This WWII cover of Look Magazine from May 29, 1945 is an appeal signed by the leaders of our armed forces urging the public to buy Bonds during the wars Seventh Loan Drive. Illustration by Frederick Chance
Remembering all the vets who have served our country, and supporting those who continue to do so.
A home front Thanksgiving toast during wartime. Vintage ad 1942
Wishing all my readers a peaceful, safe and happy Thanksgiving!
From the Archives:
Just as 9/11 is a marker for this current generation, and November 22 was for mine, Sunday December 7, 1941 was a where-were-you-when-kind of day that was seared permanently in the memory of the greatest generation, including my parents.
The war was still over there, though the news was full of muffled but ominous portents. From the Far East came reports of Japanese troop movement in Indochina and that Saturday night FDR would make a last-minute appeal to the Japanese Emperor Hirohito for direct talks but to no avail.
Like most Americans, my mother and her family did not expect to be at war the next day or the next week or even the next month, but they knew in their hearts it was inevitable.
When, was the big question.
So like everyone else, my mother’s family went about their business.
The day before Pearl Harbor there were only 15 shopping days to Xmas and the department stores were having one of the biggest shopping sprees in years.
Goods were plentiful but pricier than last year. Nylons were replacing silk stockings which had been scarce because of the darn embargo on Japanese silk thread. But Stern’s Department Store in NY offered them at “one special buy all you want price” of $1.75 a pair.A fifth of scotch was 3 bucks, but in two Christmases these items as well as many others would be next to impossible to find.
Saturday night in NYC where my mother’s family lived, was a mass of Christmas shoppers and visitors streaming into restaurants, night clubs theaters and movies, ready to paint the town red.
That evening my grandparents were Broadway-bound with tickets to see the critically acclaimed Lillian Hellman production of Watch on the Rhine at the Martin Beck Theater. It’s portrayal of a family who struggle to combat the menace of fascism in Europe during WWII responded directly to the political climate of the day, and the continuing debate on American neutrality in the War.
While the audience absorbed the words of Lillian Hellman’s warning that “all who chose to ignore the international crisis were helping to perpetuate it and that no one could count himself or herself free of danger,” 6 carriers of the Pearl Harbor striking force under Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo sliced through the blue waves of the Pacific a few hundred miles north of Hawaii.
(L) 1939 Vintage advertisement- Matson Cruise Line to Hawaii “A Voyage as Colorful as Hawaii’s flowered isles”
Picking up a copy of the Sunday Herald Tribune on their way back to Brooklyn after the show, my grandfather read in the rotogravure section an article about the naval base at Pearl Harbor, “the point of Defense of our West Coast.”
The pictures of silvery sands mingled with war planes flying over Diamond Head. As the newspaper article pointed out, the lucky lei-draped tourist vacationing there would be too busy eyeing the hula girls to notice the Army pillboxes since they were cleverly concealed from prying eyes. The accompanying pictures showed an idyllic tropical setting, causing my grandmother to make a mental note to visit there sometime soon.
It was difficult for many Americans to understand what was happening in the Pacific. We were preoccupied with Hitler.
Another factor was plain and simple geography.
Until the air age, islands like Midway and Iwo Jima were practically worthless. Like most Americans, most of what my parents did know about the Pacific had been invented by Hollywood. The south Seas were pictured as exotic isles where lazy winds whispered in the palm fronds and native girls wore sarongs like Dorothy Lamour.
1938 Vintage ads Dole Pineapple Juice
The closest most Americans would get to those enchanted Isles of Hawaii would be courtesy of Dole. Whether as canned juice or slices, exotic pineapple from Honolulu Hawaii had become immensely popular over the past decade due to its unusual health values.
Pearl Harbor a once unfamiliar name for most Americans who weren’t quite sure where it was, would grow increasingly familiar all too soon.
The next day, Sunday, the eastern seaboard was quiet but jittery with the news of the surprise attack.
Along with millions of Americans, my mother first learned of the attack when her father turned on the big mahogany RCA Radio to hear his favorite CBS broadcast of the NY Philharmonic concert at 3pm. That Sunday most people gathered around their radios listening for whatever news they could get about Pearl Harbor.
On anything but a mundane Monday, 60,000,000 jittery American would remember exactly where they were when they turned on their radios at noon to listen to President Roosevelt speak of that day that would live in infamy!
© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2015. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Learning from our past history, America could use a good dose of mental insecticide to vanish the racism and vitriol that has been infecting our country recently. 1942 Political cartoon by Theodor Geisel – Dr. Seuss, from NY newspaper PM.
We need to be on high alert
The threat is real.
We need to be vigilant not only about extremist terrorists who wish to do us harm, but about the ramped up stereotyping and creeping xenophobia that is growing, thanks to the red white and blue home-grown extremists like Donald Trump whose vile comments cloaked as patriotism are becoming numbingly familiar.
Both threats are real…both are dangerous…both pose a grave danger to American freedom.
Against a boosterish backdrop of cheering crowds, Trump announced his plan to make America great Again by banning all Muslim’s from entering our country, beaming at what he saw as a public service.
Encouraging the public’s vigilance to keep their round eyes peeled for Arabic speaking neighbors and hijab wearing plane passengers, his solution would keep people safe.
A How-To to determine turbaned friends from terrorists. This “Turban Primer” originally appeared in a Chicago publication Redeye in 2012, two days after a gunman shot and killed 6 worshipers at a Sikh Temple in Milwaukee. Image: Redeye 2012
Since turban wearing folks seem to confuse to most Americans, unable to distinguish between a Sikh or a follower of Islam, how exactly would we know which tourists and immigrants are Muslim?
Other Wise…
Easy as apple pie and just as American.
Airline representatives, custom agents and border guards would simply ask folks for their religion, Trump explained matter of factly. “They would say; ‘Are you a Muslim?’” Trump said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe Tuesday morning. If they say no, they’d be allowed in the country.
Simple. Safe. Stupid.
Identifying tourists and immigrants as the “other” seems so simple, it’s a wonder no one has thought of it before.
Except they have.
An anti-Japanese political cartoon by Dr. Seuss. From 1941 to 1943 Theodor Geisel created more than 400 political cartoons for NY Newspaper PM. Along with subjects such as racial discrimination and social injustices, he did create anti-Japanese propaganda and supported Japanese internment. After the war he questioned his beliefs about the Japanese. Years later Dr. Seuss wrote “Horton Hears a Who” ( a metaphor for American postwar occupation of Japan) in part as an apology to the Japanese that he had demonized during the war.
Identifying the “other” has long been a stock in trade in a racist America.
A panicked American public consumed with fear from a recent December terror attack is something we have witnessed before. The demonization of Japanese Americans during WWII could serve as a history lesson in what happens when racist propaganda is disseminated as patriotism .
And it didn’t take long.
A mere two weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor, a racist guide geared to the hapless American to differentiate a Jap from the Chinese was published in two highly respected periodicals Life Magazine and Time as a public service to a frightened public.
After Japan’s surprise attack on America fear and hysterics ran high.
Like most Americans in December of 1941, Bob White was in a state of anxiety. Shaken to the core by this violent act of terrorism perpetrated against America in Pearl Harbor , he was left confused. Like others Bob simply didn’t know who to trust.
This native of Newberg worried…was the Chinaman washing his shirts really Chinese or a Japanese spy. Maybe the Oriental whose family fix-it shop had been there for generations might be sending signals back to Tojo. Who could tell if they were even Japanese?
Life magazine understanding this confusion came to his rescue.
In a world of insecurity and uncertainty, Bob White could count on 3 things. A white Christmas, the regular delivery of the U.S. mail and the reassurance from his favorite magazine Life.
Like most Mondays, Bob looked forward to his weekly copy of Life, the eyes and ears and voice of America to entertain, inform and instruct him.
But this December 22 was not like most Mondays. Only 2 weeks earlier President Roosevelt had appeared before Congress asking them to declare war on Japan. The date that would live in infamy was fresh in American minds.
So when the doorbell rang at noon, Bob could count on it being the mailman making his delivery. As Sam the mailman shook off the snow and handed Bob his weekly copy of Life, he smiled and said winking: “It’s a keeper!”
Long May She Wave
Bob’s heart swelled with pride at the image of the majestic waving American flag that filled the cover of the magazine.
Flipping through the thick periodical he pored over the graphic photos documenting the devastation from the attack in Hawaii, fueling his hatred of the cruel and barbaric enemy. The jingoistic copy confirmed what Bob knew in his heart – harnessing America’s might we would pull together to beat the Japs!
Reading onward, his eyes fell on the bold-face heading “War and Terrorism” under which he noted a series entitled “The Handbook for Americans.”
This former Eagle Scout knew that to win this war both on the battlefield and on the home front, Americans needed to be prepared.
Americans needed to mentally awake and morally straight and most importantly, keep informed.Like any good handbook this one offered practical, useful information.
The first article in the handbook was a handy guide for identifying dangerous Japanese warplanes.
But more urgent than the planes was the vital information on how to identify a Jap.
Yes, not only does the reader learn to recognize enemy Jap warplanes, identifying them by their unique markings, they learn to distinguish Japanese Americans from Chinese Americans.
Not unlike most Americans, Bob tended to lump all member of the “yellow race” together.
It was Life’s mission to carefully point out the differences concerned that our anger and contempt not be directed at our good Chinese friends but at the Japanese.
Bob sighed in relief. Finally a helpful guide to identifying the real enemy.
It was a major task, but Life made it so much easier .
Life Magazine December 22, 1941
Entitled “How to Tell Japs From the Chinese:” Bob read with interest as the article explained:
“In the first discharge of emotions touched off by the Japanese assaults on their nation, US citizens have been demonstrating a distressing ignorance of the delicate question of how to tell a Chinese from a Jap. Innocent victims in cities all over the country are many of the 75,000 U.S. Chinese whose homeland is our staunch ally.
So serious were the consequences threatened, that the Chinese consulates last week prepared to tag their nationals with identification buttons.
These photographs are marked with crudely notated facial features such as an anthropologist might compare one animal to another. Life Magazine December 22, 1941
Lest you engage in a friendly conversation with a Japanese American store clerk this handy guide would protect you from this dangerous encounter.
To dispel some of this confusion between Asian friend and foe , LIFE provided a rule-of-thumb for characteristics that distinguished friendly Chinese from the enemy alien Japs.
As in the warplane article, Bob learned how to differentiate between Japanese and Chinese people, with “instructive, easily interpreted diagrams and photographs.
The article’s “helpful captions” explain distinctive bones structures and facial features” with the arbitrariness and stereotypes worthy of an instructor of eugenics .
American racism 100% proof . The second page of the article is framed between two columns of advertisements. Americans consume their racism along with their whiskey.
The Chinese we learn, are smiling and friendly the Japanese is frowning and angry.
The engaging Chinese man is described as a “public servant,” while the Japanese man ( General Tojo) is listed as a “Japanese warrior” whose face “shows the humorless intensity of ruthless mystics.”
Across the street, Bobs neighbor Mary was picking up her own mail, anxious to read her issue of Henry Luce’s other publication Time. It too carried its own helpful article “How to Tell Your Friends From the Jap.”
Arbitrary instruction from Time December 22, 1941
It wasn’t long before distinguishing between a Jap and Chinese would be as easy as identifying a an enemy airplane with their handy-go-to guide. Everything you needed to prevent you for mistaking your friendly Chines store keeper for a Japanese American traitor
Life would help you identify the enemy and properly direct your hatred to the appropriate source.To a frightened hysterical public it came in the nick of time.
Hatred of the other because of fear is dangerous. Deplorable acts of racism somehow justified and even honorable in the time of terror and war end up with predictably terrible consequences.
© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2015
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The Middle Class Fades Away
America’s middle class is vanishing before our eyes, fading away like a once cherished Kodacolor snapshot.
Today the possibility of obtaining the American Dream feels as outmoded as these vintage advertisements from Kodak.
Kodak and its long running ad campaigns celebrated the middle class life and the possibility of attaining it. Today that possibility is vanishing. From millennials saddled with staggering school debts and grim employment prospects, to Baby Boomers unable to save for retirement, the fundamental elements of the American Dream – a living wage, retirement security, opportunity for one’s children to get ahead in life are now unreachable for all but the wealthiest. Vintage Kodak camera ads 1946
The sad fall from grace for American icon Eastman Kodak, the very recorder and reinforcer of middle class America, seems to sadly coincide with the decline of that very ethos of upward mobility it once helped encourage.
In mid-century America Kodak was there to record every milestone of middle class life. An ever-growing economy and the idea of upward mobility in America had always been a powerful and deeply ingrained part of the American Dream. Vintage Kodak ad 1952
Once upon a time the promise of middle class upward mobility was fundamental to the American Dream, and for over half a century those dreams were expertly captured in Kodak moments.
Vintage Kodak advertisement 1940
If the seed of the American Dream was planted during the dark days of the Depression, it was nurtured and cultivated during the solidarity, sacrifices and deprivations of WWII. By wars end it was ripe, ready to be harvested and it would blossom into full bloom in the post war years and beyond.
Vintage Kodak advertisement 1956. Today the middle class is withering on the vine
This high yielding seed would turn out a bumper crop of dreams. And with a press of a button, Kodak was there to record it all.
Kodak’s long running ad campaign painted the perfect portrait of that American Dream, celebrating the middle class and the possibility of attaining it. Vintage Kodak ad 1951
Now something is fundamentally wrong. The core elements of the American dream are increasingly unaffordable for the majority.
Vintage Kodak Ad 1948
Vintage Kodak Camera ad 1957
Vintage Kodak Ad 1953
Kodak and the American Dream were made for one another.
Painting the perfect portrait of that vision, the wholesome images of All-American family fun portrayed in their long running advertisements would saturate our Kodacolor dreams for decades creating a model for the middle class and the good life.
These uplifting, homogeneous tableau’s created by Kodak, along with the familiar yellow and red logo, insinuated themselves into the very fabric of American family life.
Vintage Kodak Ad 1920
The turn of the last century marked the arrival of the groundbreaking Brownie dollar camera.
Snapshots were the great equalizer, the perfect tool for a democratic society available to one and all. For a buck (with film costing 15 cents for 6 shots) everyone could now archive their lives.
Vintage Kodak Advertisement 1909
Suddenly this camera – so easy they advertised a child could do it – could be seen everywhere.
Vintage Kodak Camera Ad 1953
Snapshot Night with the gang! Vintage Kodak Camera ad 1950
Vintage Kodak Camera ad 1951
Easter Memories. Vintage Kodak camera ad 1950
Vintage Kodak Camera ad 1954
Bristling with their box Brownies, Americans were suddenly hard at work recording the spectacle of the their middle class moments, cameras clicking away at birthday parties, picnics, communions and vacations.
WWII Vintage Kodak ad 1943
WWII Vintage Kodak ad 1943 “For a man far from home, snapshots are the most precious gift of all.”
When America entered WWII folks on the home front were encouraged to send snapshots to the boys overseas to remind them of what they were fighting for – mom, apple pie and the American Dream that awaited them when they returned.
Unlike today’s troubled vets who are returning to an American Dream itself suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, the greatest generation of WWII soldiers came back to a robust America, the American Dream gift wrapped just for them in red, white, and blue.
Vintage Kodak ad 1949
The post war future it promised would be filled with homes, harmony and upward mobility. It heralded a time when the American dream was indeed within reach of most middle class families and the achievement of the better life was fundamental to the American Way.
The ads which ran from the late 1940’s to the late 1950’s served up a romanticized mid-century America enjoying their post-war promises of prosperity. Vintage ad Kodak 1962
After WWII Kodak ramped up their already heavily sentimental ads to fit in with the ethos of domestic post-war America, the middle class family idealized as never before.
For over 65 years, home ownership was the defining definition the American Dream and Kodak families are often seen having family fun in their suburban homes.
Vintage ad 1947
Baby Boomer’s lives would be captured in Kodak moments. Today sandwiched between the millenials and the greatest generation, baby boomers may soon go bust. As more boomerang kids live at home due to the bleak job market, and the elderly life expectancy is ever increasing, feathering the boomers nest egg becomes an impossibility as much an outmoded pipe dream as that high paying job is for their kid. Vintage Kodak ad 1955
Family fun together – what a time for pictures! Vintage Kodak ad 1952
For over 65 years, home ownership was the defining definition the American Dream and Kodak families are often seen having family fun in their suburban homes. Vintage Kodak Camera ad 1960
Vintage Kodak color slides ad 1959
Dreaming of a White Christmas. Pictures radiated with suburban domestic bliss, abundance, good neighborly cheer and good Christian values. Vintage Kodak ad 1949
The idyllic snapshots of the American dream family that Kodak used in the ads all portrayed an eerily homogeneous landscape of spacious suburban homes and smiling, prosperous, cheerful, Anglo-Saxon families enjoying fun times together in their rumpus rooms and backyards.
This “Happy Family Living” was the image that most advertising and entertainment seemed determined to project and Kodak excelled at the iconography.
Band leader Ozzie Nelson, his wife Harriet and their 2 sons playing a fictional family, were the perfect spokesperson for Kodak. The adventures of Ozzie and Harriet airing from 1952-1966 starring real life Nelson Family, America’s ideal family, lived in a 2 story colonial. Before the Kardashians this TV staple blurred the lines between fiction and reality. Vintage Kodak Camera ad 1958
TV’s June and Ward Cleaver or Jim and Margaret Anderson – no slouches when it came to the nuclear family – would have fit right at home in any of these dozens of tableau’s of the American Dream. Is it any wonder that Ozzie and Harriet the quintessential American TV family were Kodak’s spokesman.
Long before selfies displaced the family snapshot, Kodak captured moments in our lives. Vintage Kodak ad 1946
“Nobody gets more fun out of making a good snapshot,” Kodak assured us,” than a rank beginner – a kid or maybe a woman who was always afraid of a camera!”
Knowledge of technology was unimportant for a Kodak picture.
The film was made for all who wanted to get a good picture of their good times…without any bother. No fuss, no muss. With its automatic push-button ease Kodak was the epitome to the easy living push-button world that would characterize mid-century America.
It made picture-taking so easy, so sure, the ads promised even a child ( or a woman) with film in her brownie could take a good picture. Why wait for dad to be around? Even an ordinary homemaker could be a first class shutterbug; taking pictures was as easy to operate as a pop up toaster they assured us.
Drop the film off at the local drug store where it would be sent off and developed in secrecy by Eastman Kodak in their Rochester labs and a week later you were reward with colorful memories. Vintage Kodak Camera ad 1957
Every man could be his own Norman Rockwell recording and replicating those saccharine filled moments captured so brilliantly in those light drenched ads.
In this bliss no one knew what went on in the darkroom nor did they need too. Like the telephone the camera was this simple magical black box that could be used without being understood.
That sunny outlook that fit in so well with our sense of self.
Happy to bask in the sunny Kodacolor optimism the ads projected , we were blissfully ignorant of those that lived shadows of society.
This is the America some retro Republicans pine for.
The widespread sentiment that America’s best days have passed, the mythic America they want us to return too was exclusionary, racist and sexist. Along with the middle class, these cherished myths are slowly vanishing too. Vintage Kodak camera ad 1953
Like an aging and fading photograph in need of restoration, the Republicans want to restore the American Dream and the middle class back to this mythical place – a conflict free, whiter-than-white America.
But that cherished myth has been exposed.
The red white and blue ads presented middle class utopias that were essentially interchangeable, lily-white, color and ethnic free zone. Vintage Kodak camera ad 1953
The red, white, and blue America that once sparkled in Kodacolor… did not sparkle for all.
The sweet sentiments these photos evoke belie the fact that these years were far from fair to Blacks, women, Latinos or Gays.
(R) Charles Moore photo. Birmingham Alabama 1963 Fire Department aims high pressure water hoses at civil rights demonstrators (L) Summer suburban kids cooling off with back yard hose. Vintage Kodak Camera ad 1957
For those who lived in the shadow of the American Dream, it would take decades for the light of tolerance and inclusion to shine on them.
Though for many the vivid Kodak world of possibilities shimmered in glorious Kodacolor, but for people of color it was still pretty black and white.
These ghosts of America’s past still haunt us.
Today some Kodak moments are best not remembered.
© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
On Memorial Day we pay homage to all the soldiers who didn’t come home. To all those we lost in WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Iraqi, and Afghanistan, this Buds for you!
Memorial Day has the word “memorial” for a reason
More than a Monday spent at beaches, backyard barbecues and blockbuster movies, Memorial Day is the day we remember and honor those who died serving our country.
Unlike Veterans Day it is not a celebration; it was intended to be a day of solemn contemplation over the high cost of freedom.
Come together
In this time of divisiveness and polarization, of spectacle and mud-slinging, it is more than ever important to stop, come together, and remember those who have given their all.
Today we pay homage to all the soldiers who didn’t come home.
Vintage ad 1944 Illustration Fred Luderkens
During WWII the grimness of war wasn’t hidden from the public.
No series of ads brought the realities of war closer to home than a memorable series that ran during WWII by Nash/ Kelvinator.
During the war when Nash/ Kelvinator was busy with war work building Pratt Whitney Engines and sidelined from manufacturing home appliances and automobiles it still wanted to keep its name before the American public. Like many other companies occupied with war work and nothing to sell the consumer, they ran patriotic advertisements.
While most adverting reflected the red, white, and blue fervor of our nation, glorifying and supporting the war effort and our boys overseas, the Nash/ Kelvinator ads dealt with the harsh gritty realities of war. The full color ads graphically showed the pain, blood and fear of our military men and women.
The ads served not only a tribute to the harshness, fortitude and bravery endured by our servicemen and women it was a tribute to the American Way and the American dream for which we were fighting for and for many, ultimately dying for.
“I’m fighting for freedom! I’m fighting for the things that made America the greatest place in the world to live in. . . . I want to come back to the same America I left behind me . . . where our way of living has always brought us new and better things . . . That’s what I’m fighting for.”
Told through the first person, the ads put the viewer in the mind of a courageous infantry soldier, sailor, army nurse, or medic in the midst of battle.
Vintage WWII ad 1944 Illustration Fred Luderkens
We took the beach head at dawn.
Our destroyers stood out to sea and threw the shells and our planes pounded hell out of their pill boxes, and then we came in…
But the wind and the tide tricked us.
The landing boats grounded off shore and we jumped over the sides and stood in the warm, shallow water and stared at the faraway beach and then at each other…and our eyes and our mouths were wide with fear as we waded in…
And we fell under their guns like wheat to the blade of the reaper. And though they said we could never take it…at dawn on the third day we took it.
I’m not fighting for myself alone….
I’m fighting for the buddies who fell beside me…for Joe and Pete and Jack and Harry. For the flag they loved, and their kids back home, and the faith they held in their right to be free…for the future and the life that they gave up…for the things that make America the one country in all the world where a man can be somebody…where a man can go somewhere.
I know why I’m still out here.
I know whats got to be done
And I’m not coming back until I’m through with my knife and my gun…until I know that terrorism and the lust to kill and enslave are forever dead…until all men and women and children can live without fear…as free individuals in a land and a world, where there will always be liberty, equality and freedom of opportunity.
That’s what they fought and died for.
That’s what I’m fighting for.
That’s America.
Keep it that way until I come home.
Vintage WWII ad 1944 Illustration Fred Luderkens
He was a thorn in their side…
All morning long his accurate mortar fire kept them from forming up, broke the spearhead of their attacks…
So they went out to get him…
And finally a sniper shot him.
Then they laid down a cross fire that was death to defy. I know…because one of our men tried. But it was damned hard to lie there and hear him call “Mom”.. and cry and call “Mom” again like a kid who’d been hurt,he didn’t know just how or why
And all we could do was just lie there…and grind our teeth together and tighten our guts because each time he cried Mom…it tore out our insides.
I put a syrette into his arm and he relaxed and his head fell back and his eyes were still wide but I could tell he thought his mother was there bu his side as he left…
Listen America.
Pen your hearts, wives and daughters!
Open your pocketbooks fathers! Give your blood brothers and sisters!
So the freedom you want…
So the country you want…
So the future you want
Will be there when we come back.
I looked Into My Brothers Face
Vintage WWII ad 1943
Even now I can’t sleep.
All night long I heard again the words I said bending over the litters as the wounded came in…
“Where are you hurt soldier?”
Now, not even the blessed numbness we pray for in this place can keep me from living over and over again the moment when sponging away the dark red mud, I looked into my brothers face.
He said, “Don’t cry Sis.” And suddenly we were children again playing nurse and wounded soldier on the battlefield of our yard back home.
I grew up last night.
Out here, I’ve seen my share of war. Women strafed in the streets…hospitals bombed…ripped sheets, splintered beds, the living and the dead tumbled together. And I’ve stood it because I’m an Army Nurse and that’s my job.
But a nurse is a woman first and when someone is wounded something breaks inside and the war hits home.
Hits home to you and to the heart of America.
And then you know why were out here. Not for glory. Not for new worlds to conquer. Not for great high sounding words…
But to make sure we keep on having the kind of America my brother and I grew up in…to make sure well always have a hand and a voice in helping to make it an even better land to live in. To make sure we’ll come home to the America we’ve always known…were we can make our lives what we want them to be…where well be free to live them in peace and kindness and security.
That’s what my brother and I are fighting for.
Vintage WWII ad 1944 Illustration Fred Luderkens
We’ll come through.
Your heart cracks and the weight on your back seems to push you under and you think you’ll drown but you don’t.
You carry on not for yourself but for the rest of the folks…for the family… the kids…for guys like these swimming around, circling around with night coming on and no ship to come home to and around and below only the empty sea.
For every drop of blood they spill…for every heart they break… for every tear that’s shed… for every ship that’s sunk… for every plane it costs…for every man of ours who’s lost…they’ll pay with ten of their own!
So the freedom we want…
So the future we want…
Will be there when we get back!
Vintage ad 1944 Illustration Fred Luderkens
I’ll come through again
I know I’ll come through because I’ve got to.
Because in the Marines a man is trained to stand alone…trained to work, to dare, to take a chance, to go ahead on his own..not just for himself but his buddy, his platoon his regiment …his wife…his kids…the country he’s willing to fight and die for.
That’s the spirit that made America strong
That’s the spirit that’s going to win this war.
© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Careless talk could lead to great suffering for a Gold Star Family. Today, Trumps careless, thoughtless talk has caused great suffering not only to Gold Star Families but to all Americans. Vintage WWII poster Artist Wesley 1944
Beware of careless talk!
During WWII civilians on the home front were constantly warned to beware of unguarded, careless talk. Central to national security was the “loose lips sink ships” campaign which carried with it the potential for the loss of life. No one wanted to be responsible for contributing to yet another Gold Star mother and adding to her pain.
Today, thin-skinned Donald Trump doesn’t know when to keep quiet.Trump and his allies have now begun a vicious smear campaign of base less innuendos against a Gold Star Family, the Khans. Vintage WWII poster
Today, Donald Trump’s careless talk has caused great suffering not only to Gold Star Families but to all Americans.
Thin-skinned Donald Trump doesn’t know when to keep quiet.
His constant barrage of unguarded, careless talk that has offended (thus far) Mexicans, women, African-Americans, and Muslims has now reached a new low with his latest dismissal of the sacrifices of a Gold Star Family.
Trump’s offensive and thoughtless remarks attacking the Khans, a patriotic Gold Star Family who have made the ultimate sacrifice has rightfully appalled decent Americans on both sides of the aisle.
One can only hope Donald’s own loose lips will sink his own campaign.
In this vintage ad from 1944 we can see the Sons of Service flag hanging in the dining room window, as Junior carves the Christmas turkey while dad is overseas. The flags were usually no larger than about one foot long. Hung vertically, a stick was sewn into the top heading of the flag and a piece of string attached to both ends of the stick to allow it to be suspended in front of a window.Vintage ad Carnation Milk WWII 1944
Gold Star Mothers was formed shortly after WWI to provide support for mothers who had lost sons or daughters during the war.
During WWI and WWII a Service Flag hanging in a family living room window was an all too common sight. A blue star in the center of the red bordered white field signified a family member in active duty in US military service.
If a family had multiple family members in the service of their country then additional blue stars were set into the white rectangle.
Little Blue Star in the Window Turns Gold
Careless talk could lead to great suffering and the ultimate sacrifice. In this vintage WWII poster by Artist Harry Anderson, the blue star on this grieving couples flag would soon be covered with a gold star.
When WWI began claiming many lives a new flag developed. When a son or daughter was killed in action a gold star was sewn over the blue one.
The idea of the Gold Star was “that the honor and glory accorded the person for his supreme sacrifice in offering for his country, the last full measure of devotion and pride of the family in this sacrifice, rather than the sense of personal loss which would be represented by the mourning symbols.”
In May 1918 the Women’s Committee of National Defenses suggested to President Woodrow Wilson that those mothers who had lost a family member in the war should wear a black band on their upper-left arm, adorned with a gold star. In a letter supporting this proposal, President Wilson referred to these women as “Gold Star Mothers.”
It was the beginning of a new tradition of patriotic support for those who serve our Nation in uniform that continues today.
The Best of Our Country
Yesterday when speaking to a group of disabled veterans, President Obama called Gold Star Families “the very best of our country.”
When an apology to a Gold Star Family would seem in order, Mr. Trump is uncharacteristically silent.
© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Once upon a time colleges and home ownership were a privilege reserved for the rich.
As the cost of 4 years of college education escalates between $100,00 and $200,000 we may end up replicating those pre- WWII times.
It was the returning WWII soldiers of the Greatest Generation and the groundbreaking GI bill guaranteeing an education to all returning veterans that changed the rarefied world of college forever, opening up the exclusive campuses for the masses and the once unreachable dream of a college education attainable for all.
By the thousands, overcrowded transport ships and transcontinental Pullmans crawled across the continent delivering war-weary soldiers back to their loved ones. Now that they were back home for keeps, the moment everyone dreamed was here. With eyes aglow and hearts aflame … awaited the long deferred American Dream for today, tomorrow, and always.
By 1947 the shape of college campuses all across the country were being altered.
Through his financial assistance Uncle Sam brought a college education to within reach of millions of persons who otherwise would have gone directly into trades or blue-collar jobs.
Now, a sheepskin diploma was one more component of that American Dream.
Would You have come without GI Bill aid- part of a series of polls Life magazine took of WWII veteran students in 1947
The Veterans Administration paid the university up to $500 a year for tuition, books and other training costs and vets received a small allowance while in school.
Armies of American veterans were streaming into colleges, their little gold discharge buttons winking gaily from their coat lapels, wedging themselves into colleges which hadn’t done any building since 1941.
The results were like trying to pack 2 pounds of sardines into a 1 pound tin.
The changes they brought were visible, as trailer camps, Quonset huts and rows of temporary barracks were set up on campus. Classrooms were so crowded that classes started at 7:30 and lasted till 10:30 at night.
Barely able to catch their breath, it was the biggest and most sudden impact American higher education had ever received; the arrival in force on the campuses of 1,777,000 war veterans, made them 50% of the total college population.
These new students were often above average in grades and educators lamented a return to the old system.
“It is a social wastage to have inferior students with money go to college at the expense of superior students without money,” educators reasoned in an 1947 issue of Life magazine devoted to the veteran student. Educators were advocating a permanent system of federal scholarships for students of high intelligence and low means
The returning vets were a welcome sight to Betty Coed and to my mother Betty a college sophomore at the University of Connecticut.
G-I ( guy interest) was the theme song of colleges now. That guy who was someone nice to send letters too last year was now back in your college life.
It was a different campus than the male deprived war years.
In the fall of 1944 Betty was a college freshman at the University of Connecticut, who had more on her mind than musty old history dates; it was dates of another sort that troubled her. However, due to the war, she and other co-eds found themselves in the midst of a gen-u-ine –man-shortage, lamenting that…. “they were either too young or too old.”
The absence of an entire generation of men between the ages of 17 and 30 left a lonely void.
Even though she and her crowd of girls enjoyed playing bridge and having hen parties to fill up those lonely weekends, Betty couldn’t help wondering if they were not rationing love too.
During the war years you had to take what you could get, including men, but by 1947 the colleges all over America were being filled by a boatload of eligible men- literally a battalion of returning soldiers taking advantage of the GI Bill.
The shapes of college campuses were being altered all across the county impacting previously enrolled students as well.
A New Yorker, my mother Betty found herself dislocated along with millions of other college students in the post-war chaos of overcrowded schools.
The University of Connecticut like so many swollen schools had to eventually close their doors to out-of-state students to accommodate the swell of new GI enrollment. Branded as “out of staters” they were forced out, leaving a downcast Betty to feel as uprooted as the millions of displaced persons in Europe wandering from place to place.
Sadly she joined the millions of dejected displaced students pouring out of former Alma maters until they could find a college that would accept them.
Schools themselves were changing, becoming West Points for Big Business. Fresh from the war the boys had one strategy they wanted to be deployed directly into jobs as second lieutenants with US Steel or Du Pont.
And retire comfortably on a Colonels pension forty years later.
Corporations from coast to coast quickly filled with forward thinking vets who traded in their khaki uniform for a grey flannel one.
With a firm handshake , they enlisted for life, the golden carrot of retirement loomed in the future like a pot of gold at the end of the work world rainbow.
Copyright (©) 20016 Sally Edelstein All Rights Reserved
The scariest part of Halloween for many parents is the prospect of all the candy their children will consume once they’ve brought home their haul.
Relax.
In mid-century America a Snickers bar would have been greeted with the same encouragement as chowing down a serving of kale.
“Little masqueraders love to be greeted with heaping variety of Halloween Candies.” Vintage ad Brach’s candies
Vintage ad 1955 Milky Way Halloween
Vintage Halloween ad 1956 Curtiss Candy baby Ruth and Butterfingers
Vintage Ad 1946 Candy Council of America
It may be hard to swallow but once upon a time candy was not the unhealthy villain it is viewed today but a wholesome food. Through the first half of the 20th century, sweets and sugar were deemed essential to health- good tasting and good for you. “Modern nutritionists agree,” we were happily informed, “that when the body calls for energy, candy is one of the quick and happy answers.”
Candy was an important part of nutrition and moral in WWII ( L) Vintage Milky Way ad 1944 (R) Vintage ad Council on Candy of the National Confectioners Association 1944 Candy Important Food for Work
Eating candy was also downright patriotic.
Adding candy to your diet was considered good wartime eating rule.
In fact during WWII sugar was sanctioned by Uncle Sam as part of the 7 essential food groups during WWII. No wonder the government rations for our fighting men included candy as a dietary supplement.
And those on the home front were urged to keep candy handy to help through long hours of war work. “Running a welding torch or typewriter, pushing a pencil or a hand truck, making meals or machines of war today’s work is longer harder and calls for extra energy,” read the copy from the Council on Candy of the National Confectioners Association Candy in an ad touting candy for war work.“There’s a good wartime rule add easy to eat good to eat fatigue fighting candy as your food for extra energy.”
Rosie the Riveter made sure to keep a snickers bar handy while wielding that blow torch.
In a nation of can-do Americans nothing was more can-do than candy!
Vintage Candy Ads Mars Bar 1950
Flush with victory after the war, can-do– Americans were ready to surge into the post-war future and candy would be there to facilitate the rush. In a nation of can-do Americans, nothing was more can-do than candy! And conscientious mothers made sure America’s youngest citizens had adequate supplies of this energy producing miracle.
Mother’s made sure their children had adequate supplies of energy candy
Vintage advertisement Milky Way Candy 1948
In 1946 Dayton,Ohio housewife Dotty Draper was an up to date homemaker, schooled in the latest scientific nutritional facts.
As chief cook and dietician, she understood that if hers was to be the perfect American family, her husband and her children must be perfectly fed. All those home-ec classes she had excelled in during High School would really come in handy.
Vintage ad Ovaltine 1948
When Dotty’s thoughts turned to preparing her children for life of course she thought of their health – to keep them rosy, robust, chubby and strong.
Sometimes she felt as if the bold headlines of the advertisements in her magazines screamed out just at her: “And remember if a child becomes thin and nervous, frail or under par, the cause is your fault mothers, faulty nutrition. Remember always that the most common correctable cause is faulty nutrition- even among supposedly well fed children. And this cause is one that you the mother can do something about”.
Dotty understood that an active child might need twice as much energy food as an adult and according to the experts, a child’s craving for sweets shows that this need is unsatisfied. The answer: Candy.
Real nourishment which quickly translates into action.
“Candy contains not only pure sugar for energy building,” she would read, ” but from orchard and field, and from dairy farms, it takes the products that make candy the wholesome, flavorsome colorful food that it is.”
Dotty had taken a solemn oath: “There is nothing more important in this world,” she was fond of quoting to her brood of freckled face kids,“than the feeding of your ladies and gentlemen of tomorrow! And your fathers and mothers realize too that on your healthy strength and growth depends not only the happiness of the family but the future of the nation.”
That’s why in-the-know-Dotty was sure to load the kids up on plenty of wholesome candy!
Vintage Baby Ruth Ad 1927
When Dotty was a child during the late 1920’s, nutritionists began touting candy as a good source of nourishment, a handy and quick source of nutrition. As healthy as an apple or a glass of milk.
Candy was good for the whole family, as described in this 1927 ad for baby Ruth:
When the chill blasts of winter keeps you inside, there is always cozy comfort with baby Ruth around. The whole family – grandma, dad, mother and the young folks, even the tiniest tot-enjoys this delicious candy and finds real nourishment and health building energy in its wholesome goodness.
Quality Food. Curtiss Candy were proud of their quality dairy farms and the quality milk that went into their Baby Ruth candy bars. and Butterfingers. And rich in dextrose too! A glass of milk or a candy bar…you choose.
By the 1930’s candy’s place in the diet had been firmly entrenched with the dietary authorities recognizing its nutritional food value. Home Economists – especially those in the employ of candy manufacturers – were quick to point out the nutritional value of candy aiming to show candy as good wholesome food..
Modern nutritionist’s called it a muscle food. It’s carbohydrates “were as important to the human body as coal or oil is to the furnace.”
Vintage Nutrition Booklet 1944
You and Your Engine by Laura Oftedal National Live Stock & Meat Board
All Mothers understood that food was foremost fuel.
Because we were told to think of our body as an engine, mothers were instructed that they were the engineers of the worlds finest kind of engine- their childs.
Vintage illustration-from Nutrition Booklet 1944
You and Your Engine by Laura Oftedal National Live Stock & Meat Board
Before you fill your child’s tank again, mothers were warned, you better read and learn and remember. A good railroad engineer or automobile driver, knows what fuel is best for his engine. So if you wanted to be a good mother it was imperative to learn what fuel is best for your child’s engine to keep your children streamlined and in good condition.
The best fuel was the food which gives your child engine muscle, heat, and energy.
Wholesome Candy provides energy, muscle-building protein and healthy protective minerals.
Vintage ads (L) illustration from Carnation Milk ad 1942 (R) Mars Bar Ad 1957
Candy was wholesome energy food with muscle-building protein and health protecting minerals. “You’ve burnt up energy you need energy refuel. That’s the fundamental story of candy-quick energy for bodies that need energy more.”
“If your body never sent out an “SOS” for energy there would be no call for candy…except for pleasure purposes. But bodies do need energy, and candy is steam on the job, whether you’re working at a factory, on the job in an office or at home, or playing football on the corner lot.an energy food.”
“Yes, America, we are growing beyond those stern days which ruled, “If it tastes good to you, it mustn’t be good for you.”
In the know-modern nutritionists now agreed that when the body called for energy candy was one of the quick and happy answers.
Vintage Ad 1946 from the Council on Candy of the National Confectioners Association . “The crave for Candy is a call for energy! The fundamental story of candy- quick energy for bodies that need energy. Candy is dandy-keep it handy!”
In 1946, The Council on Candy of the National Confectioners Association ran an aggressive ad campaign titled: The Crave for Candy is a Call for Energy.
Headquartered in Chicago The Council on Candy was “an organization devoted to maintaining high standards of quality in candy and the dissemination of authoritative information on its use as an energy producing, morale building food.”
“By All means, let em’ eat cake…and candy too!” Illustration from Vintage 1946 ad for Dextrose Sugar who encouraged the benefits of sweets. Corn Products Refining Company, producers of Dextrose fanned the sugar flame with their own heavy advertising
“Isn’t it true that you often have a hankering for candy”? the Council on Candy asks in one of its ads.
“Well here’s the reason.”, they explains. “Scientists have learned that bodies hanker for foods that contain elements they need when they need them. Whether your golfing mowing the grass or going to the store, you need Can Do– and Candy is the can-do food!”
“Modern nutritionists now agree that when the body calls for energy candy is one of the quick and happy answers. That’s why we remind you in rhyme when its energy time: Candy’s Dandy/ Keep it Handy !”
1945 Vintage Ad children’s Candy Quiz – Council on Candy of the National Confectioners Association
The Council eagerly provided a handy quiz for parents on the value of candy.
It explained the wholesome, nutritious value of candy:”Candy contains not only pure sugar for energy building but, from orchard and field and from the dairy farm it takes the products that make candy the wholesome, colorful food that it is.”
“When you know the answers don’t you get a brand new picture of candy’s place in nutrition?” the ad asked the reader.
“Yes, candy has a definite part to play. Naturally its outstanding usefulness is providing quick energy in a most inviting pleasant and handy form. “If you followed the experts advise “you would send your children off to school with a surge of power that will thrill you!”
“We call this the can do” of candy.”
Wholesome candy…trick or treat? You be the judge.
© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
We need to take a hard look at history. A Vanity Fair cover from July 1933 showing a despondent Uncle Sam seated on the Western hemisphere with storm clouds above can serve as a somber harbinger for our own times. Illustration by Paolo Garretto
History has never seemed more relevant.
That anti-Semite Steve Bannon who made white nationalism mainstream through Breitbart, is now to be President Elect Donald Trump’s Goebbels…er…Chief Strategist.
This past summer with the weight of history hanging heavy as the Republicans nominated Donald J. Trump as their candidate for president, historians spoke out as never before.
We didn’t listen then.
We need to listen now.
It’s a post worth repeating, so we don’t repeat history.
A dozen distinguished historians from David McCullough to Ken Burns have bonded together to create a Facebook page called Historians on Donald Trump, dedicated to educating the voters on the disturbing threat trump poses to American democracy.
Historian Robert Caro called Trump a “demagogue” who appeals to the ugliest parts of human nature.
“History tells us we shouldn’t underestimate him,” Caro said. “History is full of demagogues and sometimes rise to the very heights of power by appealing to things that are unfortunately a part of human nature: racism, which I think is a part of human nature no matter how hard we try, and excessive virulent patriotism that goes by the name xenophobia.”
Joining them are Historians Against Trump, a group of history professors, museum professionals, public historians and scholars who are concerned about the ominous precedents for Trump’s candidacy. In a published open letter they wrote: “The lessons of history compel us to speak out against a movement rooted in fear and authoritarianism.”
They are all urging us to take a hard look at history.
I didn’t need the urging
History surrounds me on a daily basis. Literally and figuratively.
The Depression era discrepancy between “the haves” and “have not’s” is illustrated in this Vanity Fair cover “Fat Cat and Hobo” from October 1933. The Vanity Fair of May 1933 (R) illustrates an unpredictable Washington DC , optimistic one minute, foreboding and disastrous the next. Illustration Vladimir Bobritsky
The flotsam and jetsam from over the past hundred years, the vintage advertising, articles, newspapers, booklets and illustrations that permeated the American Twentieth century mass media play in an endless loop through my mind, cluttering it like so many teetering stacks of vintage magazines and books that clutter my art studio.
In my constant field of vision, are a series of framed vintage Vanity Fair magazine covers from 1933 that powerfully illustrate that most tumultuous year, a year that would have far reaching global consequences. and offer a somber forewarning to our own troubled times.
Many are illustrated by Italian artist Paolo Garretto arguably one of the great European illustrators of his time, his graphic covers expose the unsettling climate of the 1930’s including Hitler’s rise to power.
These compelling images of that unsettling time serve as a cautionary tale.
The cover of Vanity Fair December 1933. Figures representing U.S. Italy, France and England “tangle’ over Hitler. Illustration Paolo Garreto
As I listened to a speech in Cincinnati a few weeks ago, a rambling Trump maniacally defending the use of the Star of David in his anti Clinton image, it was clear he was pandering to his racist anti-Semitic supporters. As I looked up at the vintage Vanity Fair covers that hang directly in front of my computer, I felt a chill.
An expert demagogue whipping discontented working class voters into a frenzy, stoking racial resentment and exaggerated threats, giving the disenfranchised a bogeyman to blame misrepresenting the facts and exploiting economic insecurities.
Sound familiar?
Vanity Fair Covers 1932 Hitler and Mussolini
The use of ethnic stereotypes,the exploitation of fear of foreigners, and the concerns about national decline is an ugly stew of propaganda straight from a fascist recipes book .
It’s a recipe for disaster.
But confused and angry voters can take the bait.
1933
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Rachel Maddow said that she has been studying Adolph Hitler in the first few months of his tenure as German chancellor:
“Over the past year I’ve been reading a lot about what it was like when Hitler first became chancellor. I am gravitating toward moments in history for subliminal reference in terms of cultures that have unexpectedly veered into dark places, because I think that’s possibly where we are.”
Cover Vanity Fair November 1933. Artist Paolo Garretto envisioned the globe as a bomb with a fuse waiting go off as diplomats stand at the top of the world seemingly oblivious.
1933 opened with Adolph Hitler becoming chancellor of Germany. The great theme of his speeches throughout the previous year was that “politicians had ruined the Reich.”
Some thought a Hitler government would be a farcical affair. The right had the illusion that Hitler was a lightweight, a ridiculous Austrian demagogue whose oratorical gifts they could exploit while “managing” to contain him.
Over the course of the one year these magazine covers appeared, Hitler was elected as chancellor of Germany, the Reichstag’s Enabling Act was passed after the burning of the Reichstag, enabling police to bypass courts giving Hitler everything he needed to set up a totalitarian state making him dictator of Germany
This was quickly followed by massive Nazi Book burnings, legalized eugenic sterilization, boycotting of Jewish businesses, prohibition of trade unions and forbidding all non Nazi political parties in Germany.
The very month FDR was telling a frightened nation we had nothing to fear but fear itself, Dachau the first Nazi concentration camp opened.
It was a frightening time.
There are compelling reasons to feel grave concern today.
Pulitzer prize winner Ron Chernow, one of the historians on Historians on Donald Trump page remarked in a video : “I have been deeply disturbed by the Trump campaign — more deeply disturbed than by any other presidential campaign in our history.
“We’ve all been horrified by the many shocking statements this man has made, but no less frightening have been the omissions,” he continued.
“I’m disturbed by the words missing from the Trump campaign: liberty and justice, freedom and tolerance,” he added. “The only historical movement that Trump alludes to is a shameful one: America First,” he said, referring to Trump’s foreign policy slogan, which shares its name with an anti-Semitic group from the 1940s.”
“Please, please, please folks don’t let it happen here,” Chernow pleaded.”
We have the power to stop it.
After Tony the Tiger took on Pepe the Frog, Breitbart the populist home for the alt right has declared all out war on Kellogg’s.
Once Kellogg’s pulled its advertising from that popular platform for white nationalists, deciding the site was not in alignment with its company’s values, Breitbart felt bullied and fought back. Arguing that Kellogg’s was turning its back on “family values,” they started a #DumpKellogg’s campaign.
Breitbart proudly calling itself the number one site for “pro family content, stated emphatically that Kellogg’s “serves up bigotry at your breakfast table.”
And there was no sugar-coating this – anyone continuing to enjoy a bowl of Frosted Flakes and not boycott the products were clearly against traditional family values.
Family values? Sure if racism, anti-immigration, anti antisemitism is part of your family tradition.
The Choice is Yours
Vintage Kellogg’s Variety Pack cereal 1959
The only ones serving up a heaping helping of bigotry and intolerance is Breitbart itself with its racist rhetoric and incendiary articles.
But they didn’t stop at the claim that Kellogg’s was being anti family, the company was downright un-American too.
Breitbart blustered: “Kellogg’s decision to blacklist one of the largest conservative media outlets in America is economic censorship of mainstream conservative political discourse. That is as un-American as it gets.”
Is this same all American cereal that has been keeping family breakfasts happy for eons
What is more American than freedom of choice? Kellogg’s went head to head against monotony and uniformity at the breakfast table and won.
Vintage ad Kellogg’s variety Pack Brings harmony to the family
All one need to do is look at Kellogg’s 70 years of promoting diversity and harmony at the family table with their famous Variety Pack, a clever packaging of multiple choices for everyone.
Vintage Kellogg’s Cereal ad 1955. Kellogg’s famous variety pack made for fun breakfast eating and appealed to different tastes for different folks offering choice and diversification at the breakfast table.
Besides which, Kellogg’s is already battle tested, when they went to ear against another group of white nationalists in WWII.
Vintage ad 1943 WWII
Kellogg’s Variety packs cleverly containing small individual boxes of their popular cereals made their first appearance en 1941. it wasn’t long before they were part of patriotic wartime meal planning.
Uncle Sam wanted everyone on the home front to be in tip-top shape for all the extra burden of war work.
For the first time he devised a nutritional guide promoting the Basic 7 food groups to maintain nutritional standards especially under the burdens of rationing and food shortages. The government encouraged vitamin and mineral enrichment of food to improve out health.
Snap, Krackle and Pop fight WWII Vintage Rice Krispies ad 1943
Like other food companies Kellogg’s took heed. Cereals like Rice Krispies were restored to the whole grain nutritive values of brown rice. Vitamins like niacin and iron were added to other cereals too so children could return to school the “Victory Way.”
Because Mothers were soon enlisted in the safekeeping of their family’s health, favoring any foods that saved time work and fuel, all scarce commodities in wartime.
Kellogg’s Variety pack fit the bill.
Vintage ad WWII 1943 Kellogg’s Variety Cereals. Variety packs were soon being touted as the answer to many meal time dilemmas saving the all important time work and fuel that were scare in wartime.
Cereals save time-work and fuel – They’re all ready to eat!No cooking or preparing is required, no messy pans skillets or stove to clean up- even the dishes are easier to wash! And you know how those things count these busy war-time days!
Save Space cuts waste- Individual size packages in handy tray carton gives you a man-sized meal in a jiffy. No half eaten packages…and you’re assured of s new package freshness every time! Variety tempts youngsters!
With food shortages and rationing, cereals offered another help to the harried housewife:
Stretches meat – make milk go farther. In addition to serving cereals as meatless meals use them to extend meat in meat loves hamburgers croquettes etc. Cereals help stretch precious milk too…you use less than a glassful per serving.
Kudos to Kellogg’s for being on the right side of history.
Worth remembering from the archives:
Just as 9/11 is a marker for this current generation, and November 22 was for mine, Sunday December 7, 1941 was a where-were-you-when-kind of day that was seared permanently in the memory of the greatest generation, including my parents.
The war was still over there, though the news was full of muffled but ominous portents. From the Far East came reports of Japanese troop movement in Indochina and that Saturday night FDR would make a last-minute appeal to the Japanese Emperor Hirohito for direct talks but to no avail.
Like most Americans, my mother and her family did not expect to be at war the next day or the next week or even the next month, but they knew in their hearts it was inevitable.
When, was the big question.
So like everyone else, my mother’s family went about their business.
The day before Pearl Harbor there were only 15 shopping days to Xmas and the department stores were having one of the biggest shopping sprees in years.
Goods were plentiful but pricier than last year. Nylons were replacing silk stockings which had been scarce because of the darn embargo on Japanese silk thread. But Stern’s Department Store in NY offered them at “one special buy all you want price” of $1.75 a pair.A fifth of scotch was 3 bucks, but in two Christmases these items as well as many others would be next to impossible to find.
Saturday night in NYC where my mother’s family lived, was a mass of Christmas shoppers and visitors streaming into restaurants, night clubs theaters and movies, ready to paint the town red.
That evening my grandparents were Broadway-bound with tickets to see the critically acclaimed Lillian Hellman production of Watch on the Rhine at the Martin Beck Theater. It’s portrayal of a family who struggle to combat the menace of fascism in Europe during WWII responded directly to the political climate of the day, and the continuing debate on American neutrality in the War.
While the audience absorbed the words of Lillian Hellman’s warning that “all who chose to ignore the international crisis were helping to perpetuate it and that no one could count himself or herself free of danger,” 6 carriers of the Pearl Harbor striking force under Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo sliced through the blue waves of the Pacific a few hundred miles north of Hawaii.
(L) 1939 Vintage advertisement- Matson Cruise Line to Hawaii “A Voyage as Colorful as Hawaii’s flowered isles”
Picking up a copy of the Sunday Herald Tribune on their way back to Brooklyn after the show, my grandfather read in the rotogravure section an article about the naval base at Pearl Harbor, “the point of Defense of our West Coast.”
The pictures of silvery sands mingled with war planes flying over Diamond Head. As the newspaper article pointed out, the lucky lei-draped tourist vacationing there would be too busy eyeing the hula girls to notice the Army pillboxes since they were cleverly concealed from prying eyes. The accompanying pictures showed an idyllic tropical setting, causing my grandmother to make a mental note to visit there sometime soon.
It was difficult for many Americans to understand what was happening in the Pacific. We were preoccupied with Hitler.
Another factor was plain and simple geography.
Until the air age, islands like Midway and Iwo Jima were practically worthless. Like most Americans, most of what my parents did know about the Pacific had been invented by Hollywood. The south Seas were pictured as exotic isles where lazy winds whispered in the palm fronds and native girls wore sarongs like Dorothy Lamour.
1938 Vintage ads Dole Pineapple Juice
The closest most Americans would get to those enchanted Isles of Hawaii would be courtesy of Dole. Whether as canned juice or slices, exotic pineapple from Honolulu Hawaii had become immensely popular over the past decade due to its unusual health values.
Pearl Harbor a once unfamiliar name for most Americans who weren’t quite sure where it was, would grow increasingly familiar all too soon.
The next day, Sunday, the eastern seaboard was quiet but jittery with the news of the surprise attack.
Along with millions of Americans, my mother first learned of the attack when her father turned on the big mahogany RCA Radio to hear his favorite CBS broadcast of the NY Philharmonic concert at 3pm. That Sunday most people gathered around their radios listening for whatever news they could get about Pearl Harbor.
On anything but a mundane Monday, 60,000,000 jittery American would remember exactly where they were when they turned on their radios at noon to listen to President Roosevelt speak of that day that would live in infamy!
© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Bringing holiday cheer to our men overseas. Vintage WWII Coke Ad 1943
Remembering all our brave military men and women who won’t be home for Christmas!
A Merry Christmas to All!
The Greatest Generation loses one more….
Memorial day this year takes on a different significance than other years for me.
This year as the number of WWII veterans continue to dwindle, another former G.I. of the Greatest Generation has recently died.
My dad.
Through the years I have shared with you countless stories of my mid-century suburban family many of them featuring my father. Though often tongue in cheek, they were always from the heart.
Now I am heartbroken.
For many Memorial Day posts I fondly recalled my suburban childhood backyard barbecues when my dad would break out the Weber charcoal grill for the first Bar-B-Q of the season. A king size cigarette dangling from his lips, barbecue apron round his regulation Bermuda shorts, Dad’s grease-stained apron with its “Big Daddy” type splashed in lurid colors, distinguished this ex GI as a commander-in-chief of the barbecue brigade.
Strategically wielding the Big Boy barbecue tongs my dad was ready for any barbecue maneuver.
This year the bag of Kingdford Briquettes remain unopened, the dented, metal, grill untouched.
As I did with my mother, I helped my 96-year-old father on his final journey. For the past 6 weeks work ceased, emails remained unanswered, and my garden lay fallow, as I tended to something more important and fundamental.
I understood the symmetry that my parents gave me life and entrusted me with helping in transition towards ending their own, but emotionally the weight bore down on me.
Barely two weeks ago, that journey ended.
Befitting a once-upon-a-time-soldier, Dad received a military burial.
After the countless stories I have shared with you, it seems only fitting that I share this final tribute that I wrote to my father, Marvin Edelstein.
An early Marathon runner, my father ran in the NYC Marathon several times. 1979
My father was a long distance runner and so it is fitting that his life ran as long as it did.
This lifelong marathon man chose to make his final journey in the same manner. The past two weeks had been a marathon for all of us, my brother Andy and I included, as we accompanied him on this last treacherous course, one filled with twists and turns, that we maneuvered with him, breathlessly running up our own Heartbreak Hill more than a couple of times. But each step of the way when we thought we had no more stamina, my father persevered as he did in life valiantly, pushing through, often against all odds and with amazing tenacity.
And it was he who chose when to cross the finish line.
Like many of us, my father was a complex man, often filled with apparent contradictions.
A man who was decades ahead of his time in matters of gender equality, he turned our 1960’s Maxwell House Haggadah into a gender neutral reading for our Seders. He was a man who just this past January beamed with enormous pride at my participation in the Women’s March in Washington. Yet this was the same man who good-naturedly could still refer to women as dames and broads with not a PC care in the world and wasn’t shy about exclaiming that his granddaughter Jessie was “some good looking tomato.”
My father was a secular Jew who was somewhat suspect of the dogma of religion yet rose to be the president of our synagogue Nassau Community Temple where he regularly participated in Torah study classes, and whose favorite shower song was “Ein K’ Eloheinu,” his boisterous off-key voice bellowing out this Friday night closing hymn at the top of his lungs reverberating throughout the house.
This lifelong Republican, a county committeeman, who not only founded a local Republican club becoming their president, working tirelessly for them, yet he was in fact the first phone call I got the morning after this recent presidential election, bemoaning Trump’s victory, his first words to me were: “I’m sitting Shiva.”
The son of a Damon Runyon-esque character if ever there was one, who dropped out of school in the 6th grade and whose reading was limited to the Daily Mirror, my father went on to law school and would often mentioned reading Proust in the sweltering jungles of New Guinea during the war…that is when he wasn’t chasing island girls!
A Twentieth Century Man
(L) A baby of the roaring twenties, (R) my father Marvin and his brother Sandy grew up in Astoria Queens, 1930’s
The year he was born 1921, the hit song was “Aint We Got Fun” and in retrospect that would be an apt description of my eternally upbeat, optimistic, fun-loving father.
His life spanned nearly a century.
Remarkable, considering that when my father was born in 1921 the population over 65 was only 4%. That he lived to 96 is amazing. That 95 ½ of those years were physically active, mentally engaged is downright astounding.
He loved history which he passed on to me because, well, he lived through so darn much of it.
This was a man who saw Charles Lindbergh welcomed home as a hero at the greatest ticker tape parade NYC had ever seen after Lucky Lindy’s historic flight to Paris. This little 6-year-old boy would himself grow to crisscross the Atlantic dozens of times with the casual ease allowed by jet planes in the many travels he enjoyed with my mother.
Born at the inception of radio and before talkies in the movies, he lived to see the computer age though despite our nudging, he sadly never took a ride on the internet highway though he marveled indeed at having face time with his granddaughter.
My father (R) at the University of Virginia 1941
FDR gave the commencement speech when my father graduated the University of Virginia and though not a New Dealer himself, my father was very proud of the fact that the President of the United States, that most magnificent orator, spoke so eloquently at his graduation. Oh, how times have changed.
Greatest Generation
Corporal Marvin Edelstein 1943
Like most men of his generation he served in WWII, stationed in New Guinea where as part of the Army Air Corps trained as a weatherman.
I recently came across a letter he wrote while in the service exactly 74 years ago in April 1943 that was published in his home town synagogue paper The Astoria Center of Israel Bulletin:
“Here is a letter from one of our boys,” it begins, “which we are happy to bring to your attention:
For the past few weeks,” my father’s letter begins,”I have been receiving the Bulletin. Needless to say, it came at first as a great surprise – however, an extremely pleasant surprise. Now I find myself looking forward eagerly to the next issue. You have no conception how much this means to us who are so far from home. It is only now that I have begun to appreciate the phrase concerning ‘the ties that bind.’
While I was writing this, they delivered a package to me from the Ladies Guild. I can scarcely say much more than “Thank You, ladies.’ It is not merely the material contents of the box that is impressive- rather the hopes and prayers that one feels fills the package.
Being in the Army has given me a chance to fully consider and appreciate the life we all once knew and to which we will, we pray, shortly return. Your work of trying to fill in that gap certainly means a lot to us wherever we may be. We want things to be as we left them until we come back and you are helping to serve notice that they will be.
Let me thank you again and hasten to assure you that by Purim 1944 our contemporary Haman will have met the same fate as his predecessor.”
My father of course did return and began living out those post war possibilities that were promised to the returning vets.
Post War Promises
My family 1957
I would grow up living my parents post war dreams.
And nothing personified that dream more than his suburban home which he lived in for 62 years. That suburban dream that sprung up in a field of potatoes was their Promised Land that beckoned millions of post war pioneers including my parents.
Siblings, Sally (L) and her brother Andy at their new house 1955.
Last week Andy and I had the sad task of going to his house on Western Park Drive to pick out a suit for his burial.
As I stood forlornly in his bedroom closet, one I had been in countless times, I felt the enormous trajectory of his adult life, of life lived in this house. Standing in that place that late afternoon, entrusted with this somber duty, I felt myself transported back to 1955 when a 30 something ex GI and his wife pregnant with me, a 2-year-old little boy in tow, first looked at this brand new house that would be their home for the rest of their lives.
(L) Deposit for their new house a whopping $10 down!
Like thousands of other young married apartment dwellers, they began house hunting as their family expanded. Every weekend they’d trudge out to LI. Just as all the houses from the development seemed to look the same so the other house hunting couple all seemed to mirror their experience.
Now as I stood inside that large walk in closet he had viewed decades earlier, I imagined the thrill this young man who had shared a small Astoria apartment bedroom with his younger brother Sandy must have experienced with the prospect of a large master bedroom and the luxury of a genuine walk in closet.
Settling into their new suburban house, my father, baby sally and brother Andy 1955
Walking from room to room, I could imagine my mother mentally installing furniture and decorating its rooms. This new house on Western Park Drive that would the beginning of the fulfillment of those post war dreams allowing them to envision the life they would lead with their family they were just beginning.
Now this same closet that spanned 62 years that held my Dads worsted wool suits and polyester leisure suits, EZ care wash and wear and velour running suits, was looked through for the last time as his grown children were tasked with picking out one last, final suit.
It’s So Nice To Have A Man Around the House
The classic Handymans Book 1957
My father took to suburban living with a zeal.
It was a time of the do-it-yourselfer craze and he dug right in. My father willed himself to be handy around the house. This former apartment dwelling fellow taught himself to a home owner.
The pinnacle of that was the suburban finished basement that mid-century homage to family fun and good modern living. So in the mid-1960’s my devoted dad took on the challenge.
Every night after dinner and on weekends he’d descend to the unfinished basement busying himself in this project building a frame where he would attach the faux knotty pine paneling, the waft of the toxic glue he used to install the tiles rising to the rest of the house. It was a testament to his stick to-it-tiveness and tenacity to accomplish something he had never done before. This willingness to try new things out of his comfort zone extended to many areas in his life.
This same house that Andy and I were raised in took on another chapter with the addition of my niece and nephew Jessie and Sam filling it with laughter and light. Thus began our nearly 2 decades long Sunday ritual of visiting our parents just as we had done with our own grandparents for decades. The light that Jessie and Sam brought into my father’s life was reflected in the sheer glow he emanated at the sight of them.
It was hard to miss. And now, sadly, I will….
Last Chapter
Marvin Edelstein 2012
And then there was this last chapter that began for my father in his late 80’s.
This man, who had never lived alone, had to carve out a life for himself when my dear mother passed away. Always the anchor of the family, without my mother he felt adrift, but his tenacity and positive outlook continued to pay off. He immediately signed up for college courses and joined a gym.
I was always amused that my father, a man of his times who’s previous culinary skills involved scrambling eggs and salami and perhaps tossing a manly Caesar salad, whose only forays into food shopping might have been to drive through a Dairy Barn for a quart of milk, now found himself fascinated with supermarkets and delighting in his weekly strolls through farmers markets. Until 4 months ago my father still cooked for himself.
The Age of Mad Man
vintage illustration Fun With Dick and Jane 1951
My father could be imperfect. Like all of us he had his flaws.
A deeply sentimental man he was the product of a time and a generation that taught men to withhold their feelings and keep a stiff upper lip, to keep your own counsel. A master toastmaster with others he could in fact be short on words at home. But his devoted love of family, commitment and loyalty were values instilled in us without words being necessary gleaned by example, and it was burnished deeply in my own soul.
In the last few months and weeks of his life as he became physically frail, he felt deeply betrayed by his body, but never once would he worry he would be left alone. As his once sharp and quick-witted mind began to deteriorate till that mind had all but disappeared what was left was his pure essence… of sweetness and gentleness. And it allowed he and I to connect in a way that in other times had sometimes eluded us.
Wherever his mind went I followed happily, without reserve or judgement.
A once clever, intelligent man’s mind was ravaged but what was left was his inner goodness, his true self distilled to its purest form of unadulterated sweetness and love. His adoring, loving gazes and endearing smiles are forever etched in my heart, knowing I was connecting with the best of him.
As he got the best of me.
When I was in second grade we were asked to write a piece about our fathers. The title of my paper was “My Daddy Fixes Everything.” Not unlike today, spelling was not my forte so I naturally spelled it Fises with an S instead of an X and that phrase clearly tickled him as he would recite that line My Daddy Fises Everything, for decades, always with a smile
In a child’s mind my daddy could fix anything. Wielding a tube of Duco cement he could miraculously repair a broken doll, a busted toy truck, a cracked, beloved serving dish.
But alas he is not here now, but I fear even if he were, he could not fis my broken heart.
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© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2017. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Donald Trump’s thunderous threat to North Korea warning of the “Fire and fury like the world has never seen” is uncomfortably familiar.
This uncanny echo has been heard before and no, not from Kim Jong-un and his blustering Korean state media but from a former U.S. President.
Harry Truman the only president to have actually used atomic weapons warned Japan after we had bombed Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 that “If they did not now accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth.”
Without the convenience of twitter, Truman announced the news of the bombing of Hiroshima in a press release from the White House and in a radio address.
Truman was discouraged by Japans refusal to accept the demand for unconditional surrender that had been issued at Potsdam on July 26.
Masters Of The Universe
Warning that this rain of ruin would continue he threatened “Behind this air attack will follow sea and land forces in such number that and power as they have not yet seen and with the fighting skill of which they are already well aware.”
Ironically today marks the 72 anniversary of the tragic bombing of Nagasaki, in which Truman made good on his threatened rain of ruin. It was the last time a nuclear bomb was used.
The U.S. released this evil from it’s Pandora’s box and it now up to us to contain it, and more urgently contain our President.
Donald Trump’s actions have been a daily “reign of ruin” on our country, our fundamental beliefs and our standing in the world.
I am filled with fury…and fear.
© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2017.
How does a Holocaust survivor, a little boy who lost his family, now 70 years later and a proud American citizen endure listening his own President talk about the “good people” at the torch lit Nazi parade?
Past has become present in the most horrifying way.
When I see the Nazi flag that symbol of the Third Reich being waved proudly through the streets of Charlottesville, all I can see is a little Polish boy, homeless, hungry and cold living in a crowded Displaced Persons camp in postwar Germany, lingering for four years in search of refuge.
When I hear those angry neo Nazis chanting hate filled slogans like “Jews will not replace us” on American soil, I see the same little boy who would never know what it was like to grow up with a grandfather, a grandmother, uncles or aunts.
Hitler saw to that.
Nazi flags flapped and Seig Heils offered along in Charlottesville eerily reminiscent of Nazi Germany L) Image via Andy Campbell Twitter R) Nazi Germany
Because his family were among the millions of unarmed Jewish civilians men women and children brutally slaughtered by the Nazis in the towns of Eastern Europe. Those swastika wearing forebearers are the inspiration to today’s hate filled Americans offering Sieg Heils on the streets of an American town.
Now 70 years later, that same little boy who would eventually grow up to be an American citizen, has had to tragically hear his own President talk about the “good people” at the torch lit Nazi parade.
Past Is Present
In some ways the past is always present in the little boy who lives within this man. With wounds too deep to ever heal, the decades old walls built to cover pain too hard to feel and block out what is too hard to remember, remain impenetrable. Along with parts of himself, the trauma lives buried, its toxic damage leaching out over 70 years, affecting generations.
I know this because, this little boy born without a home and without an extended family would one day grow up to be my all American husband.
Though not my own history the damage from his decades old tragedy becomes part of mine.
Now as I observe this man as he watches the horror of what has been unleashed in our country, I see the little boy confronted by that noxious symbol of hate once again, and the trauma that has long been buried, gets stirred up. The look is of pain but so deep he is unable to speak of it.
Today I will be his voice.
And it is loud, it is outraged, and it is frightened.
The horrors of the Holocaust seemed as far removed from my own safe, postwar suburban life as I could imagine.
I always felt fortunate to have been born when I was.
Born a full decade after the end WWII which in a child’s mind is an eternity, the Nazi atrocities of Auschwitz and Treblinka and Belzec seemed ancient history. Storm Troopers in their black boots and their angry red flags emblazoned with swastikas became harmless villains easily beaten in movies, comics and television. America’s story of triumph of good over evil was the lessons of WWII. We had been victorious in our fight against Hitler resulting in the ultimate defeat of the ultimate evil.
How glad I was to be a Jew in America safe and immune from that kind of hate.
The unthinkable atrocities in Europe could never happen in our democracy we were told.
Kristallnacht, the Night of broken Glass, that most horrific night in November where the Nazis destroyed hundreds of synagogues, vandalized Jewish businesses, schools and hospitals, demolished buildings with sledgehammers, attacked Jews in their homes and killed hundreds in a solitary night in 1938 seemed as far removed from my own safe, postwar suburban life as I could imagine.
Of course through the years, a reviled swastika scrawled on a wall or an ugly anti-Semitic rant might rear its ugly head causing a queasy uneasy feeling to wash over me, but I could be confident that the perpetrators of this hateful act were swiftly and firmly denounced.
Holocaust survivors in a Displaced Persons Camp
The European Jewish story was history, an unthinkable tragedy important to remember, but unimaginable here.
But now the unthinkable is entering American Jews thoughts.
I no longer feel protected in my own country least of all by our president with his appalling lack of leadership and empathy. The hatred, bigotry and violence in Charlottesville came from “many sides” our President insisted, but the fact is only one side was carrying swastika flags, the flag of Nazi Germany.
It is unthinkable that the President of the United States, the leader of a country that over 70 years ago sacrificed hundreds and thousands of the greatest generation to ensure the demise of that same evil, not vigorously condemn Americans who marched under the flag of the Third Reich. How can he possibly claim to represent America, its’ values and its’ citizens?
No, Mr. Trump you do not represent me.
Copyright (©) 2017 Sally Edelstein All Rights Reserved
A patriotic Santa comes to the aid of the Allies in this WWII Christmas advertisement for Interwoven Socks .
Just as both sides in a war claim God on their side, so WWII American’s enlisted Santa to help fight their battle.
This 1944 ad for Interwoven Socks should be filed under vintage advertising we are not likely to see ever again in our politically correct culture.
Claus For a Cause
In 1943 while FDR, and Churchill conferred in Casablanca, apparently Uncle Sam was having a hush-hush tete a tete with Santa Claus in the North Pole, to strategize the war.
Appearing to wield powers far beyond those of mortal men- not unlike another super hero- Santa stomps out the Axis of Evil in one clean swoop of caricatures – Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo.
Clearly this ad should end the current Santa debate – Santa isn’t just white, he’s a red-blooded American!
© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2017.
After WWII, my future husband and his family of Holocaust survivors lingered in an overcrowded Displaced Persons Camp in Germany waiting for a country that would accept them as politicians and a fear mongering media debated the loyalty of Eastern Europeans and the fear of Communist infiltration. My 2-year-old husband to-be in a DP Camp 1947 photo: family collection
I married a refugee who as a little boy was perceived as a threat to Cold War America and not as a survivor of the Holocaust.
While my childhood was a sugar frosted world of frost-free fun living out the post war suburban dream, my husband would spend the first four years of his life in a displaced persons camp, while Congress bickered unwilling to change existing restrictive immigration laws that severely limited the number of Eastern European allowed.
Was he any more of a threat to our country than a Migrant Central American or Syrian refugee child is today?
Steeped in fear, some Americans have a habit of marking an entire people as predisposed to disloyalty.
Tragically one sits in the oval office today, wielding a mighty presidential pen issuing out executive orders grossly affecting the lives of millions and tarnishing America’s moral authority. His presidential policy is to appeal to his base with racially motivated attacks on immigrants.
When it comes to American paranoia, Donald Trump’s fear based, fear driven policy aimed at the other feels eerily familiar.
Fear mongering media and xenophobic politicians cry out in protest at the possible influx of refugees seeking a safe haven.
Squawking like Chicken Little, they ominously warn of the dire consequences and threat to America if we allow “these tired, these poor, these huddled masses” of refugees ‘yearning to breathe free” into our homeland.
These particular refugees they assert “are supporters of terrorism, violence and the abrogation of American laws and ideals…they will take over the country and subvert our constitution.”
“Taking in these refugees would be suicide for the US because anti-American terrorists may be disguising themselves as refugees.”
A lawmaker opposing these immigrants claims they are “imbued with political ideologies wholly at variance with our constitutional system!”
Testimony before Congress offered grave warnings that these refugees were “important carriers of the kind of ideological germs with which it is their aim to infect the public opinion of the US.”
Now that certainly sounds like a diagnosis from the good doctor, Ben Carson.
“Is this Tomorrow?” A panel from the 1947 anti communist comic book designed to teach people about the subversive nature of communism.
Only the speaker here was not directing his paranoia at the fear of a Muslim terrorist sneaking into the U.S. along with the Syrian refugees or a dangerous MS-13 gang member from fraudulently sneaking in by applying for asylum.
These remarks were uttered over 65 years ago about another group of refugees seeking asylum, East European refugees.
This fear mongering claiming national security that sounds straight out of the Trump racist playbook on Central American refugees, is actually a page from the cold war anti-communist rhetoric directed at the displaced persons of WWII.
The current policy of blocking refugees fleeing a violent homeland desperate to seek a safe haven, mirrors the deep freeze experienced by displaced placed Eastern European Jews during the cold war whose efforts to get to a safe haven were met by a cold shoulder.
The cold war cast a particularly chilly response to the desperate plight of the displaced person of Europe due to our heightened fear of Communist infiltration.
Thanks to the peddling of irrational fears to a panicked and paranoid public, many post war Americans were resistant to the idea of welcoming these poor souls to our shores.
Displaced Persons in a DP Camp, Germany 1947The conventional wisdom that we immediately opened our shores with outstretched arms to these displaced persons has become a more romanticized version of the truth; the harsh edges of their struggle to enter the land of the free have softened over the past 70 years.
Liberated Jews suffering from illness and exhaustion emerged from concentration camps and hiding places to discover a world which had no place for them.
Well into the post war years, thousands of European Jews remained locked in displaced persons camps in Germany and Austria. Without a home, many were afraid to be repatriated because their countries were now police states under Soviet occupation.
For these ¼ million stateless, homeless Jewish survivors, prospects for resettlement in free democratic lands appeared uncertain.
These huddled masses yearning to be free had nowhere to go.
It is a story that hits close to home.
My future in-laws were Holocaust survivors.
Strong national prejudices, procrastination in Congress and some less than dynamic leadership in White House combined to prolong the miseries of Jews who survived the Holocaust.
All over Europe after the war ended in May of 1945, like a great backwash to the tidal wave of war, almost 10,000,000 confused, depleted and hungry human beings were wandering from place to place amidst the rubble of war. Some were newly liberated labor slaves, some concentration camp survivors, some civilians, some prisoners of war.
Trudging on foot, hitching rides on bicycles, looted German cars, trucks, and hay wagons this stumbling mass of humanity moved steadily on urged on the idea to get home.
For many there was no longer a home.
Many survivors who went home faced hostility from their neighbors and found their homes, possessions and jobs gone.
These huddled masses yearning to be free had nowhere to go.
It is a story that hits close to home.
My future in-laws were Holocaust survivors.
Braving the incertitude among history’s most jumbled mass of migration was a courageous young Jewish woman grown older than her 23 years through the unspeakable horrors that no one should ever bear witness to.
Her entire family lost at the hands of the Nazis, separated from her husband, she trudged on with her meager belongings tightly clutching her most valued possession, her precious newborn baby.
Lost Family 1937 Photo: family collection
This tiny baby boy, born without a home, who would never know what it was to grow up with grandparents, uncles or aunts would one day grow up to be my future all-American husband.
Bereft of home and family, tattered photos were the few remaining mementos many had. Polish Jews 1930s. Vintage photo from family collection
Unable to return to her now vanished hometown in Poland, reunited with her husband, they found their way to a displaced persons camp in Germany.
DP camps were made from abandoned German army barracks, factories and even concentration camps. Most of these camps were crowded and unsanitary with shortages of food and clothing
Before the end of 1945, more than 6 million of those uprooted by the war found a home leaving 1.5 to 2 million displaced persons. Most Jewish survivors were unable or unwilling to return home because of persistent anti-Semitism and the destruction of their communities during the Holocaust. Many of those who did return feared for their lives. In postwar Poland, for example, there were a number of violent riots that claimed scores of Jewish lives.
The big question was where to put the people who could not be repatriated?
Give Us Your Tired, Your Poor
“You’re a Cheap Bunch of Soreheads and You Can’t Land Here,” says a bloated Uncle Sam in cartoonist Art Young’s protest against discriminatory immigration laws. This editorial cartoon appeared in “The Masses” the radical, socialist magazine that attacked the status quo.
Restrictive immigration policies were still in effects in the U.S. and legislation to expedite the admission of Jewish DPs was slow. These constricting immigration policies had at least a partial basis in anti-Semitism and racist theories, thanks to immigration laws passed between 1882 and 1929 that were among the most discriminatory in the world, regulating immigration by race.
Despite loosening of some quota restrictions, by the end of the year opportunities for legal immigration to the United States remained extremely limited.
Congressional action was needed before existing immigration quotas could be increased, so while Congress procrastinated and bickered, my husband would spend the first four of his life in a DP camp looking for a country that would accept him.
A Tarnished Golden Door
These Jews did not receive the welcome promised in the poem by Emma Lazarus inscribed on the Statue of Liberty “I lift my lamp beside the Golden door.” In the years following the end of the war, the lamp was dimmed, the door too often closed.
Many were convinced that Communists had infiltrated DP camps posing as refugees in order to enter the country where they would soon overthrow the government. All were suspect including this homeless little boy on the left who would one day grow up to be my husband. Did I marry a communist ? Not in the least. (L) My 3-year-old husband in a DP Camp 1948 photo family collection (R) 1949 movie poster “I Married a Communist”
Cast in a cold war light, these refugees became even less desirable.
Part of that opposition was fueled, as it is now, by stereotypes of the refugees as harbingers of a dangerous ideology, in this case Communism.
By the beginning of 1947, the composition of the DP camps had changed.
The camps were very overcrowded due to the daily influx of Jews from Eastern Europe fleeing oppressive Soviet occupation. 250,000 Eastern European Jews including large numbers of families and children from Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Poland, and Soviet Union joined the other displaced persons of the Holocaust.
As my husband and his family lingered in an overcrowded DP camp waiting for a country that would accept them, politicians and a fear mongering media debated the loyalty of Eastern Europeans and the fear of communist infiltration.
Warning! Danger Ahead
An anti-communist comic book warning young readers of the dangers ahead should Uncle Sam steer clear of the Rd Iceberg
By 1947 relations between the Soviet Union and U.S. were in the deep freeze; the cold war was frozen solid.
In the black and white cold war world war of good vs evil, America was certain that the communists were waging an aggressive campaign of hatred against us embarking upon an aggressive campaign to destroy free government and the American Way of life.
from the 1947 anti communist comic book “Is This Tomorrow?” warning people of the subversive nature of Communist infiltration
Uncle Sam was convinced that Russia was hell-bent on destroying the traditional American way of Life and had their cunning communist eyes set on infiltrating America with whatever means they could.
American feared being infected with a good case of communism. (R) Is This Tomorrow a 1947 comic book designed to teach people about the subversive nature of communist infiltration.
The very health of democracy was at stake, unless these morally corrupting influences were wiped out and banned from our shores.
More frightening than polio was the spread of that ideological virus communism.
And the displaced persons camps were prime breeding grounds for this subversive cunning germ.
The president of the National Economic Council testified in Congress that the DPs were “important carriers of the kind of ideological germs with which it is their aim to infect the public opinion of the U.S. ”
It was a virulent strain of ideology that once exposed, there was no cure. We needed to quarantine the public from the spread of this dangerous virus.
Crafty subversive plotters training for their roles as peddlers of Soviet propaganda, skillfully disguise themselves as refugees in a DP camp 1947 . Photo family collection
Just as germs entered the bloodstream undetected so Communists could infiltrate and attack. “Skillfully disguising themselves as refugees,” one article warned, “carrying out their mission these communists spend years in training for their subversive roles, poised to slip in a neat hypodermic needle full of Moscow virus.”
In a DP camp in Germany a group of Junior revolutionaries plotting for seizure and power in the USA. Photo- family collection
Many were convinced Communists had infiltrated the DP camps, posing as refugees in order to enter the country where they would soon overthrow the government.
People testified in Congress that the Soviets had placed “trained terrorists’ ( trained at terrorists institutions in Moscow) in the DP camps .
Is that a concealed weapon in that snow ball? A 2 year old displaced child in DP camp Germany. Photo Family collection
It was therefore likely that many DP camps admitted from Europe would include a number of these terrorists. Alarmists feared that DPs were Soviet “Trojan Horses bent on the nations destruction.”
Natural Tendencies
As a reflection of their “natural tendencies” the perceived politics of the displaced person’s thus posed a threat to American nation.
Many Congressmen opposed DP immigration equating these “New Immigrants” with anarchism, communism and Bolshevism, recklessly claiming the DPs were “imbued with political ideologies wholly at variance with our constitutional system of government.”
Who Can You Trust
What it boiled down to was loyalty and trust calling in to question the loyalty of immigrants from Eastern Europe.
Marking an entire people as pre disposed to disloyalty is a familiar refrain.
Once here, the DP’s ( from Central, Eastern and Southern Europe) would be “peculiarly susceptible to the absorption of socialistic propaganda” and naturally gravitate into “left wing unions” and the immigrant slums which were “mothers of revolution.”
Opponents of DP immigration often spoke of how the DPs and the “ideological germs” that they carried would weaken the nation from within, echoing fears of “race suicide” that had been so prevalent in debates about immigration earlier in the century.
However as time went on President Harry Truman stood up against the public opinion and Congress in his battle to open the door of the U.S. to Jewish DPs. He urged Congress to enact legislation that would admit thousands of homeless and suffering refugees of all faiths to the U.S.
After pressure, Congress passed the less than magnanimous 1948 Displaced Person Act ( an act to authorize for a limited time the admission into the U.S. 200,00 of certain European displaced persons) which was highly selective using date restrictions designed to limit the number of Jewish refugees eligible for entry.
President Truman when he signed it, grudgingly admitted it was better than nothing, but called it “flagrantly discriminatory” against Jews and Catholics. 1
Many began seeing the propaganda potential of DPs that could be exploited and that they be touted through the U.S. as “Victims of Communism.”
As more refuges were being admitted, a cold war re-branding of the DPs began to take hold. In the war against communism they could use their plight to our advantage.
One document suggested a technique for fighting Communism in the USA strongly recommending “that the propaganda potential of DPs be exploited and that they be touted through the U.S. as Victims of Communism.”
The obvious fact that the DP’s who might technically be able to return to their East European homelands refused to do so because of feared Communist rule, had somehow previously eluded them.
Many folks began to realize that far from destroying the nation from within, the politics of the DPs especially their anti-communist feelings could strengthen the nation in its conflict with the Soviet Union.
For many of the proponents of DP immigration, the DPs did not represent the communist contagion but rather the anti-communism inoculation.
They would be living proof of the terrors and horrors of Communist rule.
In its final report the USDPC urged the resettlement of refugees from communist tyranny should become part of Cold War U.S. Strategy.
These displaced persons served to remind us of the dangers of totalitarian communism!
Coming to America 1949 Photo family collection
In the fall of 1949 a few months before a relatively unknown senator from Wisconsin began his 4 year witch hunt for Communists, my future husband and what remained of his family arrived in the states from their DP camp in Germany.
After a ten-day crossing from Bremerhaven, Germany, the ship steamed into NY Harbor. On board were other displaced persons some were survivors of concentration camps others refugees from Russian persecution.
Some were so old that they had little to look forward to except burial at last in American earth; others like my husband, so young that soon they would have no recollection at all of Europe. But all of them felt grateful to the country that had finally given them a safe haven.
Only 4 years old, Hersh who had spent almost all his life behind barbed wire was able to adjust quickly, learning phrases that would take his parents months to learn.
His first experience here was watching Hop Along Cassidy on TV. This little 4 year boy who could only speak Yiddish donned a cowboy hat and learned the language watching good old American westerns.
As his parents watched him change from a displaced person with a number into an American, they beamed with happiness.
Today this former unwanted refugee is an attorney defending those most in need of help, whose eloquence owed a lot to those 1950s cowboy and the generosity of America for welcoming him.
1. Note: So much criticism was heaped on the 1948 Act that Congress later passed amendments extending allotment of US immigration visas for DPs to approximately 500,000.
The 1950 revision succeeded including treating all European refugees “equally as members of the human race” as the NY Times said in an editorial at the time.
© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2018. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriat
“Stretch out your hand in brotherhood, open your heart in compassion.”
Just like my own Jewish family, White House senior advisor Steven Miller’s family was the beneficiary of immigration policies that his own administration is working so hard to undo.
Trump may be unhinged but Steven Miller is clearly unmoored, especially when it comes to his own family roots.
Like many Jewish Americans, Steven Miller is from a family of immigrants and refugees who desperately came to this country escaping anti Jewish pograms.
But unlike most Jewish Americans who feel a deep sense of obligation to help the next generation of refugees, Steven Miller is Trump’s architect of his draconian immigration policy.
Miller is a disgrace to America and a disgrace to the Jews.
Even Miller’s uncle has recently written a scathing editorial eviscerating his black sheep nephew calling him a “immigration hypocrite.”
Jews and Jewish organizations have longed stepped up, no more so than after WWII when the displaced, homeless Jews of Europe faced another crisis in their bitter struggle to survive.
I feel proud that my own family stepped up and opened their hearts in compassion when it was called for..
The Jewish Question
In the late 1940’s anti-semitism was a prevalent attitude in the US.
Refugees from the Holocaust were not welcomed here with open arms
In Congress, antisemitism was an explaining factor in the common hostility towards refugee immigration and anti-semitism explains Congress’s action that blocked all likely havens of refugee for the Jews before the War and were slow to change.
Part of that hostility was fueled – as some grievances are now- by stereotypes of the refugees as harbingers of a dangerous ideology, in this case communism.
United Jewish Appeal – Call to Action
While Congress cooled their heels, charitable organizations stepped up, none more so than the United Jewish Appeal.
The UJA appeal was unprecedented.
The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration that had started helping Diplaced persons in 1945 was saddled with limited resources and inadequate to cope with the tremendous need.
A major campaign by the United Jewish Appeal organized in 1946 to help the Jewish Displaced Persons set in motion the most massive reconstruction and immigration program in Jewish history.
It was a challenge to American Jews to help survivors.
Along with thousands of others who answered the humanitarian call, my own family opened their hearts in compassion to help, never knowing that in decades to come this saga would touch their own family.
Winter 1946. (L) While my mothers Manhattan family vacationed in Miami Beach , (R) my husband and his family spent the winter in a DP Camp in Germany.
On a snowy February afternoon in 1946 while my future in-laws scrounged for food in a Displaced Persons camp in Germany, bartering cigarettes and chocolate for fresh meat and milk my own beloved grandmother Sadie sat in the warm comfort of the grand ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, one of a several hundred women attending the opening rally of The Woman’s Division of the UJA, the United Jewish Appeal of Greater NY.
Seated at snowy white linen covered tables festooned with silver plated urns filled with Herbert Tareyton cigarettes, they waited silently, somberly sipping tea and nibbling lighter than air angel food cake in anticipation of the featured speaker Mrs Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
We…You…Are Their Only Hope
These ladies had gathered together to embark on the greatest drive to raise money for the Jewish Refugees , part of The UJA’s recently launched $100,000,000 nation wide drive.
Eleanor Roosevelt the guest speaker had just recently come from visiting 4 DP camps and movingly shared her experience of the indescribable pain and suffering she witnessed.
Looking out at the packed ballroom of that grand hotel filled with well-heeled and well-intentioned ladies, a veritable sea of bobbing Lilly Dache chapeau, a profusion of ranch mink and Persian Lamb coats redolent of Shalimar and Joy, the former First lady firmly implored : We cannot live in an island of prosperity in a sea of human misery,
These smartly dressed ladies in their Hattie Carnegie dresses who now lived in large limestone apartments that lined the grand Avenues of the Upper West Side of N.Y. gave her a standing ovation.
“These are Your Brothers and Sister Who Speak…”
Nearly all these women were once Eastern Europeans themselves, or had come from those who had made the odyssey, suffered from dislocation, confusion, fear, loss of what they knew.
All looking for a better life.
Many of these same women knew first hand the Cossack’s on horseback that had driven their people from their homes, the laws that had prevented them from owning land, living where they wanted, getting an education.
They knew that even here, in this new land where they had prospered because prosperity was what America had to offer, they were still despised for being themselves, for being Jews. So they knew the only way to survive was with your people and to care for them.
That it was the obligation of American Jews to contribute generously to relieve the suffering of the surviving Jews of Europe was never in question.
The UJA ran a series of emotion laden ads asking for help, such as the one above.
“Give them Life and Make it Worth Living”
These are your sister and brothers who speak.
Praying that their liberation from Nazi tyranny shall not be turned into a mockery by the worlds indifference. Praying that now, after years of torture and death and a miserable existence in displaced persons camps they be helped to rebuild their lives.
By 1947 the need was greater.
The Jewish population of the DP camps has tripled in one year. From 85,000 at the beginning of 1946 to 250,00 in 1947.
Resources were depleted.
Not only were US Quotas still in place against the Jews there was an organized campaign against permitting the entrance of displaced persons into the U.S. with President Truman’s mail 7 to 1 against admission.
Many nations shared the shame of the US in having refused sanctuary to stateless Jewish survivors following WWII.
Efforts to get them into Palestine faced great odds. Great Britain continued to strictly limit the number of Jews allowed in Palestine. Jews already living in British-controlled Palestine organized “illegal” immigration by ship. In 1947 the British forced the ship Exodus 47 which was carrying 4,500 Holocaust survivors headed for Palestine, to return to Germany where the passengers were again imprisoned in camps.
The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration set to expire that June placed greater burdens on the agencies of the UJA.
The massive campaign continued running ad campaigns in the popular magazines.
Could You Refuse Them If They Stood Before You?
The plaintive question asked in this 1947 UJA ad went straight to the heart:
“Could you look into the sad proud eyes of this girl and say, No child I will not help you?
Could you bear to hear the sobs of this frightened boy without wanting to draw him into the warm shelter of your s arms?
There are thousands more like these 2…children who have survived Hitlers plan for their extermination. Sad, hungry terrified children who need your help.They have seen sights no child should ever see. They have known terror we in America cannot even imagine. Before they had a chance to be young, their hearts grew old. Their souls are wounded in a way that only understanding people like you can heal.
They need everything. Food clothes and medicine just to keep them alive. The need homes and guidance. They need education and training for useful lives in Palestine the US or some other hospitable land.
But most of all they need what all people need…faith in their fellow beings, hope for the future.
We in America…you in your comfortable living room..it is us they look for help. We…you…are their only hope.
It was a moral obligation then, it is a moral obligation now.
© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2018. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Just in time for Halloween the frightening ghosts and goblins of anti-Semitism past have arisen from their slumber. This virulent strain of hate never really disappeared, merely reawakened.
And it is deadly.
I am scared.
I am haunted.
I am a Jew.
I am haunted by the solemn voice of my childhood Rabbi whose thunderous High Holiday sermons referencing the Holocaust declared “Never Again,” sentiments echoed by Hebrew school teachers.
I am haunted by the countless conversations overhead as a child of anxious parents and family friends debating plaintively … “could it happen here?”
I am haunted by the knowledge that for my parent’s generation, a generation of Jews who lived a life of assimilation yet kept one eye open for that display of anti-Semitism that has always lived right below the surface.
I am haunted by the fact that my parent’s generation was right to believe that anti-Semitism never really left …that it was just a matter of time.
And that time is now.
Among the tragic victims of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting were several seniors with living memories of the Holocaust. Just as the number of Holocaust survivors is dwindling so are those who have first-hand memories of that horrific time.
That Greatest Generation who bore witness to the greatest atrocity of our time, the Holocaust, also bore witness to some of the most virulent anti-Semitic periods here in America.
People like my parents.
Photo by Margaret Bourke-White Life Magazine
By the spring of 1945, the unspeakable details of the European concentration camps began slowly being spoken about.
Through the war, few Americans were aware of its scale. Like most Americans, my mother and her family had their first glimpse of that atrocity when gruesome and heartbreaking images of the Holocaust appeared in print for the first time in the May 7, 1945 issue of “Life” magazine.
Photo by Margaret Bourke White Life Magazine
It was unimaginable – Jewish bodies stacked like hardwood found at a liberated concentration camp. The gruesome display of haunted living corpses, smoldering piles of charred bodies, the atrocities that the allied troops had uncovered. The graphic images recorded for all time by Margaret Bourke-White were bone-chilling and would be seared into my 19-year-old mother’s mind.
This abomination was the unthinkable culmination of nearly two decades of growing anti-Semitism that she and other Jews had witnessed.
Unlike me, my parents had grown up with the constant assumption of anti-Semitism.
It was a childhood punctuated by parades of marching brown-shirted men with outstretched arms and swastikas, cemeteries desecrated and synagogues vandalized. Incendiary anti-Semitism spewed over the airwaves and grand public halls were filled by hateful Nazi rallies spreading vile propaganda.
Perceived as greedy, dishonest and all too powerful, Jews were restricted where they could go and where they could enjoy themselves.
This was America in the 1930’s.
Despite the fact that many, like my grandfather, had served their country in the Great War and felt themselves to be “real Americans,” no matter how assimilated, the Jew was still the “other.”
Many hotels, clubs, and colleges restricted or prohibited Jews from visiting, attending, or becoming members. That was the norm for my parents. Jews were barred from prestigious law firms, admitted to medical schools on a quota basis and excluded from employment by the phrase “Christian.”
A suspicious public still saw Jewish people as different, unassimilable, and threatening. When my mother visited a college friend in Ohio a group gathered at the train station to sneak a peek at “the Jew” to see whether it was true they actually had horns.
As Hitler was rising to power in Germany the U.S. was producing its own anti-Semitic demagogues.
Though the news of the Nazi persecution moved from the front page to the inside of the newspapers, Jews were not only frightened with what was happening in Germany, there was the unspoken fear – “Could it happen here?”
One of the most popular and dangerous voices was Father Coughlin, a Roman Catholic priest and propaganda king who peddled hate, spouting vile anti-Semitism on his radio program. No flash in the pan, this popular program attracted 40 million listeners for over a decade.
To Coughlin, the New Deal became the “Jew Deal,” liberals were communists and the faithful must “Think Christian,” “Buy Christian” and “Beware of World Jewry.” By the late 1930’s Father Coughlin was speaking out in favor of the Nazis and blaming Jews for political and economic troubles.
Henry Fords articles in The Dearborn Independent attracted the attention of Adolph Hitler 1920
That familiar “Globalism” trope had dovetailed nicely with Henry Ford who a few years earlier had outlined the “Jewish World Conspiracy” in his newspaper the “Dearborn Independent.”
His anti-Semitic views echoed the fears and assumptions of many Americans. The articles referred to Jews as the root of Americas and the world’s ills and were reproduced in the book “The International Jew: The Worlds Foremost Problem.”
Suffice to say my grandparents only purchased Chryslers for their motoring pleasure.
Even Lucky Lindy, my father’s childhood idol, became a Nazi Sympathizer.
All-American hero Charles Lindberg began espousing “America First” a slogan embraced by Nazi-friendly Americans in the 1930’s. No friend of the Jews he famously commented: “We are all disturbed about the effect of the Jewish influence in our press, radio, and motion pictures.”
Even as American’s read about the Jews being attacked on the streets of Nazi Germany there was great resistance for increasing immigration quotas fearing the potential flood of undesirable immigrants.
As the waiting lists for U.S. immigration visas swelled so did anti-Semitism.
By 1939 bills in Congress were proposed to end all immigration for 5 years. Speeches by Senators insisted that the time had come to “Save America for Americans.”
While those exclusionary words echoed in our halls of Congress, the fated “St. Louis” the German ocean liner filled with Jewish refugees was refused entry into the U.S. and turned back.
That same year the German American Bund held an “Americanization” rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden denouncing Jews and their conspiracies. The rally was attended by 20,000 uniformed men wearing swastika armbands and carrying Nazi banners.
With the end of WWII, the sober realities of what hate could bring were made manifest.
After the horrors of the Holocaust were revealed perhaps the hope was the world would be cleansed of that virulent strain of hate. Perhaps the greatest generation hoped to eradicate anti-Semitism as they had with polio.
So yes, gone would be the overt anti-Semitism of my parent’s youth, but it was never far from their minds.
For my own childhood, anti-Semitism seemed to be a relic of the past. Because I would grow up living in an unprecedented time of acceptance for Jews it would be easy for me to be lulled into a sense of security.
Because what happened in Nazi Germany was such a terrible atrocity it felt impossible to imagine ourselves capable of causing anything that resembled it. Certainly, societies would stop, reverse, and repair long before plunging into such appalling depths.
I wanted to think “never again” was a statement of fact. In my America, that kind of hate can’t exist.
Except it can.
The specter of anti-Semitism has always hovered around us, the shadowy world of hate like a sinister ghost I chose not to want to see it.
But even as an American Jew, I learned through osmosis the coded language and dog whistles of hate and bigotry. To Jewish eyes and Jewish ears the tropes of today are familiar, as familiar as the ancient prayers of Kaddish said in temple.
As shocked as I am today at this ugly display of hate perpetrated in a Pittsburgh synagogue, I am haunted by the fact my parents might not be.
My parents were haunted by the ghosts of anti-Semitism.
Though I never believed in ghosts, I do now.
I am spooked.
I am a Jew.
© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2018. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
