Hidden in plain sight

At the far east end of 47th Street in Man­hat­tan, between 2nd and 1st Avenues a broad lovely park leads up to the United Nations com­plex of build­ings on the East River. A farmer’s mar­ket is set up every Wednes­day through­out the year.

a mar­ket and plaza to rally against genocide

This broad space is known as Katharine Hep­burn Gar­den in Dag Ham­marskjöld Plaza. As often as pos­si­ble I walk Deb­bie most of the way to her office, buy pro­duce at the farm­ers’ mar­ket, then, with my bags slung over my shoul­ders, I walk the mile back up to our apartment.

Stop Iran rally in Dag Ham­marskjöld Plaza (a large black back­drop for the speak­ers blocks the view of the UN)

On Sep­tem­ber 22, 2008 when Iran­ian Pres­i­dent Mah­moud Ahmadine­jad spoke at the United Nations, the Jew­ish com­mu­nity orga­nized a “Stop Iran” demon­stra­tion in the park. I made a point of being there. Young peo­ple were bussed in from day schools around the area and oth­ers flew or were flown in from Canada and as far away as Bal­ti­more and Chicago.

Sat­mar at Stop Iran rally

God Gave Israel To The Jews

Never Again Is Now

In the 1960s and 1970s when you attended a rally you wore a lapel but­ton that indi­cated how you felt. How­ever, while a few but­tons were dis­trib­uted at the “Stop Iran” rally, very few of the couple-thousand peo­ple who may have been packed into the park and the sur­round­ing streets that morn­ing wore their but­tons. They were there express­ing their con­cern about a world leader who denies that the geno­cide against the Jews dur­ing World War II occurred and threat­ens to com­mit geno­cide in our own day against the peo­ple of the State of Israel.

A few days later on Sep­tem­ber 25, a dif­fer­ent coali­tion orga­nized a demon­stra­tion to call atten­tion to the geno­cide in Dar­fur. I made a point of being there as well. No offi­cial Jew­ish pres­ence, not even AJWS, was vis­i­ble. In fact there were barely 50 peo­ple in atten­dance the entire time.

rally to stop geno­cide in Darfur

five sqaure columns, a blue sphere, paving stones and a bronze briefcase

I did not know this at the time. I only learned about it because I made a con­certed search. The loca­tion at the east end of this park between the park and the United Nations is ded­i­cated to some­one who did all he could to stop geno­cide. And then he dis­ap­peared into the Soviet Gulag sys­tem. On a tiny island in the mid­dle of 1st Ave. five tall columns of black dia­base, mined from the Swedish bed-rock stand in a field of paving stones taken from the for­mer Ghetto in (and as a gift from the City of) Budapest. The brief­case has the ini­tials RW on it. There is no expla­na­tion for the blue sphere. The mon­u­ment (a park in his honor exists in Queens), titled “Hope”, was com­mis­sioned by the Swedish con­sulate and cre­ated by Swedish sculp­tor Gus­tav Kraitz.

Raoul Wal­len­berg Memo­r­ial from the west

Raoul Wal­len­berg Memo­r­ial from 1st Ave. head­ing north (obscured if not com­pletely hidden)

Raoul Wal­len­berg Memo­r­ial from the east

who was Raoul Wal­len­berg?

On each of the columns a small amount of text is carved:

Ded­i­cated to Raoul Wal­len­berg a Swedish diplo­mat born in 1912, who was sta­tioned in Budapest, Hun­gary 1944–45

Dis­play­ing great car­ing and inge­nu­ity, Raoul Wal­len­berg saved the lives of count­less Hun­gar­ian Jews by plac­ing them under the pro­tec­tion of the Swedish Gov­ern­ment “I could never return to Stock­holm, know­ing that I had failed to do every­thing within human power to save as many Jews as pos­si­ble” –Raoul Wal­len­berg …Raoul Wal­len­berg, with extra­or­di­nary courage and with total dis­re­gard for the con­stant dan­ger to him­self, saved the lives of almost one hun­dred thou­sand men, women, and chil­dren…. — From the 1981 Joint Res­o­lu­tion of Con­gress, mak­ing Raoul Wal­len­berg an Hon­orary Cit­i­zen of the United States On Jan­u­ary 17 1945 Raoul Wal­len­berg was detained and impris­oned by the Soviet gov­ern­ment His fate remains unknown.

As a world-traveled 32 year-old busi­ness­man, one might almost call him an adven­turer, from a wealthy and illus­tri­ous Swedish fam­ily with busi­ness con­nec­tions in Hun­gary, Raoul Wal­len­berg was sent (in an effort of the Amer­i­can government’s War Refugee Board and per­haps as an under cover agent of a top secret intel­li­gence agency) to join the Swedish lega­tion in Budapest. It was hoped that he would do some­thing to save the lives of Jews being deported to their deaths.

Raoul walked the walk

How do you decide what is appro­pri­ate for you as an indi­vid­ual to do in response to a cri­sis of hor­rific pro­por­tions? Raoul Wallenberg’s activ­i­ties in Budapest are so out­stand­ing (I find it a bit odd that there has not been a Hol­ly­wood movie about his exploits) that I repeat the story here rather than merely link to it [the text comes from the Wikipedia page about him]:

On July 9, 1944, Wal­len­berg trav­elled to Budapest as the First Sec­re­tary to the Swedish lega­tion in Budapest. Together with fel­low Swedish diplo­mat Per Anger, he issued “pro­tec­tive pass­ports” (Ger­man:Schutz-Pass), which iden­ti­fied the bear­ers as Swedish sub­jects await­ing repa­tri­a­tion and thus pre­vented their depor­ta­tion. Although not legal, these doc­u­ments looked offi­cial and were gen­er­ally accepted by Ger­man and Hun­gar­ian author­i­ties, who some­times were also bribed. The Swedish lega­tion in Budapest also suc­ceeded in nego­ti­at­ing with the Ger­mans so that the bear­ers of the pro­tec­tive passes would be treated as Swedish cit­i­zens and be exempt from hav­ing to wear the yel­low Star of David on their chests. With the money raised by the [mh: war refugee?] board, Wal­len­berg rented 32 build­ings in Budapest and declared them to be extrater­ri­to­r­ial, pro­tected by diplo­matic immu­nity. He put up signs such as “The Swedish Library” and “The Swedish Research Insti­tute” on their doors and hung over­size Swedish flags on the front of the build­ings to bol­ster the decep­tion. The build­ings even­tu­ally housed almost 10,000 peo­ple. San­dor Ardai, one of the dri­vers work­ing for Wal­len­berg, recounted what Wal­len­berg did when he inter­cepted a train­load of Jews about to leave for Auschwitz:

…he climbed up on the roof of the train and began hand­ing in pro­tec­tive passes through the doors which were not yet sealed. He ignored orders from the Ger­mans for him to get down, then the Arrow Cross men began shoot­ing and shout­ing at him to go away. He ignored them and calmly con­tin­ued hand­ing out pass­ports to the hands that were reach­ing out for them. I believe the Arrow Cross men delib­er­ately aimed over his head, as not one shot hit him, which would have been impos­si­ble oth­er­wise. I think this is what they did because they were so impressed by his courage. After Wal­len­berg had handed over the last of the pass­ports he ordered all those who had one to leave the train and walk to the car­a­van of cars parked nearby, all marked in Swedish colours. I don’t remem­ber exactly how many, but he saved dozens off that train, and the Ger­mans and Arrow Cross were so dumb­founded they let him get away with it.

At the height of the pro­gram, over 350 peo­ple were involved in the res­cue of Jews. Sis­ter Sára Salka­házi was caught shel­ter­ing Jew­ish women and was killed by mem­bers of the Arrow Cross Party. Swiss diplo­mat Carl Lutz also issued pro­tec­tive pass­ports from the Swiss embassy in the spring of 1944; and Ital­ian busi­ness­man Gior­gio Per­lasca posed as a Span­ish diplo­mat and issued forged visas.

On July 10, 2009 I made a point of vis­it­ing the Hope memo­r­ial on my way to a dif­fer­ent errand. As I con­tin­ued on my walk down 1st Ave, a few blocks south, beside the Isa­iah Wall in Ralph Bunche Park, across the street from UN head­quar­ters I came upon…

Raoul Wal­len­berg Walk at the foot of the steps along the Isa­iah Wall

Isa­iah 2:4:

ושפט בין הגוים, והוכיח לעמים רבים; וכתתו חרבותם לאתים, וחניתותיהם למזמרות–לא-ישא גוי אל-גוי חרב, ולא-ילמדו עוד מלחמה

And He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide for many peo­ples; and they shall beat their swords into plow­shares, and their spears into prun­ing­hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, nei­ther shall they learn war any more.

This quote has been part of my per­sonal story since my ear­li­est years. I have sung it to many melodies and, I believe, worked to bring it about. Yet, when I think of the efforts of oth­ers, I won­der, what have I done to help? These were among my thoughts as I returned home, again via the “Hope” memorial.

how many peo­ple need to die for “killings” or “mas­sacres” to rise to the level of genocide?

There, at the east­ern edge of the Plaza fac­ing Wallenberg’s pil­lars of hope a group of peo­ple held up beau­ti­ful blue and white flags call­ing atten­tion to attacks against their dias­poric peo­ple. A mea­ger demon­stra­tion was held, call­ing atten­tion to the plight of the Uygur minor­ity in West­ern China.

demon­stra­tion against Han Chi­nese treat­ment of Uygurs

in a Tues­day, 14 July 2009 story at the BBC…

China demands Turk­ish retraction

There is still a heavy mil­i­tary pres­ence on the streets of Urumqi
China has demanded that Turk­ish Prime Min­is­ter Recep Tayyip Erdo­gan retract his accu­sa­tion that Bei­jing prac­tised geno­cide against eth­nic Uighurs. Mr Erdo­gan made the claim after riots in the Uighur heart­land of Xin­jiang dur­ing which 184 peo­ple were killed.

The demon­stra­tion had been orga­nized by the Uyghur Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion which dis­trib­uted a few leaflets and back­ground infor­ma­tion on the sit­u­a­tion (from their point of view). In the lit­er­a­ture were links to dis­turb­ing videos on YouTube:

• Ten­sions are over­flow­ing in the streets of Urumqi with sev­eral vio­lent attacks Wednes­day. Anger is high on both sides of the eth­nic divide between Han and Uighur groups after the most vio­lent riots…
• Troops have flooded China’s west­ern Xin­jiang region to enforce a cur­few after days of height­ened ten­sions between eth­nic Uighurs and Han Chi­nese in the cap­i­tal, Urumqi. More than 150 peo­ple have b…

Per­haps hun­dreds of Uyghur peo­ple have been killed in the recent strug­gle. From the lit­tle I’ve read, it seems that the Han Chi­nese have insti­tuted a for­mal pol­icy of relo­cat­ing the Uyghur peo­ple to dis­tant parts of the Chi­nese empire. I appre­ci­ate the strug­gle of these peo­ple for their own national self deter­mi­na­tion. It is pos­si­ble that a hor­ri­ble atroc­ity is occur­ring now in West­ern China, and even with YouTube, this sit­u­a­tion is hid­den from us in plain sight. And yet I won­der if what is hap­pen­ing there can truly be called, as the plac­ard of one of the demon­stra­tors claimed, genocide.

an Uyghur demon­stra­tor (on the left) with a home­made poster call­ing Chi­nese actions GENOCIDE

the con­tin­u­a­tion is hidden

I expe­ri­enced a very strange phe­nom­e­non as I pre­pared this post. I would reach a cer­tain length in the writ­ing (or num­ber of items in the code?) and that caused the entire post to “dis­ap­pear” or be hid­den. Even­tu­ally I found the point beyond which I could write no more… and I sim­ply deter­mined to cut the post in two portions.

To con­tinue, click here