Inch He Fourth of JulyOn July 4, there was always an important day for me, something special, a holiday. For the first time in 1954, I made contact with this date in my place of birth of Timiaar in Romania. I was five years old, and I sat with my father in front of our Radio Blaupunct. We heard the final of the World Cup between Hungary and West Germany from the Wancdorf stadium in Bern.
We knew all the names of the players of the Golden Elf Hungary. The team was familiar to us, and yet it was clear to me that my father did not press on the thumbs of the Hungarians. Even the Germans, of course, are not. He presented a community that led to deep hostility in our then Jewish world.
At the end of this game on July 4, my father said something that accompanies me to this day: “It was a game between two Gosos “ – He used the Hungarian word for Evil – “Between the two evil peoples who committed terrible suffering from our family and Jews. But you must only remember the important event of this day: his date, July 4. This is the birthday of the United States of America, for which you – God – will one day go on a trip and where you will find success and happiness. “
From that day, I perceived the United States of America as an ally and a friend of Jews, as a stronghold against anti -Semitism, as our liberator from the Holocaust. This is my feeling about America, even if it is wrong, at least in our case, because our liberators were soldiers of the Red Army of the Soviet Union.
Andrey S. Markovitz
Born in 1948 as a son of the survivors of Shoa, worked at Harvard, Santa -Krus and at the University of Michigan.
But the bourgeois experience of my parents was convinced that they not only hate everything socialist, but also rejected everything that came from East of Europe. It is also applied to Eastern Jews.
There were also Great Britain. But in some way the aura that surrounded the United Kingdom has always remained inaccessible to us. This can be annoyed, because it was the British army that freed my aunt from Bergen-Belsen. By the way, she was one of the few people from the Markovts family who could return alive from extermination camps.
In Europe, I was only a tolerant Jew. The power of America, on the other hand, has always served as my defender
Thus, America remained alone, which appeared in my small world as a real opponent and conqueror of the Nazis. He had something: one Soft powerwhich comes from the English language and which is especially pronounced in popular culture, in films and music. These love relationships between me and American culture continue for 70 years, continuous. In Europe, I have always been only a tolerant Jew, but was never the one who was really accepted when. The strength and power of America, on the other hand, always served as my defender, regardless of how far the United States.
This is applicable, despite the terrible undesirable events in American history – with slavery, submission and destruction Indigenous Americans I call only two especially outrageous ones. Despite this, the United States was the oldest and most long liberal democracy in the world. Here we, my father and I were really accepted without any restrictions – as sovereign and valuable people.
I will never forget how I was sitting in a meadow in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the middle of a million people on July 4, 1976. We all celebrated 200 years of the American Republic. My father told me with tears in my eyes: “It’s good, it’s good!” It was not only the case when I just got a doctoral degree and began my first work at Harvard University. The comforting awareness that we can live as Jews in safety and dignity expressed even more expressed. My father never said anything like this in Romania and Austria.
When I arrived at Columbia University in 1967, it was one of the most educational experiments in my life. Colombia made me what I became until the end of my life: a scientist who learned to love his profession in all her aspects.
I learned to appreciate the value of contradictions in Colombia and that you must question the power. In other words, the liberality of the people of the 68ths created a constant love of the nature of democracy with the opposition and contradiction.
“My America” no longer exists
Nevertheless, last year’s events deeply shook this happy mood. In short, I see how the last years of my life are destroyed by Skylla trumpism. Trump is going to destroy almost everything that I learned to love in America. And I see Haribdius of anti -Semitism, which is the strongest in the most sacred places of my life, namely in the world of elite universities, such as Colombia, Harvard and Michigan University.
Trumpism. Where can I start? This is a movement that is proud of your arrogance and ignorance. She only knows that the naked exercise of the authorities is within the country and at the international level. This is a movement that despises weak, unprocessed violence.
America, which was a refuge for me, offered me safety and support and gave me the opportunity to success. It is very scary and depressing!
What was my America? It was not a natural miracle of the rocky mountains, and not the vastness of his cities, even the diversity of his social life. First of all, it was the world of elite universities. They became my workplace, my home, as well as the place of safety! But universities were not the same since October 7, 2023. I even believe that in today’s America there are only a few institutions in which a person who lives openly as a Jew feels more inconvenient than in the world of elite universities.
I would like to tell you two vignettes from the University of Michigan, which I experienced there in March 2024, in the last semester of my teaching.
Firstly, I noticed that at the end of my lectures some students hid their necklaces Davidtern under their sweaters before they left. They did it very naturally, as if protecting their neck with a scarf. Second: when I once went through a campus, I witnessed how a young woman screamed at another young woman, hated: “Go back to Poland!” A Jewish from America should “get out of Palestine” that she should “return to Poland”, from where I suspect -her family once had to flee from the pogroms!
I never thought I would test these two events at the American University. They were A The place of my safety, my success, my luck! Unfortunately, it is gone.
My grief, my disappointment, they sit very deep! I am afraid that they will not disappear in the remaining years of my life.
