WWW.QNS.COM RIDGEWOOD TIMES NOVEMBER 8, 2018 13
PREVENTING
HATE IN
THE UNITED
STATES
On Nov. 9, 1938, a wave of terror
swept across Germany and Austria,
as gangs of SA hooligans roamed
the streets, looting, burning and
destroying thousands of Jewish
owned businesses, homes and
synagogues.
This horrific action was called
Kristallnacht, “the night of broken
glass,” because of the thousands of
windows that were shattered in Jewish
shops, homes and synagogues across
Germany and Austria. Thirty thousand
Jewish men were arrested and
sent to concentration camps as well.
Many Jews were beaten and defi led in
the streets as well.
This truly was the beginning of the
horrors to come for the Jewish people
in Europe — the extermination of 6
million innocent Jewish men, women
and children, which was to become
known to the world as the Holocaust.
As the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht
approaches, we now see an increase
in anti-Semitic acts here in our
country over the last year, the latest
being the horrifi c mass shooting at that
synagogue in Pennsylvania, which
took 11 lives, and injured several others.
What has happened to human decency?
Is there no respect of all religious faiths
in our country any more? When will
this madness and mayhem fi nally stop?
Let’s hope that things will begin to
quiet down, and that people of all faiths
can work together to erase the scourge
of such hatred, because our country is
not about hatred — it is about freedom
and the rights of all religions to be able
to practice without fear.
John Amato, Fresh Meadows
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those of this newspaper or its staff .
LETTERS AND COMMENTS
Silence is not an option
BY ALISON KELLER
I can’t shake the massacre in Pittsburgh
on Oct. 27. I feel so many
things. Hopeless, sick to my stomach,
angry, fearful and so desperately
sad that hate crimes are becoming a
regular occurrence.
How to respond to such evil? Such
hatred? I don’t have answers. But I do
know that being silent on this forum
of Facebook is no longer tenable for
me. (It never was, and let me be clear:
I never believed it to be, but I let my
discomfort with sharing my self, my
truth, my vulnerabilities on social
media grow into silence).
I can’t tell you how many posts I
started to write — aft er the Charleston
church shooting, the Pulse nightclub
shooting, aft er the shooting of Philando
Castile, aft er Charlottesville, aft er
the Portland train attack.
Each time I started to write, I let my
fears of expressing my vulnerability,
my fear of saying it wrong, of not doing
enough, of not being enough, fear of
my privilege discrediting me, getting
the better of me. Fear of reactions I
would get, fear of the non-reactions.
Fear of my post just dying in the fastpaced
world of social media. Fear of
no one caring about what I had to say
anyway.
Well, I just can’t do that anymore. I
can’t accept that. This is too big. This
is bigger than my fear. I can’t give in to
my fear and silence any longer.
I say to my Jewish friends, colleagues
and neighbors — I am thinking
of you, I am grieving with you,
although I know it doesn’t do anything
to lessen the pain and the anguish you
are experiencing.
I say to everyone who reads this
post — no matter your religion, race,
ethnicity, nationality, gender or
background — what happened at the
Tree of Life Synagogue this weekend
is everyone’s problem. The problem is
the growing fragmentation, isolation,
fear and hatred growing in our society.
The problem is divisiveness and
“othering” of whole groups of people
for their thoughts, their beliefs, their
identities, and how they express themselves.
I will not tolerate this othering
of people — at the macro level or at the
micro level. I will not tolerate bigotry
or hatred in any form, and I will not
tolerate hate speech and demeaning
speech in the many insidious ways
in which it is expressed — including
jokes and many other subtle ways that
we perpetuate bias and intolerance
within our social groups.
Among the targets of the alleged
killer’s online vitriol was HIAS, the
Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society,
founded in 1881, which today is one of
nine organizations that works with the
federal government to help resettle
refugees who come to America. Please
consider donating to the organization
in memory of those died in Pittsburgh.
You can do so on my Facebook page or
by visiting hias.org.
Alison Keller, an LGBTQ community
ally, originally posted this on Facebook.
com. This op-ed fi rst appeared in
Gay City News, which is owned by
Schneps CNG, the parent company of
The Ridgewood Times.
A LOOK BACK
This photo from the Ridgewood Times archives shows the streetscape at the corner of Myrtle and St. Nicholas
Avenues in Ridgewood, looking northwest, in the 1930s. The building you see in the foreground knocked down
years ago to make way for a restaurant. Other parts of the area were later converted into a public plaza known as
Venditti Square, named for Detective Anthony Venditti, who was gunned down at the restaurant while conducting
an investigation in 1986. Send us your historic photos of Queens by email to editorial@qns.com (subject: A Look
Back) or mail printed pictures to A Look Back, ℅ Editorial Department, 38-15 Bell Blvd., Bayside, NY 11361. All
mailed pictures will be carefully returned to you.
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