Football Reparations
If you’re a Jewish soccer fan, like myself, these have got to be conflicting times. That’s because the World Cup, the greatest sporting tournament known to mankind, is taking place in Germany. I remember when I first found out that Deutschland was going to host the tourney in 2006. It really felt like a bad dream. If I could have chosen one country that I didn’t want to be forced to embrace - it was Germany.
Now, you have to understand where I am coming from here. I am not a hateful person. As a member of a nation that is despised by so many it would be incredibly hypocritical if I openly hated Germany. But I must admit that its truly hard not to have mixed feelings towards a country that, for all intents and purposes, tried to wipe my people off the face of the earth. I am trying to look at the positives, but its tough. And you could imagine how I felt when Iran played in Nuremberg last week. Talk about the past colliding with the present.
You see, this is the first time that my feelings towards Germany have been truly tested. It’s always been easy for me to say that I will never choose to travel there. It's easy to say I would rather not purchase a German-manufactured vehicle. These are things I can control. But when you sprinkle my favorite sporting event throughout the country its impossible to look away. So, after years of trying to ignore Berlin, Frankfurt, Cologne, and pretty much the rest of Germany, I am now waking up early every morning to celebrate the splendor of sports along with them.
Maybe this is just what I need to move on. Maybe the beautiful game will help me realize that Germany really is a beautiful country with a dreadful past. At the same time, I don’t want to forgive and I can’t forget. Not when I have personally experienced the horror that still stands at the Concentration Camps in Auschwitz, Treblinka and Birkenau.
A few years ago, I traveled to Poland to learn more about the hell my people had to endure. There isn't a day that goes by that I don’t think about the mass graves, the piles of hair and the gas chambers. That trip made me even prouder to be Jewish than I ever was. It also strengthened and, in many ways, confirmed my beliefs that it’s too early to move on. So, are my feelings towards Germany a little harsh? Judge for yourself. If you feel that way I know what you’ll say because I have heard it time and again. Nevertheless, I have to live with those feelings in my heart and I am not ready to let them go. But what does it say about the power of sports that for the first time in my life I am open to seeing the beauty in a country I have forever tried to ignore?
1 Comments:
Wasn't this post called something like "Hello Darkness My Old Friend".
Good to see the Swastika thrown up in the middle of the World Cup. The Germans so far have been dissapointing in bringing it out so its good a Jewish dude on a sports blog did it. For the next post maybe Franchise should cop a ticket to Germany and meet some real-live actual Germans. They might tell you a thing or two about how a whole country can give way to a fascist regime, how people will sit silently by while they hear about: camps being built,about "renditions", about occupation and imperialism, about torture, about young men following the orders they were given to do unspeakable things. The German people are great teachers of how things like this can happen and they will talk openly about it and may in fact push an American to ask them about Hitler by saying - "how did you allow Bush to come to power?" They are aware of their past. More than I can say about what American know about 100,000 Iraqis dead, Guatannamo Bay's conditions or even Ronald Reagan and El Salvador death squads or hell - agent orange, napalm and carpet bombing in Vietnam. There's been no war crimes tribunals for those things yet. In watching a recent doc on TV called "Checkpoints" , about young Isreali soldiers'"just doing their jobs" harrassing and de-humanizing Palestinians as they try to go about their lives crossing into and out Jewish controlled territories, I thought about if years from now somebody will try Isreal's leaders for these types of actions. Will it be a crime in Israel one day deny these things didn't take place? Will there be monuments to this moment in time? Will it be a crime to say that during the World Cup a few militants were killed by Isreal's rockets along with the collateral damage of some Palestinain teenagers and a child.
Hell maybe someday - half a century from now some dude from Palestine, Iraq, Vietnam, El Salvador, South Africa can talk about what its like to see his team take the field under their own flag to play in the World Cup - maybe as its being held in Israel or the USA - as one of those countries looks to help change the perception the world has of them.
Post a Comment
<< Home