The Summer of '42

In the movie, The Summer of ’42 Richard Dreyfus spent one summer night “dragging the main” in search of the hot blond in the blue T-Bird. Life was fun and easy as it should be for young adults in their early twenty es – or teens --as they may actually have been in the movie. I can’t remember all the details, but I couldn’t help thinking about that movie yesterday as we were touring the walk of heros in Warsaw with Sheryl as our guide. Why? The summer of ’42 is when the Warsaw Ghetto uprising was held. It was initiated and accomplished by young Jewish Poles whose average age was twenty years old. Touring Poland and the nazi concentration camps I can’t help but also compare the life of the Jews who lived here during the Holocaust with the lives of their American counterparts. When the days are sunny and the summer nights are hot and the only worries are whether to order a chocolate or vanilla shake at the diner, how can it be possible that a completely different reality exists for people who look exactly like you and live in a modern world like you do but whose reality is a universe away?
Several of the marchers in our group were angry that the Jews didn’t fight back against the Germans sooner. We talked a lot about the dichotomy of hope and denial We discussed how hope and denial are two of the strongest human motivators and there is a constant struggle between the two. On the one hand, the Jews were possible in denial that the rumors they heard were true. It is understandable, right? Who can imagine that such evil can exist in the minds and deeds of men in the Twentieth Century? Who can imagine a plot to exterminate the entire Jewish people of Europe? Impossible! On the other hand, what kind of life is a life without hope? How do you wake up to face the next day, find food for your starving family, if you have no hope that things will get better and return to normal soon? We talked about fighting back by simply refusing to give up. By continuing practicing Judaism, going to school, and resisting in subtle ways and continuing to do the things that the Germans prohibited the Jews from doing the Jews were fighting back.
Our walking tour ended at the intersection of the Warsaw Ghetto and the office of the Judenrat. There is a subtle sculpture embedded on the plaza of the Hebrew letter bet and an olive branch. One proposed meaning of the sculpture was the letter bet is the first letter of the Torah. It is the first letter of the word Bereshit – “in the beginning” – the first words of the Torah. It possibly symbolizes hope for a new beginning for the Jews. We would start again and rebuild our lives, families and populations. The olive branch, also a symbol from Bereshit, is another symbol of hope. In the story of Noah, Go d destroyed all of humanity with the exception of those who were aboard the ark. When Noah sent the dove out to find dry land, the dove returned with an olive branch in its mouth. This indicated to Noah that it was time to rebuild the earth and start anew.