Thursday, August 17, 2017

"Would I Have Done the Same?"

Very poignant reflections from NBA star Roy Allen. 

"Would I have done the same?"

This is a very difficult question. It is extremely easy to posture about it.

Readers of my blog (when I was still blogging anonymously as the "Closet Conservative") may recall that I myself thought of, and experienced this very issue when I was in Poland with my father seven years ago.

When visiting the shtetls that my grandparents came from, I had the personal experience of meeting some random clerks in the "city hall" of the shtetl my late maternal Bubbie z"l, came from. I started asking through our taxi driver about my great-grandfather's house-he had a shul in it. He was a Rabbi and we looked in every town that we visited for the cemetery and the synagogue (we were so naive-most were razed to the ground). 

He became extremely hostile and agitated and bit off my head telling me 'if you want records, we don't have them here you will have to go to Womza (Lomza)'. Another female clerk gasped, and looked appalled and quickly came over to us to explain to our driver where the mass grave was and did we want to see it. He thought I was fishing for property restitution. He spit his words out and gave me a death glare. We declined and went about looking for the house (which we eventually found).

I realized in that moment that if we were in that time, back then, the male clerk would have turned us in, and the female clerk would have saved us. Two people, same jobs-in the space of 5 minutes of one another.