Say no To racism

In search of Anne Frank (nexus with Anti-Sikh riots 1984 and our own lives)

Credits by http://pravimalabhishek.wordpress.com/

1. Introduction

In July 1942, thirteen year old Anne Frank and her family, feeling the horrors of Nazi occupation went into hiding in an Amersterdam warehouse. Over the next two years Anne Frank vividly described in her diary the frustrations of living in such confined quarters. One day in 1944, Gerrit Bolkestein, a member of Dutch Government in exile, announced in a radio broadcast from London that after the war he hoped to collect eyewitness accounts of the suffering of the Dutch people under the German occupation, which could be made available to the public.

Impressed by his speech Anne Frank decided that when the war was over she would publish a book based on her diary. But August 4th 1944 the eight people hiding in the Secret Annexe were arrested and shifted to the concentration camps where Anne Frank died in the same year in the month of September. Of all the eight people who went into hiding, Anne’s father Otto H. Frank was the only one who survived the holocaust. When he came back, he was given the diary of Anne Frank which was preserved by one of the helpers to the family. This diary was later published by him fulfilling his daughter’s wish. Today the world literature knows it as the ‘The diary of a young girl’.

2. About Anne Frank

Anne Frank was born on 12th June 1929 to Otto Henry Frank and Edith Hollander in Frankfurt am Main in Germany. Her family was Jewish German who lived in Netherlands till 1933.But when the Nazis came to power in Germany, fearing the anti-Jewish decrees; they migrated to Amsterdam in Netherlands. Anne’s elder sister was Margot, who was 3 years older than her.

3. The anti –Semitism and its consequences on her life

3.1 Semitism

The term Semite means a member of any of various ancient and modern people originating in south-western Asia, including Akkadians, Canaanites, Phoenicians, Hebrews, Arabs, and Ethiopian Semites. The word “Semitic” is an adjective derived from Shem, one of the three sons of Noah in the Bible (Genesis 5.32, 6.10, 10.21), or more precisely from the Greek derivative of that name, namely Σημ (Sēm); the noun form referring to a person is Semite.

3.2 Anti-Semitism

Anti-Semitism is prejudice against or hostility towards Jews, often rooted in hatred of their ethnic background, culture, or religion. While the term’s etymology might suggest that anti-Semitism is directed against all Semitic people, since the term was invented it has been used to refer exclusively to hostility toward Jews. In its extreme form, it “attributes to the Jews an exceptional position among all other civilisations, defames them as an inferior group and denies their being part of the nations” in which they reside.

• Holocaust scholar and City University of New York professor Helen Fein defines it as “A persisting latent structure of hostile beliefs towards Jews as a collective manifested in individuals as attitudes, and in culture as myth, ideology, folklore and imagery, and in actions – social or legal discrimination, political mobilization against the Jews, and collective or state violence – which results in and/or is designed to distance, displace, or destroy Jews as Jews.”

• Professor Dietz Bering of the University of Cologne further expanded on Professor Fein’s definition by describing the structure of anti-Semitic beliefs. To anti-Semites, “Jews are not only partially but totally bad by nature, that is, their bad traits are incorrigible. Because of this bad nature: (1) Jews have to be seen not as individuals but as a collective. (2) Jews remain essentially alien in the surrounding societies. (3) Jews bring disaster on their ‘host societies’ or on the whole world, they are doing it secretly, therefore the anti-Semites feel obliged to unmask the conspiratorial, bad Jewish character.”

• Bernard Lewis defines anti-Semitism as a special case of prejudice, hatred, or persecution directed against people who are in some way different from the rest. According to Lewis, anti-Semitism is marked by two distinct features: Jews are judged according to a standard different from that applied to others, and they are accused of “cosmic evil.” Thus, “it is perfectly possible to hate and even to persecute Jews without necessarily being anti-Semitic” unless this hatred or persecution displays one of the two features specific to anti-Semitism.

• The United States Department of State defines anti-Semitism in its 2005 Report on Global Anti-Semitism as “hatred toward Jews — individually and as a group — that can be attributed to the Jewish religion and/or ethnicity.

• In 2005, the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, a body of the European Union, developed a more detailed discussion: “Anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities. In addition, such manifestations could also target the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivism. Anti-Semitism frequently charges Jews with conspiring to harm humanity, and it is often used to blame Jews for ‘why things go wrong’.”

3.3 Anti-Semitism in History

3.3.1 New Testament and anti-Semitism

Certain historians have noted that the New Testament, although recognized as being largely authored by Jews within a Jewish cultural context, has been singled out for its progressively antagonistic tone and hostile attitude toward Jews. Particularly, the Gospel of John has been singled out in anti-Semitic texts, because it includes many anti-Jewish episodes and it contains many references to Jews in a pejorative manner.

The New Testament states that while on trial, Jesus was struck in the face by a Jewish guard for allegedly speaking ill of the high priest (John 18:20-22).

The death of Jesus, according to the New Testament, was done in brutal mockery by the Roman soldiers. Pontius Pilate’s words (Matthew 27:24-25) imply that the Jews were entirely responsible for the killing. When Jesus is nailed to the cross, the New Testament states that those present mocked Jesus (Matthew 27:39); some have speculated that the unnamed individuals were in fact Jews. Further speculation states that the overall impression on Christians was that the Jews controlled the events that lead to the death of Jesus, although the Roman involvement in the affair, specifically the form of execution, is attested to within the New Testament text.

Jesus speaking to a group of Pharisees:

“I know that you are descendants of Abraham; yet you seek to kill me, because my word finds no place in you.” (John 8:37)

“I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father.” (John 8:38)

They answered him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would do the works of Abraham.” (John 8:39)

“…. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But, because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. Which of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? He who is of God hears the words of God; the reason why you do not hear them is you are not of God.” (John 8:44-47)

The New Testament holds that Jesus’ (Jewish) disciple Judas Iscariot (Mark 14:43-46), the Roman governor Pontius Pilate along with Roman forces (John 19:11; Acts 4:27) and Jewish leaders and people of Jerusalem were (to varying degrees) responsible for the death of Jesus (Acts 13:27)

3.3.2 German perspective of Anti-Semitism

According to Nazi propaganda, the Jews thrived on fomenting division amongst Germans and amongst states. Nazi anti-Semitism was primarily racial: “The Jew is the enemy and destroyer of the purity of blood, the conscious destroyer of our race(Reference 7)” however, the Jews were also described as plutocrats exploiting the worker: “As socialists we are opponents of the Jews because we see in the Hebrews the incarnation of capitalism, of the misuse of the nation’s goods.(Reference 7)” In addition, the Nazis articulated opposition to finance capitalism with an emphasis on anti-Semitic claims that this was manipulated by a conspiracy of Jewish bankers.

3.3.3 Nuremberg Laws:

The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 were anti-Semitic laws in Nazi Germany which were introduced at the annual Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg. The laws classified people as German if all four of their grandparents were of “German or kindred blood”, while people were classified as Jews if they descended from three or four Jewish grandparents. A person with one or two Jewish grandparents was a Mischling, a crossbreed, of “mixed blood”. The Nuremberg Laws deprived Jews of citizenship and prohibited marriage between Jews and other Germans.

3.4 Migration of Anne Frank’s family to Netherlands

At the beginning of 1933, the Nazi party came to power in Germany. Adolf Hitler, the leader of this party, became the Chancellor. He was responsible for the new government which was transformed from democracy to dictatorship, and the immediate formulation of the Nuremberg laws left the Jews with fears, and many of them started migrating. Anne’s parents no longer felt safe to be in Germany; also her father Otto Frank’s bank was plunged into financial trouble because of the worldwide economic crisis (The Great Depression, 1929). Otto and Edith Frank decided to leave Germany. They settled in Amsterdam of Netherlands.

“I can remember that as early as 1932, groups of Storm Troopers came marching by singing: ‘when Jewish blood splatters from the knife.’” – Anne Frank

3.5 World War 2 and the invasion of Netherlands by Germany

3.5.1 World War II

The Second World War was a global military conflict which involved most of the world’s nations, including all great powers, organised into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. The war involved the mobilisation of over 100 million military personnel, making it the most widespread war in history. In a state of “total war,” the major participants placed their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities at the service of the war effort, erasing the distinction between civilian and military resources. Over seventy million people, the majority civilians, were killed, making it the deadliest conflict in human history.

3.5.2 Conquest of Netherlands by Germany

At the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, the Netherlands declared itself a neutral force once again as it had done during World War I. Even so, on May 10, 1940 Germany invaded the Netherlands. The civil government was headed by the Austrian Nazi Arthur Seyss-Inquart. The German occupiers implemented a policy of Gleichschaltung (“enforced conformity”), which was characterized by the systematic elimination of non-Nazi organizations.

Shortly after the German rule was established, the military regime began to persecute the Jews of the Netherlands. In 1940, there were no deportations and only small measures were taken against the Jews. In February 1941, the Nazis deported a small group of Dutch Jews to the concentration camp Mauthausen. The Dutch reacted with the February strike as a nationwide protest against the deportations, unique in the history of Nazi-occupied Europe. Although the strike did not accomplish much its leaders were executed. And as a reaction to the February strike, the Nazis installed that same month a Jewish Council: a board of Jews who served as an instrument for organising the identification and deportation of Jews more efficiently, while the Jews on the council were told and convinced they were helping the Jews. In May 1942, the Nazi leaders ordered Dutch Jews to wear the Star of David. In 1942, a transit camp was built near Westerbork by converting an existing internment camp for immigrants. The Germans built concentration camps at Vught and Amersfoort as well.

“After May 1940 the good times were few: first there was war, then the capitulation and then the arrival of the Germans, which is when the trouble started for the Jews. Our freedom was severely restricted by anti – Jewish decrees.”- Anne Frank on 20th June 1942.

“Jews were required to wear a yellow star; Jews were required to turn in their bicycles; Jews were forbidden to use trams; Jews were forbidden to ride in cars; even their owns; Jews were required to do their shopping between 3.00 and 5.00 p.m.; Jews were required to frequent only Jewish owned barbershops and beauty salons; Jews were forbidden to be out on the streets between 8.00 p.m. And 6.00 a.m.; Jews were forbidden to sit in their gardens or those of their friends after 8.00 p.m.; Jews were forbidden to visit Christians in their homes.”- Anne Frank on 20th June 1942.

“So there we were, Father, Mother and I, walking in the pouring rain. Only when we were walking down the street they revealed, little by little, what the plan was. It was agreed that we’d go into hiding on 16th July. Because of Margot’s call-up notice, the plan had to be moved forward ten days.” – Anne Frank on 9th July 1942.

4. The Secret Annexe

4.1 Hiding Place

The hiding place was located in her Father’s office building, which was at 263, Prisengracht. Otto Frank didn’t have a lot of people working in his office, there were only four; Mr.Kugler, Mr.Kleiman, Meip and Bep Voskuijil. The office had a large warehouse in the ground floor which is divided into several sections such as the stockroom and the milling room. Next to the ware house doors is another outside door, a separate entrance to the office. Just inside the office door is a second door and beyond that a stairway. At the top of the stairs is another door, with a frosted window on which the word ‘Office’ is written in black letters. A wooden stair case leads from the downstairs passage to the first floor. At the top of the stairs is a landing, with doors on either side. The door to the left opens into a storage area, attic and loft in the front part of the house. The door to the right of the landing leads to the Secret Annexe at the back of the house. A bookshelf was placed in front of this door which was hinged and acted as the secret door for the helpers.

4.2 The people in hiding and the helpers

They were eight in total – Otto Frank, Edith Frank, Margot Frank, Anne Frank, Hermann van Pels, Auguste van Pels, Peter van Pels, Fritz Preffer.

The four helpers – Mr Kugler, Mr Kleiman, Miep Geis, Mr Bep Voskuijil.

4.3 Excerpts from the diary

Dear Kitty,

I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support.

Kitty is the name she gave to the diary. Although Anne had a loving family and many friends, but she never found anyone among them in whom she can confide and get the burden off her chest. She took her diary as friend, to whom she wrote her troubles, frustrations, hopes and dreams.

“Writing a diary is a really strange experience for someone like me. Not only because I’ve never written anything before, but also because it seems to me that later on neither me nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen year old schoolgirl. Oh well, it doesn’t matter. I feel like writing, and I have an even greater need to get all kinds of things off my chest.”

“My father, the most adorable father I’ve ever seen.”

Anne believes that it’s her father who understands her perfectly, and she always wished that one day she could have a heart-to-heart talk. She had continuous problem with the way her mother and sister treated her. When it comes to defence of Anne, at times of conflict with mother, her father would always be with her.

Guiltiness of not helping her friends:

I feel wicked sleeping in a warm bed, while somewhere out there my dearest friends are dropping from exhaustion or being knocked to ground.

The eighth person who is a dentist joins the Annexe family in the month of November. As he comes to annexe, he brings the news of some Jewish people who were marched to death, and some other who were ruthlessly killed. Anne Frank feels sorry for friends and feels guilty about her escape while her friends were in danger.

The description of war by Anne Frank.

Last night the guns were making so much noise that Mother shut the window; I was in Pim’s bed. A loud boom, which sounded as if a firebomb had landed beside my bed. Light’s! Light’s! I screamed.

“…less than five minutes later the guns were booming so loudly that we went and stood in the passage. The house shook and the bombs kept falling.”

“Just as we were starting dinner: another air-ride alarm. The food was good , but I lost my appetite the moment I heard the siren.”

“I see eight of us in the Annexe as if we were a patch of blue sky surrounded by menacing black clouds. It looms before us like an impenetrable wall, trying to crush us, but not yet able to. I can only cry out and implore, ‘Oh, ring, ring, open wide and let us out!’”

Freedom

“I long to ride a bike, dance, whistle, look at the world, feel young and know that I’m free, and yet I can’t let it show.”

“I sometimes wonder if anyone will ever understand what I mean, if anyone will not worry about whether or not I’m Jewish and merely see me as a teenager badly in need of some good plain fun.”

Courage

“I’m becoming more and more independent of my parents. Young as I am, I face life with more courage and have a better and truer sense of justice than Mother.”

“I know what I want, I have a goal, I have opinions, a religion and love. If only I can be myself, I’ll be satisfied. I know that I’m a woman, a woman with inner strength and a great deal of courage!”

“If God lets me live, I’ll achieve more than Mother ever did, I’ll make my voice heard, I’ll go out into the world and work for mankind!”

Happiness

“We are all alive, but we don’t know why and what for: we are all searching for happiness we are leading lives that are different and yet the same.”

5. The Arrest and death of Anne Frank

On the morning of 4th August 1944, sometime between ten and ten-thirty, a car pulled up at 263 Prinsengracht. The Policemen have arrived and arrested the eight people hiding in the Annexe, as well as two of their helpers. They were first taken to the prison in Amsterdam and then transferred to Westerbork, the transit camp for Jews in the north of Holland. They were deported on 3rd September 1944, in the last transport to leave Westerbork, and arrived three days later in Auschwitz (Poland).

Margot and Anne Frank were transported from Auschwitz at the end of October and taken to Bergen-Belsen, a concentration camp near Hanover, (Germany). The typhus epidemic that broke out in winter of 1944-45, as a result of the horrendous conditions, killed thousands of prisoners, including Margot and, a few days later, Anne. She must have died in late February or early March. The bodies of both girls were probably dumped in Bergen-Belsen’s mass graves.

 

6. THE 1948 MAN-SLAUGHTER, INDIA

6.1 Sardarji and Lachmi Kaur

I would like to bring out case which I read in a news paper recently. The article was about a woman, Lachmi Kaur, whose husband was killed in the mayhem that followed the assassination of Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India.

Lachmi’s family belonged to a subaltern sect of the Sikhs, the Labanans, who are more comfortable speaking Sindhi (and now Hindi) than Punjabi. When she was 13, her parents found her a Labana Sikh groom from a neighbouring village, Sundar Singh. Soon after they were wed, Sundar Singh moved alone to Delhi to seek better prospects for his family, and built a hutment in the slum resettlement colony of Mangolpuri. He initially sold vegetables on a hand cart, but gradually saved enough to bring over his teenaged bride Lachmi and together they set up a successful meat shop. Her husband whom she called Sardarji, would buy goats from the wholesale market in Paharganj and skin them himself. He would hang the carcasses in his kiosk and would cut, weigh and sell the meat through the day.

In, time as their business grew, Lachmi also learned to assist Sardarji by her self slaughtering the goats, and that too in a single strike. She recalls that it was perhaps this that helped her keep a level head during the 1984 man-slaughter, as she hid and tried to rescue seven men even after her husband and brothers were killed. She was accustomed at least to the sight of flowing blood. She bore three children, two of boys and a girl, and insisted on sending them to school. She was content with her life.

6.2 The Problem

But this life changed irrevocably one afternoon when the crowds rushed to their colony crying out, “Indira Gandhi has been killed”. The day was October 31st 1984. Lachmi’s immediate response was grief. They credited Prime Minister Indira Gandhi with setting poor people like them many of whom were uprooted from slums, in Mongolpuri, with house sites in their own name.

Lachmi did not light the fire in her kitchen that evening, in mourning for the departed leader. Sardarji, her husband, was confused about how he should respond to her assassination. After all, he knew that Indira Gandhi was also responsible for the sacrilege in the Golden Temple in Amritsar, when troops were marched in and ravaged the sacred structure.But Lachmi said tearfully that he still should close his shop for a day, in tribute and gratitude to someone who had given them their home. Hearing her, even Sardarji broke down and exclaimed affectionately: “Just listen how this illiterate woman is trying to make sense of all this for me!”

6.3 The riots

This was how it transpired that all of them were home when the Mobs arrived at Mongolpuri. The rioters were armed strangers from outside, but were joined by many residents from within the colony. They began to pull out Sikh men and youth from every home to slay. Soon they lit fires on all the exit routes to block terrified Sikhs from escaping. Lachmi desperately pleaded with the only neighbour who had not joined the mobs, to hide her husband in her home, but she refused. “They are killing all Sikhs. Do you want me to get killed while trying to save them?”

Sardarji did not want to endanger his entire family, so as the waves of rioters moved closer to their house, he resolved to make run for the police station. On the way he was waylaid by a mob and felled with two or three blows on his head with heavy sticks. He still tried to escape by pelting bricks at the horde, when policemen from Mangolpuri police station surrounded him and flung a burning tyre around his neck. He collapsed near his shop and right opposite the police station. Five of lachmi’s seven brothers were also slaughtered in the murderous melee, which continued unabated for three days and three nights. Some rioters reached their home, and fell upon Lachmi’s older son, then around 12 years old, with sticks. When they struck blows on his head, she tried to shield him by covering him with her own body, and begged the attackers to leave him. The boy fell unconscious and they left him for dead. His mother hurriedly picked him in her arm and hid him in toilet. When she later went to feed him, he started crying and complained of an aching head. By the time they reached the relief camp i Punjabi Bagh four days later, he was seized with high fever and his one arm was paralysed. She got him treated by private doctors, but his arm remains crippled and he walks life-long with a pronounced limp.

7. In search of 263, Prinsengracht

The first and the direct analogy I would like to make is how the Mangolpuri in 1984 turned out to be an Amsterdam of 1942-44. The consequences that lead to the anti-Jewish riots in Netherlands and the consequences that lead to the anti-Sikh riots are not the same. But they were against a community, an ethnicity, and a group of people. Both of them killed hundreds of innocent people ruthlessly; and Anne Frank, Lachmi Kaur were one among them plunged into same fear, frustration and pain. On one hand the situation of Anne Frank was anticipated, slow and they managed to escape by hiding to an extent. But on the other hand the situation of Lachmi Kaur was sudden, short and there was no chance for her to escape. The reality of the death of Sardarji is same as the reality of the death of Anne Frank.

“I am just an illiterate woman, but I believe it is the same blood that flows in everyone’s veins. I do noy hate anyone, though I wonder how the perpetrators did not feel ashamed about the killing of innocents. I don’t think targeting any one religious community is right. After all we are all human beings.”- Lachmi

The second analogy that I would like to unfold is about the neighbour who denied helping Lachmi Kaur, when she begged to hide her husband in her house. One cannot deny the fact that a person has absolutely no humanity, nor a pinch pity, all through his life. If only she could have helped Lachmi, by hiding her husband, Sardarji would have lived. And the pressing questions are what happened to her humanity? Why didn’t she have courage to hide the poor man from the sabotage? Why didn’t have pity for Lachmi Kaur.

“They are killing all Sikhs. Do you want me to get killed while trying to save them?”

What hid her courage, her pity or her humanity is what that hid the eight people in the Secret Annexe. It may be out of the heat of moment, or her insecurity and selfishness that dominated over them. But they pressed her humanity and forced it to go into hiding right in her heart, just like the Nazi-government made the people to go into hiding. The third and a similar analogy is the case with the policemen who flung a burning tyre over Sardarji’s neck. Here the duty, ethic, and moral of the policemen were hiding right in themselves while the burning anger and hatred ravaged the life of Sardarji. If we go on further, the analogy is not with just the policemen and Sardarji or the neighbour and Lachmi kaur, but it’s with the hundreds of rioters who participated in the massacre and hundreds of victims like Lachmi Kaur. If we go in search of 263, Prinsengracht, we will sure find one in everyone’s heart.

8. Conclusion

I would like to conclude my term paper by showing out how devastating it would be for mankind if prejudices are institutionalised. Whether it is with the Jews, or with the Sikhs or Muslims in India, these stereotypes have claimed lives of several Lakhs of innocent people in the history. They are not only of religious form but many like regionalism, gender, linguistics etc. What did Anne Frank do to this world or to Nazis? Or what did Lachmi do to Indira Gandhi? Why do they have to suffer? If one has to be discriminated and judged by virtue his/her birth, then the mistake has to come from the creator who gave the birth and nowhere else. If this world is really getting destabilised by Jews, if this world doesn’t have place for Jews, if Jews were the sinners born to destroy the mankind, then who was Albert Einstein, a sinner who had to be marched to death or the greatest scientist of the world who won the “Nobel Prize?”

Another point I would like to make is how our mentalities go into hiding within ourselves. What happens to our love when there is hatred? What happens to our peace when there is anger? What is the achievement of killing Sikhs for Indira Gandhi? We don’t have answers but we march ahead in the timeline, building up new prejudices every season. We hide ourselves, and the truth. And we suffer, and then march again with new ones. The reality of Anne Frank continues.