Who is to blame?

On March 25, 1911, in New York City, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire claimed the lives of 146 garment workers, all young women, aged 14 to 43. Most of the victims were recent Jewish and Italian immigrants. The fire started in a scrap bin toward the end of the long working day, and quickly spread. Probably a match or cigarette butt started it, the bin was full of months' worth of accumulated fabric scraps, and the fire spread rapidly. There were no alarms. The fire exits had been sealed to prevent unauthorized breaks and theft; this was a common practice at the time. The workers died of smoke inhalation or in the flames, and many tried to leap from the 8th, 9th and 10th floors of the building, where the factory/sweatshop was located. Most died, of course. Others who did manage to find an unlocked fire exit were killed when a poorly-constructed fire escape broke away and dumped them 100ft onto concrete.
The tragedy was the second deadliest disaster in NYC until the destruction of the World Trade Centre in 2001.
As a result of this horror, significant workplace reform took place. Legislation led to improved factory safety standards. The Ladies' Garment Workers Union was formed to fight for better conditions for sweatshop workers.

Whose fault was this fire? It was certainly not the fault of the consumers of the ladies' blouses that the factory produced.

The recent collapse of the Bangladeshi factory has so far killed 380 garment workers. It is unlikely that any more survivors will be pulled from the rubble, 5 days after the event. The 8 story building was illegally constructed and cracks in the building had been noted; the workers were not supposed to have been there on the day the collapse occurred, but they were ordered to come to work by their bosses, so they came. They needed the job. Many children were killed because there was a creche on the premises; a part of me thought that having childcare at work is actually a pretty good thing for working mothers, but who knows what that sort of childcare means? Playing with a ball of yarn under your mother's machine, until you are old enough to thread a needle?

So now I am reading opinions in the blogosphere about how it's all our fault in the West; it's the fault of the global economy and it's the fault of the consumers who want inexpensive clothing. It's the fault of Benneton and whoever else was having their product made in Bangladesh. It's the fault of Wal-Mart for keeping prices low for their customers. And how we in the West should care about where our clothes come from, just as we care where our eggs and coffee come from, and we should have clothing labelled to show if it was made in an acceptable factory, and we should not buy from countries where sweatshop workers are exploited etc.

http://www.dailylife.com.au/news-and-views/dl-opinion/the-role-we-all-played-in-the-bangladesh-tragedy-20130428-2in4s.html#comments

I think that this is just middle-class white guilt. The fault does not lie with the customer who wants nice clothes for a low price; the fault lies with corrupt and incompetent governance. It lies with the building inspector who is bribed to turn a blind eye to shoddy and illegal practices. It lies with the government department who only employs 18 building inspectors for the whole of Bangladesh, as if there is a shortage of people there. It lies with the owner who built an extra 3 storeys onto a 5 story building and got away with it. Until it collapsed.
Corruption and to a lesser degree, incompetence, are the 2 major contributors to bad governance in the Third World.

We in the West can beat our collective breast over our rampant consumerism, but we did not kill those poor women. There is nothing inherently wrong with being paid a low wage as a semi-skilled worker. These women want the work and need the work; the garment industry in Bangladesh is the third largest in the world, after China and Italy. It is worth 20 billion dollars annually.

But there is everything wrong with being killed at work.

We cannot 'fix' Bangladesh and other such countries. Certainly boycotting these garments would be impossible, absurd and, in the end, harmful to the economy and the workers.
Change must come from within, as it did after the Triangle fire.

YOM HAZIKARON 2013

Last night I attended the local Yom HaZikaron commemoration at Robert Blackwood Hall in Monash Uni Clayton.

I wrote about my brother Yehuda who fell in the Yom Kippur War, October 1973, last year, and I really have nothing more to say about him. Although, there is good news; my daughter named her baby boy after him 5 months ago. Little Yehuda Raphael is the first to be named after him, may he always be a source of nachas to his parents.

So I won’t write about my brother. I want to write about the actual ceremony.

Some 20+ years ago when Yom HaZikaron started being commemorated in Melbourne, it was a small, short affair. It went from 8pm to 9pm, pretty much sharp, and it was all in Ivrit and attended mainly by Israelis. About 300 would come and the venues wandered around from Beit Weizman to school halls and town halls, eventually coming to rest at the Robert Blackwood Hall, one week after the Yom HaShoa commemoration. It got bigger and bigger, it drew more diverse participants and, along the way, it changed from a tight, rather military-style evening with a very Israeli flavour, to a rather long, bilingual affair, with pre-recorded segments from Israel being screened as well as lots of speeches from local dignitaries and heads of Zionist organizations. This is all OK up to a point. But the interesting thing is that, while Yom HaShoa, which attracts slightly larger crowds and involves children’s choirs and a lot more people coming and going on stage, as well as survivor testimony and candle lighting by elderly folk and their families, has become tighter and more streamlined, starting at 8 and ending at 9.30, the Yom HaZikaron evening seems to get longer and longer; last night went from 7.30 to 9.30, and then there was a singalong for the Israelis, at which point we left.

In fact, I understand why this evening has spread out in this way. Early on, there were 7 candles lit, each in remembrance of the wars fought: 1948, Independence war; 1956 Suez war; 1967 Six Day War; 1967-70 War of Attrition; 1973 Yom Kippur War; 1982 First Lebanon War; and a candle for the victims of terror. And lives lost in training accidents.

Well, unfortunately, you can see the problem here. There have been more wars. Second Lebanon. Gaza, Cast Lead and Pillar of Defence. First and second intifadas, although that was more about terror attacks. 

It’s not as ‘neat’ as Yom HaShoah and the 6 candles for the 6 million. It keeps growing. But you can’t just keep adding candles. So now there are still 7 candles lit but it’s all over the place. With each candle we hear the story of an individual who lost his or her life in defence of Israel, usually in combat but sometimes in training, or as a result of terror. 7 people come and light them, family or friends of the dead. And there are stories and stories and stories.

23,085 people have lost their lives since the State was established. Every family in Israel has been bereaved.

Last night, the hall was pretty full; but it should be overflowing. Yom HaZikaron is a reminder that, however you feel about it, as a Jew you have a link with Israel, the only Jewish state in the world. This little piece of land which has been fought over for millennia, is our land, and it’s all we’ve ever had and it’s all we’ll ever get. We’ve been kicked out of it and stomped on numerous times, but we’re still here, and it’s still ours. Whether you are religious or not, Zionist or not, left or right in politics, when push comes to shove, Israel with its politically blurry borders and its hostile neighbours, is all we Jews have. If we had had Israel, or any sort of foothold in Palestine during the time of the British Mandate, the horrors of the Holocaust would not have been. Jews had nowhere to go, in the main, and history showed that nobody wanted them, and they were murdered. We were murdered; one third of the 18 million Jews at the time, the flower of European civilization, were murdered. Triated, not decimated; decimation is the killing of one in 10. One in three of us perished at the hands of Nazism and world apathy. If we had had a Jewish state, even only a little piece of the ancient Jewish homeland which the British at first ‘gave’ us with the Balfour Declaration and then prevented us from entering during the Mandate, maybe we would have ‘only’ been decimated. We might ‘only’ be mourning 1.5 million martyrs instead of 1.5 million children. But millions would have been saved.

It is not good enough to say that Yom HaZikaron doesn’t interest you or is not meaningful to you or you have something better to do on the night. Israel is our birthright, as Jews. If we don’t show ourselves, our children, the world, that it is important to us, then it looks like we don’t care. And if a Jew doesn’t care about the Jewish state, then who the hell will?

In memory of the fallen, the heroes in battle, the victims of terror;  those who have survived with injuries, physical and psychological and spiritual; and the wounded families, whose lives have been changed forever. 

Lest we forget.

Am Yisrael Chai.

Liberation and beyond

A few nights ago I attended a Seder which commemorated freedom No, not Pesach, that was 2 weeks ago. This was the annual commemoration and celebration of my father-in-law, Nathan Werdiger's rescue and liberation from Buchenwald April 11 1945. He calls it his rebirth. He had survived slave labour in Auschwitz Birkenau, then a death march to Buchenwald and was probably hours from death when the Americans came. He had in fact been thrown onto a pile of corpses and left for dead. His brother Nechemia, the only one of his family who had survived, had refused to leave the camp to go into the forest as the Nazi guards had ordered him to so that they could gun him down as they did with the other running Jews. Miraculously they let him stay. Under cover of darkness he went back to the pile of corpses and pulled his brother out; he was still alive.
My father-in-law doesn't really remember these details because he was unconscious. He remembers that he had been unable to walk for some time before, having to creep on all fours 'like a dog'. He remembers that he was a Musselman, a walking skeleton, neither fully alive or dead. He remembers lying in the shelf bunk, helpless in his own filth because of the typhus. He remembers being held upright for the roll calls, because anyone who collapsed would be shot. In fact, when he did collapse, he wasn't shot because the Nazi didn't want to waste a bullet on someone who was so clearly moribund, and that was when he was thrown onto the pile. That part Nechemia told him.
The Americans resuscitated him, refed him very slowly, as by then they had learned a little about the risks of food to such starved individuals, many of whom died from rapid refeeding; and his friend Shabsi Kornwasser z'l taught him to walk again. (Shabsi eventually made his way to Melbourne and was also a friend of my father z'l.)
The brothers were sent to Davos in Switzerland for treatment and rehabilitation. The Swiss interned the survivors in barracks surrounded by barbed wire-topped walls - very sensitive of them- because they were terrified of the diseases that these desperately sick people carried. They made them all sign documents that would ensure that they would leave Switzerland once they were well enough and not try to claim refuge and citizenship.
My father in law tells of the time that he arrived in Davos. Escorted by military personnel, a group of these boys- they all had to be under 18 in order to merit this treatment, so some became younger, (just as they had to be older in order to escape the selection for the gas chambers on entering Auschwitz, so some had immediately become older)- were in their prison camp garb, and some previously content Swiss citizens saw them. Some turned away. Some wept. Some offered Nathan money. He took the coins and threw them back at their feet. He told them that giving him money wouldn't take their guilt away from them. It was the first time since his rescue that he felt real anger.
Anyway, after 3-4 years in Davos sanatorium the brothers had regained their health. Photos at the end of the rehab show Nathan as a stocky young man, smiling at the camera, squinting into the sun carrying a pair of skis on his shoulder. But where was he to go? Certainly not back to Sosnowiecz where his family's apartment was now occupied by Poles who would not be happy to see the Jews return. Nechemia went to the US but US immigration didn't want Nathan because of his TB and poor health. But a cousin in Australia sponsored him out and the rest is history.
He married several years after. The short guy with the positive attitude won the beautiful daughter of the Rabbi and restarted his life. He managed to keep his optimistic outlook and his love of Yiddishkeit and Torah and raised a family which now has more than 100 members. He has been successful in business and life is good. He thinks he is 90, but he might be 88, and nothing is more important than his family whom he loves with all his being.
So at the Liberation dinner there is always bread to eat, because that was what they all dreamed of when they were starving, chicken soup, klops (meatloaf which my mother in law makes a superb version of) and other delicacies. My father in law gives testimony. Children and grandchildren speak.
My daughter Esther, who lives in New York, wrote a letter which I will excerpt:
'Central to my own relationship with my grandparents has always been the instinct to not only relate to them as matriarch and patriarch of our giant family unit, but as actual and real people - people with urges, flaws, regrets, idiosyncrasies. I always like to ask myself that if my father wasn't my father, or if my sister wasn't my sister, or whatever, and I met them at a party, would I talk to them? Would we become friends? Would we make each other laugh? Respect each other? When I'm with Bobba and Zaida, I'm often compelled to ask questions - and I really feel like nothing is too banal - because everything tells you SOMETHING. I ask questions ranging from, "Hey Zaida, when did you first eat a hot dog?" to "Hey Zaida, how did you believe in G-d after the Holocaust?" - and not out of any kind of irreverence. As members of the Jewish people, and members of each of our family units, we are collectors and stewards. We are gatekeepers and bodyguards, and we safeguard memory, ritual and experience. We collect things and pass them on. We document everything and we live to bear witness for what happened to our parents' parents, but also to what happened to the very first Jews. It's in our DNA - we don't exist in a vacuum, but as a small part of something much bigger and older, and each of us is entitled to the knowledge of all these events - as stressful as that may be for me to contemplate. It's too easy for all of this to translate to fear, guilt, pressure and resentment. But it's also so easy to see the beauty, the strength, and the power that comes from it all too. '

So it's a Seder. We talk, we listen, we discuss and we eat (of course!). We cry a little. We laugh. We are Jews and we are proud.
'In every generation', we read in the Haggadah, 'there rise against us those who would destroy us; but the Holy One, blessed be he, saves us.'
In every generation.
Never forget.
Never Again.
Am Yisrael Chai.

The Queen of the Quince

Every Pesach my mother lives on in one particular food: the dessert of stewed quinces, deep ruby in colour, tart and well sweetened with sugar. Because without the sugar it would be inedible.
The quince is a pome fruit, related to the apple and pear, yellow skinned and white fleshed. Whoever first picked one off the tree and bit into it would have really been disappointed. Quinces are wonderfully fragrant but cannot be eaten raw: it's like trying to eat a gritty, astringent potato. So whoever thought that it could be rendered edible at all was a visionary; or desperately hungry. (Like the olive; have you ever picked an olive and popped it in your mouth? It is without a doubt the worst thing you could eat. It is unbelievably bitter. Anyone who bit into it would spit it out and declare it to be poisonous. So who first had the idea of crushing them for the oil in the flesh and the stone? Had to be a message direct from G-d.)
Quinces originally come from Persia and surrounding areas. I can only assume that my mother's grandmother who came from Bessarabia, brought the tradition of cooking quinces for Pesach with her and passed it down.
You peel it and quarter it and core it and cut each quarter into 2 or 3 wedges. You put them in a pot, cover with water, add a heap of sugar and cook them for about 3 hours. The longer they cook, the redder they get. (Apples will also go pink if you cook them long enough. I don't know why.)
Now, I've made it sound easy, haven't I? But it's actually hard work, because the quince is a bastard of a fruit. It is hard and gritty, often infested with bug holes that you have to cut around, uneven in shape, therefore hard to peel, and if they are a bit unripe, as they were this year (but not infested, praise The Lord), I swear it's like peeling and cutting a stone. And you have to wear gloves because they are so astringent and acidic they will leave your hands a mess.
Every year I say I won't do quinces again, and every year I do them again.
I mean, they taste amazing, there is a definite reward there, but crikey, it's hard-earned. They freeze well, they keep well in the fridge, and I just ate the last bit of Pesach quinces for dessert tonight. They were delicious. And with every bite I thought of my mother, peeling and cutting and cursing the damn things, as I do every year. Tradition!
Thanks, Mum. I think.