What would you have done if?
The Holocaust is spoke of as a tool of advocacy by today’s advocates with little empathy for the real toll on humanity that it represented. Those who lived the horror experienced humanity in a spectrum that none of us can even contemplate. The 1970’s American Nazi march on Skokie, Illinois was a symbol or a clue as to just what the survivors actually faced. We who were safe while Europe endured the 3rd Reich could not begin to contemplate what that even represented. However, to the many survivors it represented a horror that was beyond contemplation. The glib amongst us parse the words of some elite political idiot to draw parallels and make silly comparisons, but our nativity and ignorance is all that is exposed. The Nazi and Soviet 1930/1940 crimes against humanity tested the limits of inhumanity in a manner that was unique.
Thus, when successful businessmen and women gathered in my office to plan the murders of the marchers the attitude was deadly serious. Of course I argued that what was being planned was ‘wrong’ and we would accomplish more by embarrassing the marchers by having them march to totally empty streets, but, I was addressing people who by and large listened to people like me when Hitler was a disgraced sergeant or corporeal with a iffy service record and suffered as victims of unspeakable crimes. They understood the threat. Fortunately, the deep seated hostility while lost on me, was not lost on the miscreants and when push came to shove they avoided the confrontation. As I obtained more experience and more understanding of the world I now understand why so many of my clients (and friends) felt the need to act.
My client base initially had few people who were my co-religionists; however, as I grew older the population became more diverse. My neighborhood office did not offer the prestige that many of my co-religionists demanded and the informality that both my partner and I were infamous for attracting mostly referrals and neighborhood business people. Our secretary fortuitously kept a coffee pot going and her knack for making a fantastic cup of coffee – complete with the aroma of the gods – was a magnet and was a stimulus for candid discussions. I learned personal secrets that my clients (friends) would not tell their spouses or priests.
The Holocaust survivors would not generally discuss their horrific experiences. However, for some reason many felt that they could confide in me and I listened – and kept silent. Today, there are no survivors alive and the burden of silence is no longer urgent or necessary. The heroics of some begs to be revealed. No one volunteered to live even a single second of this ordeal, however, every individual lived to regret every mili-second.
My first blush with this situation came with my grandfather’s angry rant directed at President Roosevelt’s refusal to allow immigration of Jews from the STAR OF CUBA steamer and our Government’s sending the refugees back to Germany to be killed. As I was young at the time I remember the outrage but not the moment of the situation. I do however remember the raw hatred that he had for Roosevelt as most Jews worshiped him - just as I remember the anomaly of Nazi rallies at the corner of Lawrence Ave and Western Ave in Chicago at the height of World War II. Years later, late one Saturday night I received a telephone call at home from G.P. G.P. was hysterical. He had taken his wife out to see a movie at the Northtown Theater. He dropped her off to purchase tickets and went to park the car. He parked the car and was walking back to the theater when he bumped into a man he recognized!
The man was the ‘camp commander’ of the concentration camp to which G.P. had been taken. GP was not Jewish, but was one of the Polish Catholics who was circumcised. A Nazi patrol caught G.P. and a few of his friends skylarking, arrested them, and when it was determined that GP had been circumcised he was arrested, and hauled off to a camp. GP vowed to escape and did. As a fugitive he joined one of the partisan units. This unit was faced with the quandary of having to deal with the Nazi policy of killing innocents as revenge for the assassination of its soldiers. The group determined that if they were much more brutal than the Nazis, the retaliation on the general population would not be an option. They were correct and many Nazi soldiers suffered unspeakable torture.
Tame Americans (and even some not so tame Russians) were appalled by the antics of this guerrilla band, and after hostilities ceased considered war crime charges. The partisans dissolved into the woodwork and now being criminalized by the victors GP joined the flotsam of refugees and escaped to the United States. My client assumed the name G.P. and took a job as a hairdresser. Rarely did the ladies of the suburbs find a hairdresser who was well over six feet tall, narrow waisted, muscular from hard work, who looked like he just stepped off the soccer field. GP’s shop was an immediate success – and so were his real estate enterprises. (I was engaged as his attorney in the real estate enterprises). G.P. married a young woman and the young couple set up housekeeping in the suburbs. She knew absolutely nothing about his past, though she did have curiosity as to the numbers tattooed on his wrist. It troubled her that he claimed to be a Catholic but never went to church, and that he did understand Yiddish and had a Jewish lawyer.
The telephone call woke me out of a very deep sleep, and it took me a couple of second to contemplate what I heard. G.P. was frantic. He had killed a man, ran from the scene and was calling me from the theater! I knew what would follow if G.P. went to the police and I knew that if G.P. said that he killed someone, not only was it not the first time but it might not be the last. I also knew that if the identification was accurate – and it turned out to be – the SOB would not be missed. I then gave G.P. the politically incorrect advice and the issue was never raised again. The death was discovered the following Monday and was another unsolved Chicago murder. For the next couple of decades, I represented G.P. as he purchased buildings all over the suburbs and as he and his wife ran the beauty shop. G.P. also confronted me as to going to Skokie during a planned Nazi march in that suburb which housed many holocaust survivors and killing a few Nazis. He accepted my counsel to wait until the Nazis marched in his suburb.
H.F., another of my clients, found himself in a partisan unit when the Nazi hordes invaded France. H.F, like G.P., got involved in a unit that had anti-social tendencies. These young men realized that if they were captured they would receive no mercy and that they were in a life and death struggle. The Nazi retaliation against the innocent civilians similarly induced horrendous brutality against not only Nazis but collaborators. This was a life and death struggle with only the LAW OF NATURE to address. There was no reasoning to be applied! The law was kill or be killed. The French Government attorned to the Nazi occupation and H.F. became a total outsider. Until the liberation, he lived in a State of Nature living only to survive and to kill the hated Nazis.
When the War ended, the occupation forces did not feel kindly to H.P. and he and his fellows were deemed to be Persona Non Grata. Indeed, H.F. was a ‘wanted man’ and while the allies were happy to accept his assistance when they had a common enemy, now that peace was declared they no longer needed him. His own country did not welcome him. Thus, the only safe place for H.F. was amongst the refugees who were seeking entry into the United States. HF assumed the identity of a dead countryman who resembled him physically and settled in Chicago. Refugee organizations obtained for H.F. a small business on the Northside of Chicago and a ‘man of action’ assumed a life that was totally foreign to his previous existence. The transmutation became complete when he married and his wife gave birth to a son. (I represented H.F. in his business and personal affairs – HF assumed the life a pious Jew, but, rarely indulged in the religious activities or rituals)
H.F. was unmasked when he got involved in a minor criminal case, and a nosy law enforcement agent dug a bit deeper than was “necessary”. Fortunately, the law enforcement agent’s wife was a client of mine and the background of my client became the subject of gossip and not official reports. The prosecution did mention to the Judge and the jury my client’s alleged background; however, I seized upon the averment to suggest that H.F. was a hero for his war efforts and the silly charges brought ought to be dismissed and H.F. ought to be lauded and given a metal. The Judge smiled when I made my assertion and we both laughed when we heard a loud voice echo out of the jury room: “there is no way I will ever vote guilty in this case - I had dealings with the French underground – I owe them!”
Indeed, the jury verdict was ‘not guilty.’ Exactly what transpired in the jury room I do not know. The judge for reasons that were never disclosed to me wanted a plea, and I refused. He then impaneled a jury at 4:00 P.M on a Friday afternoon. I objected strongly as this happened to be my second jury that week and I was legitimately very tired. The jury was charged at 10:00 P.M. It was 3:00 P.M. when the Jury rendered its verdict. Interestingly when I went to examine the file after the verdict had been entered, it not only was missing, but, there was no record of the file, the charge, or the case.
A.B. was an ordinary peon. He like many other Jews was swept up in the holocaust frenzy, herded onto a train and sent to a concentration camp. He was singled out to be one of the prisoner “policemen” who milled around the condemned and kept order. He was designated to be hated, despised, and worse. His shame was so great that even with the promise of attorney client privilege, he was too ashamed to reveal his experiences – however, every day of his life (including on his death bed) he could not speak of the horrors he had witnessed and participated. The community of his peers treated him a pariah and he accepted his fate. His ordeal and loneliness never ended and he could not escape himself – or those who new him or recognized his ilk.
M.S., D.R., A.S. were also ordinary peons. Each was sent to a slave labor camp and somehow survived. They were part of the flotsam who survived. All wound up in the United States and were essentially reborn after the war ended. All wanted to forget their ordeal, however, all wore the brand of the holocaust – i.e. the numbers tattooed on their arms. However, they did not forget! They were the lucky ones and they made great efforts to take advantage of the freedom and the redemption that they enjoyed. Each exhibited a lust for life and worked with diligence to get a dollar ten out of each dollar of opportunity. Until the contemplated Nazi march on Skokie none publicly acknowledged their ordeal or the inherent fear of repetition of the Nazi ordeal.
As a young lawyer, I did not understand the subliminal workings that drove my friends and clients to contemplate controlled extreme action. I looked at the problem in terms of the RULE OF LAW and never considered that the LAW OF SURVIVAL and/or the RULE OF NATURE was in play. The Courts looked at the problem as strictly a FIRST AMENDMENT situation. Under our American Law as long as the action contemplated is per se peaceful the First Amendment applies. It is irrelevant that your first Amendment action might incite violence! Those who commit violence or threaten to commit violence are criminals and they NOT YOU are to be punished. According to our courts there are no exception! The Right to speak freely and advocate even the most heinous of actions is protected unequivocally. (NB. Actions in support of the heinous action no matter how innocuous or mild are violations of the law – but the expression is political and protected!)
The foregoing notwithstanding there is a group of public officials (such as Jerome Larkin and the Illinois Supreme Court) that object to an HONEST INVESTIGATION of elder cleansing and have used the power of the State (including the State of Illinois)to thwart disclosure of dishonest judicial and political figures who have as a side profession the isolation, intimidation, abuse, exploitation and dehumanization of senior citizens and making a mockery of the United States Constitution and the State Constitution. In particular here in Illinois Article 1 of the Constitution of 1970.
Does the actions of Jerome Larkin, Judge Connors, the Illinois Supreme Court, the dishonest lawyers and judges on the 18th Floor of the Daley Center et al rise to the level of the 3rd Reich? I leave such esoteric issues to the experts - all I can say is that the corruption fostered by the corruption of the Illinois Supreme Court, Jerome Larkin and the 18 USCA 371 co-conspirators is a cancer that is seriously affecting the fabric of America and undermining our core values. All that JoAnn Denison, Lanre Amu and yours truly asked was an HONEST INVESTIGATION of the perfidy and theft that was being perpetrated on America's elderly!
It is true (in my opinion) that we have not reached the proportion of depravity that the 3rd Reich displayed in the 1930's and 1940's but the Alice Gore and the Mary Sykes cases demonstrate a start that if it remains unchecked will leave a lasting perfidy and nefarious exhibition that will live in infamy. Law enforcement must act NOW! The Federal Government must act NOW! We as citizens must ACT NOW! When a petty political figure like Jerome Larkin can get the Supreme Court of Illinois to intentionally ignore the First Amendment to the United STates Constitution and Article 1 of the Illinois Constitution we here in Illinois are in very serious trouble - it is no consolation that the Government Accounting Office has wasted rems of paper on four reports that are largely unread by Congress and the NATIONAL ADMINISTRATION or that the 'elder cleansing' scandal is a National disgrace!
Indeed - what do you and I tell our children and grandchildren as to the Alice Gore Estate and the judicial raid on her oral cavity to steal the gold from her teeth. Shame!
Ken Ditkowsky April 19, 2017
