Opinion: On Holocaust Remembrance Day, remembering a 1941 bar mitzvah in Germany

Martin Lowenberg became a Jewish man, a bar mitzvah, 10 months before the Jews of Fulda were deported from Germany to Latvia, most of them to their deaths. The reading at his ceremony, from the portion of the Book of Exodus Jews all over the world will read tomorrow, was secret and hidden.

But this Holocaust survivor remembers the reading by heart. It’s ironic that Martin, still attending morning services daily, can recite that passage of the Torah, read on the eve of his deportation to the Kaiserwald camp near Riga. Even more ironic is that this portion, chapters Exodus 10-13, is all about God hearing the cries of the Israelites and releasing them from bondage in Egypt. (Some release in 1941!)

On Holocaust Remembrance Day, how haunting is Martin’s bar mitzvah, how sad that exodus from the darkest chapter in human history occurred many years too late for 6 million Jews, and thousands of Roma and homosexuals, let alone the millions of soldiers from countless countries.

As we think of Jews celebrating bar mitzvahs all over the world, we may be tempted to think they have nothing in common with Martin Lowenberg’s 1941 bar mitzvah in Fulda. We might think that Jews have power, influence and wealth, and nothing could ever happen to them like what occurred all over Europe 80 years ago.

What a grave mistake that would be. Everyone is vulnerable — especially successful minorities and ethnic groups. The more successful Jewish people are, the more they have contributed to art and culture, and the well-being of the countries they have lived in, the more vulnerable we become. From ancient Egypt to Muslim and then Christian Spain, to Germany, and almost everywhere in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s — Jews have been forced to encounter the wrath of antisemitism.

So, too, tragically, in America: As Jews find themselves able to live in every neighborhood, able to join virtually every country club, to become senators and governors of states like Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Georgia, antisemitism is nevertheless rising. Small pockets of extremists on the right and the left tap into the age-old jealousy that Jews are becoming too influential, too powerful, too scary for people to deal with. The Jews who lived in Fulda for over 800 years were well-established by the time of the rise of Hitler and Naziism. But that only made them more of a threat; only made them more vulnerable.

Martin Lowenberg is able to celebrate the anniversary of his 1941 bar mitzvah in the safety of America and in a Detroit that has little resemblance to its antisemitic past — yet there is an ever-growing fear that antisemitism is yet again rearing its ugly head.

Let us all make sure that as Martin continues to celebrate the exodus, that we as a society do not give in to fear and paranoia of blaming our own frustrations on minorities, immigrants or on people who are different from us. Let us make sure that we learn to accept the strengths and the successes and the integration of people who look, pray, worship, or observe differently than us. Their successes need to be our successes; their integration and advances are a sign of how great our society is, not a cause to be jealous or nervous. Let us make sure that America is all about exodus from slavery and oppression.

The next time you experience a bar mitzvah, baptism, or consecration — take that as a moment for all of society to celebrate together. We must ensure that hatred, murder and vicious antisemitism can never exist again here in America, or around the world.

Rabbi Asher Lopatin is the executive director and Sam Dubin is the assistant director/ director of media relations of the Jewish Community Relations Council/ AJC Detroit. JCRC/AJC’s mission is to represent the metropolitan Detroit Jewish community, Israel and Jews throughout the world to the general community and to establish collaborative relationships with other ethnic, racial, civic and religious groups.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Opinion: On Holocaust Remembrance Day, remembering Germany in 1941