Hate is a disease

Henry Lowenstein

Jack Adler

In 1977-1978, the Adler family is living in Skokie, Illinois when their quiet Chicago suburb becomes the stage for a legal battle between the town and the National Socialist Party of America (NSPA).

Village of Skokie v. National Socialist Party of America

The National Socialist Party of America (NSPA) was founded in 1970 as an offshoot of the American Nazi Party. Both organizations embraced the ideas of Hitler and adopted the rhetoric, symbols, and uniforms of the NSDAP (the Nazi party).

In late 1976, the NSPA files requests to hold a white power demonstration in Skokie. Skokie has a large Jewish community and is home to a significant number of Holocaust survivors. NSPA leaders intend to use the community’s anticipated objections to generate publicity for their racist ideology.

Many Jewish citizens of Skokie—including some, like Jack, who survived the Nazi camps—are fiercely opposed to any manifestation of Nazism in their town. At their urging, the Skokie council files for an injunction against the rally and passes ordinances that would prevent similar events in the future, initiating a legal battle that goes all the way to the Supreme Court in the case of Skokie v. National Socialist Party of America.

The NSPA sues the village for infringement of their right to free speech under the First Amendment. As the case makes its way through the courts, the NSPA is able to enlist the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for its legal defense. While Skokie maintains that government exists to protect the dignity of all its citizens, and that allowing incendiary speech amounted to an endorsement of hate, the ACLU mounts a defense of the NSPA based on the idea that the government should not be permitted to decide which voices to allow and which to suppress, no matter how offensive the voice may be.

Following lower court rulings in favor of the town of Skokie, the ACLU appeals the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Ultimately, the NSPA is allowed by law to march in Skokie, but the event never takes place. However, important questions about free speech and the protection of hate speech addressed in Skokie v. NSPA continue to have relevance today.

For Jack, hate is a disease that threatens to destroy the fabric of society. The only antidote is respect.

Transcript

Jack Adler: Hate-- excuse me-- it is like a cancer. You have to catch it in its infancy and cut it out. If we fail to do so, like a cancer, hate continues to spread. And when it spreads sort of after a certain point, it starts killing. And we cannot allow that to happen to any group of people.

Interviewer: And the way to stop it is?

Jack Adler: Mutual respect. We are all the same. We may look different, come from different countries, but we are always-- they-- all we have to do is respect each other. We don't have to love each other.

Many families don't get along. We don't even have to like each other. But for our own self-preservation as a human race, we had better learn to respect one another. Only then will we survive. Or else we'll destroy each other, as we have seen destruction going on in various parts of the world, or one group of people against another. And that's 50 years after the Holocaust.

"... all we have to do is respect each other. We don't have to love each other."

USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, Interview 18433

When interviewed by the Shoah Foundation in 1996, Jack declared that he had no intention of ever returning to Poland. But in 2011, at the age of 82, Jack joins the March of the Living group to visit sites of the Holocaust in Poland with students from around the world. For the first time in 67 years he returns to the country of his birth and visits Lodz, Pabianice, and Auschwitz.

Jack’s son Elliot, a filmmaker and Emmy-award-winning cinematographer, recounts the story of the Skokie episode and Jack’s unexpected return to Poland in his 2015 film Surviving Skokie. Accompanied by his son and by the young students on the tour, Jack revisits the scenes of his youth, where happy childhood memories are overshadowed by inconceivable suffering and loss.

Excerpt from Jack Adler's memoir, Y? A Holocaust Narrative:

We then went to the city and stood upon the same main street I used to walk up and down as a child. To my astonishment, everything was still there—the ghetto and other buildings still stand. It brought back some happy memories, like functioning as a family unit in the city, but then it also brought back memories of the destruction of that family, of our lives and our culture. It was difficult to reconcile all my emotions, but I managed. I wanted so badly to visit the apartment building my grandfather had owned. I wanted to knock on what had been my own door and introduce myself. I imagined what I would say.

“Hello. I’m Yacob Adler. I used to live here with my family before the war.”

I imagined the look of surprise that would cross the face of the man or woman who lived there, hoping they would let me look around and relive some of the happiest moments of my childhood.

[...]

I could go on and on about some of the better memories that were resurrected by everything in Pabianice that evoked the senses. The smells and tastes brought me back to my childhood before the war, when my mother would still make things like that and when we had full bellies.

[...]

We next saw the Pabianice Ghetto, a site that is now home to apartment buildings and businesses. They had not rebuilt the old synagogue. There is now only a plaque where it once stood. There is very little evidence of what transpired. Men and women live and work in the same rooms that became home to an overcrowded and starving Jewish population. It almost seemed surreal. Of course it happened. But it seemed so unlikely standing there.

This is why we have to remember. This is why we have to teach and listen and learn.

Jack begins speaking to students about his wartime experiences in 1992. He has since told his story hundreds of times in schools throughout Colorado, and it has become a way for him to process the trauma and channel it for good. The most important lesson he passes on is the importance of respect for the future of democracy and humanity.

Transcript

Jack Adler: That's a very good question. And I-- and I-- and you know, as I speak, as you are well aware, to thousands of children, each-- schoolchildren, as well as civic groups, church groups, each year, what I like to say is that, how can we stop the cycle of hatred, prejudices, racism, bigotry, or what have you? I would like you to know my own opinion on it.

And you know, as I tell the children, we live in the greatest nation on the face of the earth-- no doubt about it-- the United States of America. We live in a diverse society. We represent every race, nationality, religious group.

And you know, in order for us to get along, to survive, to be able to preserve this great democracy to generation-- for generations to come, for my grandchildren, and their children, and so on, you know, we don't have to love everyone. I know I don't. We don't even have to like anyone. But if we want to survive and preserve this great nation, we have to learn to respect each other.

There has to be a mutual respect for one's race or nationality or religion or whatever the belief may be, as long as it's a belief. It's sane. It's not something to hurt someone.

And you know, you have people here who ask me, what have you learned since the Holocaust? What did the world learn from it? Unfortunately, nothing positive. If we did, we wouldn't have what's going on in the former Yugoslavia, Liberia, Somalia, Rwanda, Ireland, the Middle East, Sudan. So we didn't know.

We learned one thing, though-- is that hate is an equal opportunity disease. And we better learn how to get rid of that. And we need some medicine to conquer that disease, or else we will destroy each other.

"...hate is an equal opportunity disease."

USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, Interview 18433

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