REP. JEFF VAN DREW FOR THE AC PRESS, December 21, 2022

As Americans, it’s a question we hardly ever stop to ponder — “What would the world look like without the United States of America?” Perhaps we should. Especially at a time when there are so many out there trying to tell us there is nothing special or exceptional about the America we know and love.

What if those 56 brave souls never gathered in Philadelphia to sign the Declaration of Independence? What if on July 4th, 1776, the Continental Congress had voted to instead reaffirm our allegiance to the English crown? What if this Great American Experiment in self-governance never actually began?

The answer should come as a jarring reality check, but let’s not stop there.
It’s been reported that PBS recently released a so-called documentary titled, “The US and the Holocaust,” in which filmmaker Ken Burns disgustingly attempts to paint the American people as “anti-Semitic” and “racist” in the years that preceded World War II and even goes as far as to argue that it was our “outright xenophobia and hatred towards immigrants” that exacerbated the horrors of the Holocaust in Europe.

I grew up surrounded by the same members of the Greatest Generation that Burns now seeks to vilify. They were our friends and neighbors, teachers and coaches, coworkers and mentors. Millions of Americans representing every race, religion, color and creed who stepped forward to defend freedom in its darkest hour.

Burns and those who share his perversion of history should be asking themselves what if the Statue of Liberty never rose in New York Harbor and there was no America to escape to? Or, if as Winston Churchill put it, “the New World (America), with all its power and might,” never “steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old”? What if America actually was what they say? I guarantee you they wouldn’t like the answer. But, hey why let the truth get in the way of impressing your woke friends.

With each passing day, fewer and fewer of these heroes walk among us, so it is up to us to defend the legacy of our honored dead. They are the ones who ended the Holocaust and delivered Justice at Nuremberg for the Nazi’s crimes against humanity. They are the ones who stormed the beach at Normandy and liberated an entire continent. They are the ones who defeated true antisemitism and helped to re-establish the Jewish State of Israel for the first time in more than a thousand years.

Of course we must always root out true racism and antisemitism. The United States of America is always self-correcting and improving. We are always striving for a more perfect Union, but this false rewriting of history must end. Enough is enough. We are a good people and an exceptional nation that is always worth defending.

U.S. Congressman Jeff Van Drew, R-2nd District, lives in Dennis Township.

MY RESPONSE

About the “Filmmaker disparages Holocaust-ending America,” an opinion piece by Representative Jeff Van Drew in The Press of Atlantic City, December 21, 2022:

Ken Burns, director of the documentary “The U.S. and the Holocaust,” supported by notable historians, states that military considerations led to decisions — perhaps exacerbated by anti-Jewish sentiment or influenced by Jewish fear — that kept the U.S. from specifically targeting Nazi concentration and death camps during WWII.

I cannot recall a moment in the six-hour film that insults or disparages the soldiers — Jews, including my father, proudly among them — who served with honor to fight for the freedoms enjoyed here and throughout much of Europe.

There can be absolutely no doubt that Jews appreciate what the United States means to the ideals of religious freedom and plurality, and to the revitalization of Judaism — and Israel — following WWII.

Representative Van Drew gains nothing and says nothing by playing the “what if” game in his opinion piece. However, since he went first…

“What if” Rep. Van Drew had actually watched the film rather than relying on “It’s been reported that PBS recently released a so-called documentary…”?

What if there had not been quotas on the number of Jewish students in universities or professional programs (e.g., medical schools) into the 1950s?

What if there had never been real estate deed covenants barring sales to “non-Caucasians,” which included Jews. (These restrictions persisted into the 1970s.)

What if “Gentleman’s Agreement,” a best-selling 1947 novel by Laura Z. Hobson that depicts widespread Jew-hatred in New York City and environs, had not been based on reality?

What if Black soldiers, heroes of the Greatest Generation, had returned home in the 1940s and could stay in any hotel, be served at any restaurant, sit where they wished on a public bus, drink from any water fountain, or freely send their children to the school of their choice?

What if Rep. Van Drew regrets using “your woke friends” as an apparent pejorative against citizens he is sworn to represent?

What if Rep. Van Drew had defined what constitutes “true” racism and antisemitism? Are there “untrue” versions?

Yes, we are a nation in process, if not progress. However, there is a great difference between selective claims of “false rewriting of history” and our duty to own up to our collective past.

Sometimes the truth hurts, but the deeper we try to bury it, the more we deny that we are “a good people.” We are good enough — and strong enough — to handle the truth.

Rabbi Jonathan Kremer
Shirat Hayam Congregation
Ventnor NJ