The decision was made the way most decisions in the Blumberg family were made. Harry never actually agreed to take the Gorinskis into their house. He’d just stopped saying no.
The Gorinskis—father Oleg, mother Karin, and daughters Olga and Petka—were a nice enough family. They’d been in Israel all of two years after moving from Moscow. Oleg was a computer programmer who was fortunate to have obtained Russian exit visas for his family, since he worked on air defense radar software. He quickly found work with an Israeli electronics business. The two daughters were excited to be in America, where they wanted to move in the first place, but were most excited about finally getting off that horrible, stinking ship. They fought over who would get the first bath in the Blumbergs’jacuzzi.
“No more than two days” turned into a week. The Gorinskis remained inside the house, as instructed. The Blumbergs’fifteen-year-old son, Sam, was sworn to secrecy, which lasted almost halfway through homeroom the following morning at school, where the teacher, aware of the rumors circulating among Marblehead High School’s large Jewish student body, came right out and asked for a show of hands, asking who took in refugees in the middle of the night. As hands were slowly raised, a good third of the students responded. Then, one after another, rather than raising their hands, they stood up, beaming, as their classmates applauded.
Helping refugees was a good thing, right? They’d be heroes. The kids who didn’t have refugees show up during the early morning felt as if they’d done something wrong.
All efforts at secrecy ceased within days of the sudden appearance of thousands of new cousins, uncles and aunts. Warnings to keep the new visitors hidden indoors began to seem pointless. A quick trip to the mall couldn’t hurt. After all, these people needed clothes, didn’t they? And maybe a nice meal out, and a movie—how could a movie hurt?
Jewish families that turned down refugees, families that said no or slammed down the telephone when asked to take people in, had second thoughts. What kind of examples were these parents to their children, especially when it seemed that all of their friends had said yes? Refugee families quickly became commodities, transferred from house to house as offers came in volunteering to share the burden.
Secrecy dissolved. The Salem Daily News ran interviews with Israeli refugees living in North Shore homes, changing names and addresses to protect the “secret locations” at which they were living.
A fundraising rally to aid refugees was organized five days after the escape. A Jewish community shell-shocked at the destruction of Israel, ashamed that their government did nothing to stop it and appeared to be buckling in to the demands of the triumphant Arab states, opened their wallets as they’d opened their homes.
A long-range resettlement committee was formed. It appeared that the escape of the passengers of the Ionian Star and the Iliad was a fait accompli.
Until the protests began.
The tone of newspaper editorials gradually changed from “The government must seek a long-term solution to this tragic problem” to “We cannot let one group take the law into their own hands and accomplish by lawlessness and violence what they could not accomplish by government action.” Boston’s Haitian community, stung by raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, decimated by deportations of longtime but undocumented residents, led the first march on the John F. Kennedy Federal Building at Government Center in Boston.
Deport White Illegals, Too, the largest banner read. Henrique Depardieux, the chairman of the Massachusetts Haitian Rights Committee, made his point clearly.
“ICE knows where these people are staying. It knows they are here with no papers. It knows they broke the law to enter this country. Yet we see these people on the news every night being taken to shopping malls to buy new clothes. We see the Jews raising millions of dollars to give to these people. Why doesn’t the government round them up the same way they rounded up my brothers and sisters?
“We will return here every day until every one of these white illegal immigrants is placed on the same airplanes that took black refugees away from us. We will not be stopped. We have suffered. Now it is time to prove to us that our suffering was not in vain, that this country treats blacks and whites alike.”
A half dozen uniformed storm troopers from the United Nationalists Movement drove through the night from Mississippi to parade in front of the Kennedy Building. Swastika-adorned flags straddling a banner declaring Jail the Jews were broadcast on TV news.
By the third day of demonstrations, the Haitians were in the minority. Mexicans, Salvadorans, Guatemalans marched with them. They, too, had lost family members to deportation. A South Boston Irish contingent joined the demonstration, as did a small group of Chinese.
The South Boston group carried a different banner. They, of course, could not complain about different treatment for whites. Their uncles and aunts, cousins, nieces and nephews who came to Boston from Cork and Galway, from Dublin and Donegal, looking for work after the Irish economic bubble burst, only to be rounded up and sent home when their tourist visas expired, were as white as the Jews from the two ships. The South Boston banner said, No Special Treatment for Jews.
While these events took place, Howie Mandelbaum, the only person arrested the night of the sinkings, remained in the Charles Street Jail. He would not be alone for long.
CHAPTER 13
At five seconds per channel, it took Adam Shapiro three minutes to flip through the circuit of cable TV selections. It drove his father crazy. It was a skill Shapiro’s generation lacked but his son seemed to have been born with, just as his son could carry on a conversation with his parents while at the same time slaying enemy soldiers on his Nintendo. Cartoons, movies, talk shows, commercial after commercial cycled past on the screen, all while Shapiro hoped to spend some time with his son. TV time together might not be “quality” time, but it was time together.
Shapiro lost patience.
“Okay. Enough. Stop that,” he barked. “Why don’t we look at the listings and decide what we want to watch.”
“That’s not how I do it, Dad. I have to see what’s on before I decide,” Adam responded. “It just takes a minute.”
“All right, but come on, make a decision,” Shapiro said, only half paying attention to the TV, fascinated by his son’s intense concentration on the screen, eyes pinched together, analyzing each five-second segment and literally making instant thumbs-up or down calls.
“Call me back when you’ve decided.” He walked toward the door of the room they called “the TV Room,” much as Shapiro disliked that label.
Just as he reached the door, a phrase caught Shapiro’s attention. He swiveled around.
“Punish the so-called Chosen people for spitting in God’s face,” he heard a voice say from the TV as the channel flipped to a Toyota commercial. “Zero percent financing . . .”
“Wait,” Shapiro told his son. “Flip back to that last one. I want to hear what he’s saying.”
“Dad, no. It’s some God show or something.”
Before Adam could say anything more, Shapiro grabbed the remote and toggled the channel button to return to the previous show.
“What I am saying, in plain American English, is that God wants us to round up the Jews in this country. Time to take our country back.”
Shapiro saw two men in dark suits standing in front of what looked like a living room set—two comfortable chairs and a coffee table. The man speaking was being ejected from the set, none too subtly. A young blonde walked on, smiling and excited, bouncing up and down in her enthusiasm, her hemline demurely below her knees, two breasts that someone other than the Lord gave to her bouncing to a rhythm of their own. The show’s host, however, took a couple of seconds to recover before greeting the woman with a broad and perhaps overly enthusiastic hug.
“Why does that man want to round up all the Jews, Dad?” Adam asked. “I don’t understand what he’s talking about. I thought that was something they did back in history. I don’t underst
and.”
Shapiro saw the tentatively fearful expression on his son’s face. This will be a quality parenting moment after all, he thought.
Shapiro had never directly experienced anti-Semitism. Adam, who liked to boast that his Dad was Jewish, his mother was some kind of Christian, and he would decide what he was when he grew up, never felt shunned because of his father’s heritage. He’d learn about the Holocaust in school, of course, just as he’d learn about the Civil War and the Great Depression, but at his age historical events did not seem any more real than Star Trek or The Lord of the Rings. That stark brand of “round up the Jews” talk was entirely new to him.
“Dad, what kind of jerk was that guy? How come they let him say that on TV? Americans don’t hate Jews, right? That’s some German—or Arab, I guess—kinda thing, right?”
“Actually, Adam, this country has its share of that, too, and not too long ago. There used to be the same kind of preacher on the radio. Father Coughlin was his name. He was a Catholic priest with his own radio show. Millions of people listened to him every week. And he used to say the same kind of stuff about Jews, the same kind of hate talk. He went on for years.
“And plenty of people agreed with him. Hey, Charles Lindbergh, the first guy to fly across the Atlantic Ocean, he used to talk about a worldwide Jewish conspiracy to get us to fight in World War II. Even some presidents have talked that way. Harry Truman, you know, the guy who took over after President Roosevelt died, he said something like the Jews are all selfish and they are as cruel as Hitler and Stalin when they get any power.”
The six-year-old’s puzzled look reminded Shapiro that his son’s knowledge of American history included George Washington, a cherry tree and some vague knowledge about Abe Lincoln freeing the slaves.
“You’ve never experienced anti-Semitism yourself, but it has been a part of America right from the beginning.” Shapiro put his arm over his son’s shoulder. “Sorry about going on like that,” he said sheepishly to his six-year-old.
Adam looked puzzled.
“Hey, buddy, forget about it. I don’t expect this will ever be a problem for you.” Shapiro rubbed the top of his son’s head. “So, what’s on TV?”
“It won’t be a problem for me if I don’t decide to become a Jew, right, Dad?” Adam asked, not quite willing to drop this topic. “And if it became a real problem, you could decide not to be a Jew anymore, so there isn’t anything to worry about. How’s that?”
Shapiro turned to look at his son.
“Adam,” he said. “I can’t ever stop being a Jew. And I wouldn’t if I could. And you know, Son, with me as your father, I don’t know if you can help being considered a Jew no matter what you want. And since most everybody is going to think Adam Shapiro is Jewish, no matter what you decide, you might as well get the benefits of being Jewish. Hey, who knows? There might be some girl someday who wouldn’t think of bringing you home to meet her parents unless you were Jewish. It could come in handy.”
“Dad, stop that,” Adam moaned.
He went back to the remote and found a Mork and Mindy rerun. Father and son sat side by side on the sofa, watching Mork from Ork consider what a strange place planet Earth is.
Shapiro agreed.
CHAPTER 14
President Lawrence Quaid was sprawled on the sofa in the Oval Office. Sitting in chairs facing him were Robert Brown, his chief of staff; Senator Grant Farrell, Democratic minority leader; and Quaid’s wife, Catherine.
Sen. Farrell broke the silence.
“The law is clear, Mr. President. You can’t be faulted for enforcing the law. These people entered the country illegally. They used violence, military weapons, to kill American military personnel. They’re flaunting their presence in Boston, not even trying to be subtle about it. They are daring you to do something. They don’t believe you have what it takes to take them on.”
“Easy now, Grant,” Brown said. “This isn’t a test of the president’s manhood.”
“The president is man enough. I’ll swear it under oath,” the First Lady said. “We are not going to make this decision based on whether my husband is going to back down in front of a dare. According to a story he told me when we were courting, the last time he accepted a dare was in junior high school when a friend dared him to piss on an electric fence. That’s a lesson he won’t ever forget, right, dear?”
“It was certainly a shocker,” Quaid responded. “If only this dare were as easy as that one.”
“We go back a long way, a long way, and I know in all that time your heart has never steered you wrong.” Brown spoke as much to Catherine as to the president. Brown and Catherine met in their junior year at Cornell University. After two dates, both realized there was no chemistry between them—friendship perhaps, but no chemistry. When Catherine asked Brown whether his roommate was seeing anyone, he’d known where the chemistry was. She and Quaid married shortly after graduation and had a marriage people didn’t think happened anymore. Faithful, sharing equals, either could have been elected president and the other would have been there in support. Quaid relied on Catherine to steer him toward deciding what the right thing was and then convince him to do it.
“The United States of America cannot deport Jewish refugees to a country in which they will be placed in camps, subjugated and, quite possibly, exterminated,” Brown said sharply. “You do that and you will earn a place in history, all right, but you won’t like it.”
“Just a minute now, Bob,” Farrell interrupted before Quaid could respond. “Don’t you think maybe you’ve got a bit of a personal bias on this issue? You know, Mr. President, maybe it would look better if Bob stepped aside on this issue and let the rest of us make a decision. It doesn’t look right having him here right now. Word could get out and there’d be hell to pay.”
Quaid shot from the couch to stand over Farrell.
“Grant, are you saying what I think you’re saying?” Quaid asked. “Hell, I’ve known Bob since college and I’ll bet I’ve been in more synagogues than he has since then. I’d guess Bob’s just about forgotten he’s even Jewish, right, Bob?”
Brown rose from his chair to stand beside the president, both of them looking down on Farrell. Catherine Quaid beamed at her two men.
“I wouldn’t go that far, Mr. President, not these days. Evidently others haven’t forgotten the fact that my parents happen to be Jews. Just for the record”—Brown stared at Sen. Farrell—“I haven’t been to a synagogue since I was bar-mitzvahed at thirteen years old. Neither of my sons had a bar mitzvah. I don’t belong to any Jewish organizations and, as you’ve scolded me several times, Mr. President, I go to work on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur every year. Despite that, lady and gentlemen, I am most certainly a Jew, if that makes any difference.”
Catharine applauded, got up from her chair and gave Brown a hug.
“That is why we love you so much, Bob. You are the heart and soul of this presidency and we won’t forget that either.”
“Heart and soul is one thing, Mr. President, but politics is something entirely different,” Farrell said, remaining seated while the president walked to the three windows facing the South Lawn and the Washington Monument in the distance. Quaid stood staring out the window, his back to the others in the room. Farrell continued speaking.
“You might not have to run for office again, Mr. President, but the rest of us Democrats still do. Now, I don’t know what you’re going to decide on this issue, and I suspect you don’t know either. But if you allow the country’s most powerful Jew, with all due respect to your chief of staff, to influence your decision, that decision won’t get much respect. This has to be your decision, not influenced by a Jewish insider in the White House.
“I tell you this for your own good, and for the good of the Democratic Party. This issue has disaster written all over it. There won’t be much of a national Democratic party without Jewish support. I know that, even if I don’t especially like it. But if it looks like we’re knuckling in to Jewis
h pressure, then this party will only have Jewish support and nothing else.”
Sen. Farrell looked back and forth between the president and his chief of staff. Farrell knew he didn’t have the same history with Lawrence Quaid that Brown had, but it was Farrell’s job to look out for the party. Brown’s job was to look out for Quaid.
“We have to watch ourselves on this one, Mr. President,” Farrell continued. “Make the right decision, sir, whatever that is, but be sure to make it in the right way, in a way the rest of the party won’t have to explain in Congressional hearings someday. I don’t want to be placed under oath and asked what role Mr. Brown played in this decision. For the good of the country, for the good of the Democratic Party, I suggest that Mr. Brown voluntarily absent himself from this discussion.”
President Quaid continued staring out the windows. Before he could say anything, his wife spoke up.
“Larry, you tell Bobbie to leave and I’m walking out with him. He’s your best friend and most trusted advisor. He won’t do anything to hurt you. The three of us are the home team, remember, the three of us. We’re the good guys. Lose one member of this team and I swear you’ll lose the other one, too, at least on this issue.”
President Quaid spun around.
She stared him directly in the eyes until he looked away. The president walked to his wife and took both her hands in his.
“Catherine, the last time I disagreed with you was when I wanted to buy a bass guitar and you said it had four strings and I only knew one note. I bought it anyway and never got past the first string.”
Quaid stared silently at the ceiling, paused, then turned back to his wife.
“What Grant says is right. We both know it is. This is the toughest issue of my presidency. How I handle this will define me. This is my moment in history. The way I handle it is as important as the result I achieve, or don’t achieve. It can’t appear that any decision I make is a payback for Jewish support, especially for Jewish financial support.”
Never Again Page 7
