Our America: Don't Give up the Fight
- By Jules Chametzky
On November 9th, the 78th anniversary of Kristallnacht, that fateful date in German and German Jewish history, I called my sister-in-law Renate in Cleveland to wish her a happy birthday; it was of course my late wife Anne Halley's birthday as well, since they were twins. Renate is a retired physician, head of mammography at Western Reserve, and not ever very political--even though she and Anne were born in Bremerhaven and heard the Horst Wessel song in the streets on their birthday, and were lucky enough to escape Germany for America in 1938. But the Trump victory energized in her an anguished and eloquent outburst:
"People in Germany early on thought Hitler was a crazy buffoon, but look at what developed!"
Well, what to say to that? I tried to be reassuring. I remembered back in the days when MacArthur came back to the States after Truman fired him, and was received with wild enthusiasm in San Francisco. I thought this is the man on horseback who would take over the White House. But one of my best professors at the University of Minnesota, a great Americanist, replied to my fears by saying, no, that's not how it's done in America: "We'll get a general in the White House, but first he will put on civilian clothes, become a respected academic president (Columbia), and then he'll be elected to the White House." Of course that is what happened.
And so I said to Renate, if we get some kind of proto-fascism in this country, it will not be like the European versions. Some reassurance. But we must organize and demonstrate and as Bob Marley put it so well, "Don't give up the fight!"
The last of the original founders of the Massachusetts Review (1958–1959), Jules Chametzky served on the board in various capacities for twenty-seven years. He taught in the UMass English department for forty-five years, and at multiple European universities as a visiting professor of American literature and American studies. He has published over 100 stories, reviews, and essays in various popular and scholarly journals.
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