Among the dozens of emails that land in my inbox every day, a message in English from a group called Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors caught my attention a few months ago. It was probably the hair-raising photograph of the train tracks to Auschwitz that accompanied the email that prevented me from deleting it immediately.
After all, I have a stake in those tracks. I assumed that this group that I wasn’t familiar with somehow considered me one of their own, and my skin tingled with the joy of belonging. In the role of “no longer a child of,” I let myself read what the group had to say.
The first thing I learned was that I should be gravely worried by Chuck Hagel’s possible appointment as the next U.S. defense secretary. The present column was written just hours after the Senate decided not to end the debate and bring his appointment to a final vote.
by Amira Hass
