“This Is Where We Burn the Jews”

This is something that was said to my face with a wink and a smile a couple years back in Barcelona. It happened in a little shop that I adored, that sold faux antique furniture and knicknacks such as the item pictured above. The enchantment of the objects for sale was matched by its owner: a petite, good-natured man in his fifties who always greeted you with a smile and friendly conversation.

I’d visited that shop several times already, and the owner and I had a great rapport. We just connected. I am very American in my ability to be abnormally friendly with total strangers. He, being something of a Catalan anomaly, was the same way. He knew a few things about me, such as what I did for a living, and every time I stopped in, he always asked me was how life in showbiz was treating me. In short, we had a very simpatico vendor-customer relationship.

So on this particular visit, I asked him a question about an item that required him to check back in the storeroom. As he opened the door to the dark, cavernous space, he turned towards me and said, with a twinkle in his eye, “This is where we burn the Jews.”

It’s hard to find the words to explain what it felt like to hear that. It was as if time had stopped and the air had suddenly been sucked out of the room. This is where we burn the Jews? It was surreal. I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. “Did this nice, elegant little man just say that?”

Now, I knew it was meant as a joke. If someone I’d known very well — a good friend, or someone who either was Jewish or who understood what it is to be Jewish — had said the same thing, then it might have been funny to me. But this was a man with whom I had only the most superficial contact. This was someone I hardly knew, and, to him, This is where we burn the Jews was safe, generic joke material, approved for all audiences.

What could I do? I couldn’t laugh. I was too shocked. So I did the only thing I could.

I said, “I am Jewish.”

Now it was his turn to feel the air being sucked out of the room. I don’t know how many times he’d used the This is where we burn the Jews routine with other customers — maybe never, maybe I was the one and only lucky customer — but it was obvious that never in his life did he expect to be say that to a real Jew.

A look of horror crossed his face and his mouth opened and closed, searching for words that at first wouldn’t come. Finally he said, “I’m so sorry. I had no idea. I was only joking. If I had known you were Jewish, I never would have said such a thing.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I know you were making a joke. I had to tell you, because I felt I should explain why I couldn’t laugh.”

He was still a good man. I knew he didn’t make that comment because he hated Jews, but rather because he didn’t know any. The existence of Jews wasn’t part of his daily consciousness. It’s very different here from the U.S., where Jews are ubiquitous. Here about 500 years ago, Jews were thrown out, killed or forced to convert to Christianity and haven’t exactly been eager to come back. Yes, there are some Jews in Barcelona, but they are a very tiny, insular minority group — for reasons perfectly demonstrated by catch-phrases such as This is where we burn the Jews. After all, it wasn’t too long ago that, in this same land, people were cookin’ themselves up a damn fine Jew-barbecue. They were goin’ through Jews like Texans go through mesquite!

So where did that leave me? Should I have said nothing? Should I have forced a laugh, even though I didn’t find it funny? I know that informing him that I was Jewish burst his bubble. It ruined our friendly moment and ground everything to a halt. But if I hadn’t said anything, I would have felt very uncomfortable. I would have felt like I was being dishonest — to him and to myself — by hiding this important fact. I would have never felt the same around him again. And I didn’t want that to happen… so I told him.

Within a few minutes, we were talking and joking again as if the whole incident had never happened. We both felt a little awkward, but I held no resentment toward him. And — as far as I could tell — neither did he with me. But you can probably bet that he never said This is where we burn the Jews to a customer again, because now this group of people, the Jews, occupied a space in his consciousness.

I guess some people would say this was an example of political correctness gone wrong; a case of “thought police” or “mind control” because I, in my insistence on demonstrating that I was a Jew, ruined this man’s innocent moment of fun.

My answer is this: If I hadn’t said anything, I would have denied a basic component of who I am, as well as my family’s history. My very existence in this world is due to the fact that, around 1900, two brothers named Arieff left their small Russian village of Vitebsk for America. Some 30 years later, every single Jew in their village — and every remaining member of their family — was murdered by the Nazis. Though they didn’t know it while they boarded that ship for America, my grandfather and his brother were escaping with their lives.

So, if I hadn’t replied the way I did when my friend said This is where we burn the Jews, in effect, I would have ceased to exist. My grandfather, his family, and everything they went through, also would have ceased to exist.

So, at the cost of putting an end to my friend’s blissful ignorance of the possible existence of Jews, the incident served to validate my existence, and expand his world a little bit. And that’s my problem with the argument that all so-called political correctness is wrong, and that it’s always equivalent to thought policing or censorship. It’s a lazy argument that represents wishful thinking on the part of those in the dominant group, who would rather not have their lives complicated by the existence of anyone else who is different from them.

Well, it’s a little too late for that. Spain is filled with millions of immigrants of different races, cultures and religions, and thanks to the Internet, the world is flat and global, and everything travels in a nanoseconds. There’s no going back now. So we’re all condemned to either learn from one another, or kill ourselves fighting each other.

“Thought police”? “Mind control?” Give me a break. It’s not mind control. It’s mind expansion. It’s consciousness. It’s basic human decency.