Never Again

by Harvey A. Schwartz

  They landed softly at his feet. He looked out at the crowd, where most people were staring at him expectantly as he spread the top open, looked in, then dropped the bag as if it actually were a bomb. All the color washed from his face.

  The rabbi then kneeled on the floor and carefully picked up the bag. He reached in and withdrew a small piece of yellow cloth. Without a word, he walked to the people seated on the platform and distributed the contents of the bag, more pieces of yellow cloth, one at a time to the people to his right and then did the same for the people to his left.

  He returned to the microphone and held the yellow fabric straight out in front of him, displaying it to the crowd, then slowly returned his hands to his chest and carefully pinned the yellow, six-pointed Star of David to his chest. In the middle of the star somebody had printed in black Magic Marker Jude, the German word for Jew.

  Rabbi Garfinkle knew the badge was the same the Nazis forced millions of German, Polish, French, Dutch and Russian Jews to wear. He leaned into the microphone.

  “President Quaid,” he said, his voice quivering, “you want me to wear a badge saying who I am.” His right hand, knotted into a first, pounded against the star, against his chest.

  “This is the badge I will wear. This badge at least tells the truth. This badge says what you really mean, Mr. President. You say I cannot be both a Jew and an American. I say you are wrong, Mr. President. But even if you are right, sir, this badge declares who I am.

  “Mr. President, I am a Jew.

  “Do you truly believe you are the first political leader to tell Jews to stop being Jews? We have such a long history, we Jewish people. We teach our history to our children. We teach our history so that our children will not forget what has happened to us throughout our history, again and again and again.

  “And, now, again.

  “We teach that because what has happened before can and most likely will happen again, and if it does, when it does, we must prepare for it. We must resist it, using the lessons of our people’s history.

  “Lawrence Quaid, over and over politicians have forced us to make the same choice you want to force upon us. Are you a Jew or are you an American? We have been asked to choose, sir, are you a Jew or are you a Spaniard. Are you a Jew or are you an Englishman? Are you a Jew or are you a Russian? Or a Pole. Or a Turk, or an Egyptian, or, Mr. President, are you a Jew or are you a good German?

  “Mr. President, if you ask that question you will receive the same answer every tyrant throughout history has received. Mr. President, I am an American and I love this country. I am so proud to be an American. But I can give up being an American if I am forced to do so—reluctantly, sadly, but that can be taken from me.

  “I will never, I can never, stop being a Jew. And as a Jew, I will say to you the two words you have heard spoken so frequently in recent weeks.”

  He raised both hands in the air.

  “Lawrence Quaid, never again, never again, never again.”

  The chant echoed from the Capitol building as the crowd’s frenzy increased and continued for five full minutes, five minutes of those two words repeated over and over and over. The speaker finally raised his hands and the exhausted crowd settled into silence.

  “Mr. President. Never again will Jews march meekly to camps, to anybody’s camps, even your camps, Mr. President.

  “Never again will Jews stand by and watch our homeland, the homeland promised to us by God Almighty, be snatched away from us. Never again, Mr. President.

  “And if you can’t accept that, Mr. President, well, all I can say is . . .”

  He walked around the microphone and stood on the front edge of the podium, raising both hands over his head.

  “Never again, never again, never again, never again.”

  For fifteen minutes the crowd chanted.

  Never again! Never again! Never again!

  Sarah Goldberg, sitting next to Ben Shapiro at the far left end of the podium, leaned close to him and whispered, “I guess I was right about my speech about peace and love and reconciliation being out of place.”

  “If this is how the show begins,” Shapiro replied, “I can hardly wait to see where we go from here.”

  Quaid turned from the television monitor carrying live coverage of the march. He walked to the window and looked out across the Ellipse to the Washington Monument.

  “This is not going well,” he said to Acting Attorney General Harrison and Carol Cabot, his legal counsel. Gen. Paterson, his homeland security director, sat on a sofa in front of the television.

  “How the hell can they say I’m another Hitler?” Quaid said. “This is about protecting the country from a nuclear attack. Can’t they see that? I tell the country we’ve been invaded, that there is an atom bomb floating around somewhere in New England, and these people call me a Hitler? They’re going too far, too far. I won’t tolerate this.”

  “I agree, Mr. President,” said Gen. Paterson. “Free speech sucks, sir.”

  Harrison nodded. “Those yellow stars were a brilliant move. You’ve got to hand it to whoever came up with that, and so fast. Brilliant,” he said.

  “What’s the status of those troops, the Virginia guardsmen?” Quaid asked.

  “They’re all set, Mr. President,” Gen. Paterson said, “sitting in their trucks, can be at the Mall in fifteen minutes. One thing though, Mr. President—they’ve got riot gear, shields, helmets, armor, even gas, and they’ve got their firearms.”

  “Hold them off for now,” the Quaid said. “Only a Hitler would send armed troops against his own people in his nation’s capital, right?”

  “They’re waiting for your command, sir. You and nobody else,” the general said. “It will be your call whether to send them in.”

  “Let’s move them a bit closer. Get them into the city but back from the Mall. Keep them in their trucks for now. Maybe we can get through this weekend without giving anything more to complain about. We’ll wait and see what happens.”

  CHAPTER 55

  Sarah Goldberg was tentatively scheduled to speak at four, but she was told she might be bumped over to the next day if the speeches ran late the first day. She sat in a gallery of more than seventy seats on the large platform. Ben Shapiro sat next to her.

  By noon, after the first four speakers each doubled or tripled his ten-minute quota, Shapiro was getting stiff from sitting. He was pleased when Judy Katz snuck up onto the platform and sat in an empty seat next to him and Sarah.

  “Stay up here with us,” Sarah told Katz. “We’re off on the side anyway, and this is where all the empty seats are. Nobody will care.”

  “Sure,” Katz said, moving her wooden chair a bit closer to Shapiro’s. “At least I’m out of the sun.”

  After a few minutes, Judy snuck her hand onto Shapiro’s leg, where she let it lie softly. He placed his hand on top of hers. She turned to him and smiled, then looked back toward the speaker.

  Katz, Shapiro and Goldberg were distracted when a tall woman in a wide hat, wearing sunglasses and accompanied by two extremely large men wearing nearly identical dark suits and sunglasses, walked up the steps at the end of the platform and moved along the row of occupied seats, stopping at the vacant one next to Sarah.

  “Is that seat available?” the woman asked quietly.

  “Yes, it’s been empty all day,” Sarah answered, turning to look at the woman. There was something familiar about her, despite the sunglasses and hat, which drooped to cover much of her face. The two men stood behind her on either side of her chair.

  She’s somebody important, Sarah thought. An actress maybe. Trying to be as subtle as possible, she elbowed Shapiro, sitting to her right, and nodded to indicate the woman. Shapiro leaned forward to look at her. He nudged Katz, to his right, and pointed toward the woman.

  “Holy shit,” Katz said. “You’re Mrs. Quaid, aren’t you? Catherine, Catherine Quaid. The First Lady.”

  The woman smiled. “As a matter of fact, I am. All of those things,
” she said. “I volunteered to address the attendees and my offer was graciously accepted. I’m supposed to be speaking shortly.”

  Sarah was stunned to find herself sitting next to the First Lady. She didn’t know what to say, fumbled for words and finally blurted out, “Does your husband know you’re here?”

  Catherine Quaid smiled again, this time more enthusiastically. “Why does everybody ask me that? No, I didn’t feel it necessary to obtain his permission. I’m hoping it will come as a complete surprise to him.” She swiveled her head to speak to one of the men behind her. “It will be a surprise to him, won’t it be, Joe?”

  “I expect you’ll get his attention, ma’am,” her bodyguard said flatly.

  They sat quietly for a moment as the First Lady listened to the speaker, deep in thought. She turned to Sarah.

  “These yellow stars,” she asked, “are they for all the speakers? May I have one, too?”

  “I don’t think there’s anything formal about the speakers wearing these,” Shapiro said, indicating the yellow star pinned to his shirt. “Lots of people in the crowd seem to have them on. You do understand the significance of these stars, don’t you?” he asked quietly.

  She nodded. “I most certainly do. I’m not ignorant of Holocaust history, you know. In fact, when I heard my husband’s speech last night, on television—alone in my bedroom, by the way—the first thought I had when he talked about issuing special Americards to Jewish citizens was that the Nazis did something just like that.”

  Katz unpinned the star from her blouse.

  “Would you like to wear mine?”

  Catherine Quaid pinned it to her jacket. “I would be proud to do so. Honored. Thank you so much.”

  They sat quietly for another few minutes. Shapiro turned to the First Lady and asked, “Do you know about the king of Denmark?”

  The surprise on the First Lady’s face indicated she had no idea what he was talking about. He continued.

  “There is some doubt about whether this story is true or not,” Shapiro said. “But Leon Uris put it in his book Exodus, so that’s as good as being true.

  “Anyway, the story goes that when the Germans occupied Denmark, the Danish king, King Christian, rode his horse every day through the streets of Copenhagen, to show that he was still around. The Germans ordered all Danish Jews to wear these same stars, like that one you’re wearing. The day after the Germans ordered all the Danish Jews to wear this yellow star, the king himself had one pinned to his arm as he rode through the city. After that, the Germans rescinded their order.

  “By the way, did you know that the Danish people managed to smuggle just about every Jew in Denmark out of the country into Sweden?”

  “I suppose I am as close as this country has to a queen,” she said softly. “Mr. Shapiro, I will be so proud to wear this star when I speak.”

  Sarah Goldberg turned to Catherine Quaid. “We . . . we all know what your husband has been doing—to Jews, about Jews,” she said hesitantly. “We want you to know how much we appreciate what you are doing right now.”

  “Thank you. You know, when I am faced with a decision, I ask myself what is the right thing to do,” she said softly. “And then I do it, always.”

  She finally managed a broad smile.

  “Then I pay the price.”

  Shapiro nodded.

  The speaker was just finishing. The next speaker was introduced as the chief rabbi of an Orthodox synagogue in Skokie, Illinois. Shapiro leaned across Goldberg to whisper to the First Lady.

  “American Nazis marched in Skokie when I was in law school,” he said. “The ACLU represented their right to do so. I’ve represented Nazis’free speech rights myself. Nazi rights somehow seem different now, though.”

  The speaker was a fragile, elderly man, assisted to the microphone by a young woman. She pulled a chair next to the microphone. “Papa, sit while you talk,” she said softly.

  “Hak mir nisht keyn tshaynik,” the old man barked at her. Rabbi Garfinkle, who was at the microphone to introduce the man, smiled.

  “He told his daughter to stop speaking nonsense,” Rabbi Garfinkle said. “And you know what, I have a feeling he’s going to say the same thing to President Quaid.” The crowd cheered. He placed his arm on the old man’s shoulder and drew him close.

  “I met Rabbi Yehuda Cohane when I was a rabbinical student. He was my teacher. He still is. I can honestly say that I have never encountered a sharper mind or a person who is less afraid to speak what is on that mind.”

  Rabbi Cohane braced both hands on the wooden speaker’s stand. He stood straight as his twisted back allowed. His daughter and Rabbi Garfinkle stepped back, leaving the elderly man alone at the microphone.

  “I listened to President Quaid’s talk last night,” he said in a voice filled with more strength than his body appeared to possess. “When he was finished, my daughter turned off the television. She was crying. ‘Poppa,’she said, ‘why do they do this to the Jews?’

  “I didn’t know how to answer her last night. But I thought about her question all night. That sharp mind they say I have, you know. Sometimes it’s so sharp I cut myself with my own thoughts.” He laughed at his joke.

  “I thought and thought. I thought about Jewish history. I thought about American politics. Most of all, I thought about God. And I came to a conclusion I want to share with you today. They do this to the Jews, time after time throughout our long history, a history longer than most any other people on the plane. They do this to us because we let them do it to us. We let them. Jews let them do this to us. We let them because we don’t fight back.”

  He leaned closer to the microphone, his lips inches from it, and whispered in a voice magnified by the giant speakers.

  “And they think we won’t fight back this time.”

  The old man paused, collecting more strength. He spoke again in a loud, full voice, gaining volume as he spoke.

  “They’re wrong. Sometimes we do fight back. Let me read you something.” The old man took a sheet of paper from his pocket. He stared at it for a moment, then pushed it aside and recited slowly from memory.

  “It is essential in the present state of world affairs that we prove to the world that our right to a Jewish State is not only an historical and human right but that we are ready and prepared to back it with military force,” he said. “Those are old words, not new ones. They are from the June 1939 Declaration of Principles of the IZL, the Irgun Zvai Leumi, the Irgun, the Jewish Freedom Fighters; some people called them terrorists. They liberated the Land of Israel from British rule.

  “The American president talks about terrorism as if when our people are being murdered, are being herded into concentration camps by their blood enemies, when the land that God himself, blessed be his name, gave to our people is taken from us, when our own country, our America, turns its back on our people, as if terrorism is something to be ashamed of rather than something to be proud of.

  “When we celebrate Chanukah, when we tell the story of how Judah Maccabee drove the Roman legions from Israel, we celebrate the victory of terrorism. Jewish terrorism. Were the Jewish heroes who drove the British from Israel, who bombed hotels and police stations, were they terrorists? Of course they were. That didn’t stop us from electing them our prime ministers, did it?”

  He paused. His daughter walked up and whispered in his ear, but the old man shook his head violently and gestured for her to sit.

  “When I finally dozed off last night, I slept as soundly as I have in years. And when I woke this morning, it was with a realization. I realized that while I slept, my mind kept thinking. Thinking about terrorism. And I was stunned at what I had realized the instant I awoke. In my sleep I realized who the greatest terrorist of all is. I lay in my bed and my body shook with the power of that understanding. Shook because I knew I would be coming here to address the largest gathering of Jewish people in the history of this nation at the time of the greatest threat to American Jews. I shook because of th
e powerful and wonderful and terrible message I knew God gave me to deliver today, the message I will deliver to you today; in fact, not just to you but also, also to Mr. President Lawrence Quaid.

  “Here is the message I come to deliver. My message is about terrorism. My message is about the greatest terrorist of them all—God, the Lord. He is the greatest terrorist of all time. Let me recite some of his acts of terror when his people were in the most danger. I’ll recite them as we do every year at Passover. We dip our finger in the cup of wine and remove one drop for every act of terror.”

  The rabbi held up an imaginary wine glass with his left hand. He dipped his right forefinger repeatedly into this glass, shaking off an imaginary drop of wine, repeating the Passover Seder ritual.

  “He turned their drinking water to blood.” Dip, shake. “He infested their land with frogs.” Dip, shake. “Then lice, then flies. Their livestock suddenly dropped dead. Then boils broke out on the people’s skin.” Dip, shake. Dip, shake. Dip, shake. Dip, shake.

  The elderly rabbi dropped his hands and looked out at the crowd.

  “Tell me, does this sound like terrorism, like maybe biological warfare? God’s weapons of mass destruction, maybe? But God was not finished.” He raised his imaginary cup again and again dipped his finger in it repeatedly.

  “Hailstorms, locusts, darkness. And all those horrible actions were not sufficient to save Israel. So what did God the terrorist do next? Talk about weapons of mass destruction. He killed the firstborn son of every Egyptian family.

  “Weren’t those all acts of terrorism? Was it speeches or marches or email campaigns that changed Pharaoh’s heart, that forced him to free the Children of Israel from bondage? No. It was terror. Acts of terror more terrible than the world has seen since. God used this terror to save the Jewish people long ago. If God could take such actions to save his people then, can’t we take such actions to save his people today?”