A crazy confluence of events

So...on this day in history:

• Much of the world found out about the suicide of Adolf Hitler
• We celebrate Holocaust Remembrance Day for 2011
• George W. Bush gave his ill-fated "Mission Accomplished" speech...long before any real mission was accomplished
• Much of the world found out about the death of Osama bin Laden

Busy. Freaking. Day in history.

I am a mix of emotions right now, looking at that list. So much death, so much sadness, so many crimes against humanity mixed up in that list.

It seems almost criminal to celebrate, doesn't it?

But...there is reason to celebrate, right?

Hitler is dead. So that's good news. He was a bad guy. (Understatement of the year.)

The Jewish faith/religion/culture is NOT dead. Hitler didn't succeed.

The war in Iraq is kinda, sorta over, unless you're one of the troops still stationed there. For them, I imagine, it's still very much on.

And bin Laden is dead, and that in and of itself is a major victory for our country, for our President, and for those people still affected by the deaths of their loved ones in 2001. He deserved to die...I think...but I still can never wrap my head around the moral question of the death penalty...and bin Laden was a REALLY bad guy...so...

So, I don't know...the celebrating in the streets, the parties at Ground Zero and the Pentagon and in a field in Pennsylvania...they strike me as in questionable taste perhaps? Much as I would love to see America rally around this news to come together again as a nation like we did in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, it makes me nervous to know that the images of people waving flags to celebrate a death are being flashed around the world today. Those people who have been indoctrinated to hate the West are getting tons more ammunition today. Retaliation is almost a sure thing, don't you think?

It scares me.

But then...the country celebrated when Hitler died, right? V-E day came quickly thereafter, as the upper echelons of the Nazi dictatorship were extinguished in a single night. We celebrated a death then, and all that happened after was another victory several months later. But we were a superpower then...are we a superpower now?

So maybe it's ok to celebrate? I don't know, it makes me uncomfortable. In my head, I'm waving a flag, but I'm also concerned about the message we're sending to a certain part of the world. Instead of extending a hand and saying, "OK, now that he's gone let's try to move forward productively," we're sort of dancing and laughing and saying, "We got you, SUCKERS!"

So maybe it's not ok?

Or maybe it doesn't matter what I think, since images of the Twin Towers on fire have dredged up an awful lot of terrible memories for me today. I cried when Charles told me about bin Laden this morning. So maybe I should just sit quietly and think about a boy I used to know, with red hair, lots of freckles, and one of the friendliest smiles I've ever seen. If there's a Heaven, I doubt he's dancing today...I doubt residents of Heaven have much time for vengeance and retribution...but I hope his family has a little bit of an easier time sleeping from here forward. Now that the man responsible for their boy's death is gone.

Flashbacks, wars and scariness

Tonight, after I put Zoe to bed, I came downstairs and saw President Obama's face filling my (rather large) TV screen as he stood in front of our nation to defend his actions in authorizing bombings last week in Libya. I sat and listened, interested in what he had to say, and I suddenly flashed back a ways.

Suddenly it was the first President Bush filling the (rather small) TV screen in my parents' living room. I was eleven years old and it was 1990, and our President (the first elected during a time I clearly remember) defended his actions in declaring war in Iraq and Kuwait.

I'd grown up during a comparatively peaceful time, at least inasmuch as I was able to follow at such a young age. I remember hearing about problems in South America, and Oliver North held significance to me, but this was different. This was WAR our President was talking about, and this was utterly terrifying to me.

WAR was World War II, when Hitler killed my ancestors and we dropped atomic bombs on Japan. WAR was Vietnam (police-action, my ass!), when my uncles lived in jungles and boys not much older than my big brother were killed en masse. WAR was scary and important and big.

I cried my eyes out that night in bed, feeling like my world had just collapsed around me.

The next day, determined to do my part, I hung yellow ribbons on the trees in our back yard. (Eat your heart out, Rosie the Riveter, I thought as I glued and stapled.) When my teacher organized a pen pal program with some soldiers in the Persian Gulf (how different that sounds today!), I signed right up, and was delighted when a paratrooper in the 81st Airborne Division wrote me back. His name was Sergeant Jim and he was from New Jersey, just like me. I still have all his letters saved in a binder that sits, gathering dust, in my parents' attic. I sent him cookies. I wanted to meet him face-to-face when he returned home, but one day, he stopped responding to my letters.

My mom tried to come up with an explanation, but nothing really satisfied me, and I was sad. Today I'm wondering...what the hell really happened to Sergeant Jim? I think I'll pull out those letters next weekend and see what some research can dig up. I hope I don't find out anything I'd rather not know.

Anyway, that was my first experience with war, and I'm not sure why President Obama's speech tonight made me think of it. But I can tell you...it's different, by now.

By now, I've had friends killed brutally in terrorist attacks. I've seen other friends and relatives sent away to hostile countries for year-long stints in the desert. I've watched helplessly as a different President Bush declared different wars on different countries, and I've learned what it's like to disagree so strongly with the leader your peers elected that you'd almost consider leaving your home country.

I guess what sent me back in time was this: Even though I still hate war, and even though I'm also weirdly desensitized to it, what President Obama said tonight made SENSE to me, just like what the first President Bush said in 1990. Of COURSE we had to protect innocent civilians. Of COURSE we have to help.

But still...it's WAR. It's SCARY. I hope we never take these moments lightly.

We should always remember

I guess every generation really does have that one catastrophic event for which every person remembers exactly where they were when it occurred.

For my generation, it is and always will be the destruction of the World Trade Centers in lower Manhattan on September 11, 2001 (I was at a bakery in Upper Montclair, New Jersey, and I saw the smoke from the towers as I drove home that morning, in case you wondered). I don't think I've ever fully processed that day, and I try not to write much about it because I'm afraid that, even all these years later, I'll sound like a complete sap.

Other events, like the assassinations of John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King, Jr., have stuck with my parents' generation, and always will.

For my grandparents' generation, it was the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Sixty-nine years ago today. Hard to believe it was so long ago, and that a whole generation of people who remember that day ("which will live in infamy forever") is rapidly dying. Soon, within the next decade or two, I imagine, very few people will be left.

Hard to imagine.

Especially when photographs like this still exist, and if a picture can a thousand words, I'd estimate these say millions. They are equal parts disturbing and impressive, upsetting and awe-inspiring. Take a look - especially check out the one which shows reporters running to phone their editors, every one of them thrilled to have such a scoop. It's a pretty interesting juxtaposition, no?

Anyway, that's what's been on my mind today. Pearl Harbor Day.

History, heritage and a lampshade

Every so often you run across something - an article, a video, a book - that completely blows your mind. It may not happen often, but when it does, you know it.

This happened to me yesterday. I was sitting at my desk at work, eating lunch, checking out my favorite web sites, when I stumbled across this piece, which only lived on NY Magazine's home page for half a day. I'm glad I found it when I did.

Mark Jacobson's excerpt from his upcoming book, The Lampshade, kicked my ass and kept me in my seat, barely tasting my food, for its duration. The topic is dark, macabre: Jacobson came into possession of a lampshade purportedly made from the skin of dead Jews in Germany during the Holocaust. He writes of his journey in attempting to learn the true lineage of this bizarre antique. But the story, even here in this comparatively small excerpt, is about so much more than that horrific lampshade.

It seems that, while searching for the heritage of the lampshade, Jacobsen wound up searching for his own as well.

While reading it, during my lunch, I was alternately nauseated (how can you read about a lampshade made of skin without getting queasy?) and enthralled, learning little snippets of a history about which I thought I already knew so much. Did you know there was a "Bitch of Buchenwald?" I didn't...and I know a lot about the Nazi camps for someone born almost half a century after they were finally closed.

I also got to learn a little about post-Katrina New Orleans, which is where the mysterious lampshade surfaced, only to wind up back on my own turf - that of an assimilated Jew trying to navigate the importance of one's own cultural heritage while processing the horrors that created much of it. Jacobson is twice my age, sure, but the questions he asked and the observations he made could easily have come from my own mouth...or keyboard...if only I was a good enough writer.

And, from what I read, he really is a brilliant writer. I want this book; I will read this book. I can't wait to own this book (Charles, please put this book in our Amazon shopping cart immediately!). I need the full story.