpoints. And in many instances there is action following these letters. Our Social Action group helped to get people to sign a petition to add a paper trail to the election procedure and that petition has been okayed by the court. 

A story was told by Rabbi Lawrence Kushner about a stranger on the bus. It was Munich in Nazi Germany and a woman named Sussie was riding on a city bus from home to work when SS storm troopers suddenly stopped the bus and began examining the identification papers of the passengers. Most were annoyed but a few were terrified. Jews were being told to leave the bus and get into a truck around the corner. Sussie watched as the soldiers were systematically working their way down the aisle. She began to tremble, tears streaming down her face. When the man next to her noticed that she was crying, he politely asked her why. “I don’t have the papers that you have. I am a Jew They’re going to take me.”

The man exploded with disgust. He began to curse and scream at her. “You stupid woman,” he roared. “I can’t stand being near you” The SS men asked what all the yelling was about.

“Damn her,” the man shouted angrily. “My wife has forgotten her papers again. I’m so fed up. She always does this.”

The soldiers laughed and moved on. Sussie never saw the man again. She never even knew his name.

The Harry Binghams, the Ernst Leitzs and the Irena Sendlers possessed an inordinate amount of bravery. I doubt that many of us have the courage or the opportunity to go out and slay the dragons of this generation. However, perhaps we can all be the stranger on the bus and help in a little way. If all of us reach out with our humanism, we can begin to participate in Tikkun Olom, in repairing the world.