Think of the Children! They Didn’t Ask to be Born!

Remember when you were in high school and you had huge screaming matches with your parents for not letting you go to a Dropkick Murphys concert? And when they wouldn’t back down you stomped up to your room and slammed the door while screaming, “It’s not FAIR! I didn’t ASK to be born!” Remember that? Well, today’s news has some insight on kids who were born into awkward and/or unpleasant situations. In fact, our own Laurel Snyder is quoted in an article about choices that kids from intermarried families have to make. There’s a lot of discussion of families where some kids chose Judaism and some didn’t. And there’s the inevitable ‘do I go to church with my dad if I’m Jewish?’ debate. All of which makes it clear that while it may not be fair, it’s hardly impossible to negotiate. (Dear Every Rabbi Who Ever Taught Me in High School, Guess what? It turns out intermarriage isn’t the end of the world! You can move on with your lives! I know, I’m totally psyched. Love, Tamar) If you think intermarriage is problematic you’re going to just love this article from the Times about children who were conceived under a Nazi plan to try to make lots of pretty Aryan looking babies. “They were conceived because of the desire of invading Nazi troops to create an Aryan master race to rule the world — and now they are demanding compensation because of the stigma and discrimination it has caused them.” Apparently, these next gen Nazis (who are mainly Norwegian) were part of a plan cooked up by Heinrich Himmler called Lebensborn, which means Fountain of Life. Many of the kids (who are now, of course, well into their seventies) were subject to discrimination and harassment, and some were “deprived of their original names and identity.” I don’t actually understand what that means—they weren’t told their parentage and background or were lied to about it?—but it certainly sounds like it sucks. The article mentions a few specific cases of these children being called Nazis and then being cruelly punished for their parentage. Norwegian courts are holding hearings now to decide whether the kids have a case and aren’t expected to make a decision for months. In a way this is a chilling reminder of how completely insane the Nazis were (and how exactly was this plan implemented? Did German soldiers get postcards that said ‘For A Good Time Call Marta at 867-5309’?) but there’s a lot of serious questions to be asked about lessons we clearly haven’t learned from the Holocaust. Like, say, tolerance. I mean, it takes a certain amount of insanity to call babies Nazis. We like to hear that everything worked out fine, and that the good guys won and the Nazis were killed, but in reality we left things pretty messy. Which is way less fair than not being allowed to go to a Dropkick Murphys show (although I maintain that is still uncalled for).