[Vision2020] Victims and Perpetrators, a belated response

[Heather Wilson]

Dear Rose and fellow V2020 members,

Rarely am I compelled to respond to the steady stream of all-things-Christ Church-related slander here or in our lovely local paper but since my sister-in-law, Mrs. Merkle, was the subject, I want to be sure her response is posted here. As she is not actually V2020 member, her letter seems to be caught in moderation.

My own particular background makes my ever tolerant self cringe at Rose's letter and misguided accusations. I have Jewish family in Israel and here in the U.S. and as a girl, I saw firsthand the camp numbers tattooed on my great aunt's arm and then again on the arms of survivors at the holocaust museum in Israel. In addition,  my parents were involved in the pro-life movement since the 70s and started one of the first Crisis Pregnancy Centers in the U.S. so the carnage of abortion is also close to my heart. 

This longer than needed intro is all to say that while I don't owe this background check, I'm saving Rose another letter challenging my qualifications for speaking out now.

Heather Wilson

> From: Bekah Merkle

> Date: August 2, 2015 at 1:49:09 PM PDT
> 
> Hi Rosemary,
> 
> Thanks ever so much for the letter you (rather oddly) sent to my husband. I’m awfully afraid, however, that you weren’t reading my post very carefully - because where you’re coming up with “distressingly anti-Semitic” is a complete mystery to me. Perhaps you should go back and have another run at it? I also wasn’t quite catching where you actually disagreed with my point - are you claiming that Rumkowski wasn’t Jewish? Or that he didn’t send thousands of his own people to the death camps? Or is the interesting factoid that his name means “life” supposed to somehow vindicate his actions? Or are you saying that the Judenräte didn’t actually exist? (Or, perhaps, that we just shouldn’t talk about it? Does good taste forbid us mentioning the fact?)
> 
> And as far as the anti-Semitic thing goes, we may need to just pause a moment and establish some data. Being ethnically Jewish myself, I could actually get Israeli citizenship if I wanted - so I’m afraid I got a bit of a chuckle out of your accusation. If I’m Jewish enough for citizenship I’m guessing that also means I’m Jewish enough to have been one of those rounded up for the camps by turncoats like Rumkowski. And my husband (the “Head of the Household” as we fondly refer to him around the house) is even more Jewish than I am - although since it’s through his father he couldn’t get citizenship. And outside of the mere DNA situation, I spent years living with Ben’s fascination with the Hebrew language, Hebrew culture, and Old Testament studies. And then I’ve moved across the world with him to live on the grounds of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies where we had a mezuzah in every doorway and every formal event we attended kept kosher . . . trying to remember not to cook pork (at least not a second time!) when our friends from Israel were over for dinner (yes, that was embarrassing), while Ben wrote a dissertation on the interesting and complicated relationship between the Reformers and the Rabbis of the 16th century. It’s a world that we have been fairly well immersed in. So I’d maybe save your anti-Semitic accusations for someone else . . . 
> 
> One more quick thing - when you say that “nothing (NOTHING) is more repellant than half-assed, ignorant references and comparisons to the Holocaust” I’m afraid I’d have to disagree. I can think of a whole number of things more repellant than people saying stupid stuff about the Holocaust (infuriating though that may be). Just pulling off the top of my head I’ll throw out a for instance - how about dismembering babies and putting their parts up for sale? I’ll take people saying stupid stuff any day of the week over that.
> 
> Cheers!
> Rebekah 
> 
> (PS - lest you missed it, that “head of the household” thing was a mere jest. We prefer the term “Patriarch.”)
> 
> (PPS - that was a joke too.)


Sent from my iPhone
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/attachments/20150803/1d731814/attachment.html>