Remembrance Day

Remembrance Day. The solemn memorial for the six million Jews that were systematically exterminated by the Nazi party during World War II. I've had the honor of hearing first hand accounts of the terrors from survivors. It is chilling every time and remembering the evil that human beings are capable of is one of the most important tasks a historian can take on.

Six million people. That is the equivalent of all the military deaths in the War Between the States.

Times ten.

It's staggering no matter how many times I read that figure. No matter how many stories of the survivors I hear. No matter how many stories they tell of the ones that never made it out alive.

I want to commemorate it somehow. But I want to go about it differently. Walking through Oakland Cemetery the other week, I saw so many Jewish graves. There is a lot of Jewish History embedded in Southern History. Being that this is also Confederate History Month, I want to mesh the two a bit. I'm going to share the stories of a few men from the Old South. Jewish men. Men that would have found themselves among the crowds from those stories had they only been born in central Europe about 100 or so years later.

Francis Salvador was born in London in 1747 and moved to South Carolina in 1773. Although there were laws prohibiting Jews from holding office or even voting, no one voiced an objections to his election to the general assembly. He served as a delegate to the revolutionary Provincial Congress of South Carolina. He would also sever in the second Provincial congress later that year. In July 1776, at age 29, he became the first Jewish man to give his life for the cause of American Independence.

David Levy Yulee

Another Revolutionary War leader was David Emanuel. He served as a soldier and a scout under his brother-in-law, John Twiggs. During his service he would escape after being captured by the British. He survived the war and served in several roles in the new state. In 1801 he was serving as president of the state senate when Governor James Jackson resigned to take a seat in the U.S. Senate. Thus Emanuel became the 24th governor of Georgia, the first Jew to serve as governor of any state of the U.S. Emanuel County, Georgia is named for him.

David Levy Yulee (born David Levy) was the son of a Moroccan Sephardi Jew. He founded the Florida Railroad as well as served as president of several companies. He served as Florida's territorial delegate in Congress before Florida's statehood. In 1845, when Florida became a state, he was became the first Jewish member of the U.S. Senate. After Florida seceded in 1861, he resigned his post as U.S. Senator and became a member of the Confederate Congress. The town of Yulee and Levy County, Florida are named for him.

Judah Benjamin

And then there's Judah Benjamin. It's hard to imagine a man so capable and accomplished that has been relegated so obscure in American History. His post-war exile would carry him to Great Britain where he would be appointed as Queen's Counsel. Before this, however, he'd serve as senator from Louisiana. In 1861 he became the first Jewish cabinet member on the North American continent when Jefferson Davis appointed him to be Attorney General of the Confederate States of America. He would go on to also serve as secretary of war and secretary of state. There would not be a Jewish member of a U.S. cabinet until 1906, 55 years later and 22 years after Benjamin's death. Not to mention the fact that Judah Benjamin turned down U.S. Supreme Court nominations from two different presidents.

I know, I know. Names, dates, places. *yawn*

Don't look at it that way. See people. Four men with families, hopes dreams, fears, lives like you and I. It is important to remember these successful men this way. It's important because that is how we should remember those six million that were poisoned, shot, beaten, starved and left to die of disease. They were piled in mass graves or incinerated like they were nothing but they too had  families, hopes dreams, fears, lives. Did  have.

The only differences between these four men and any of the victims of Hitler's Final Solution were years and miles. As remarkable a Judah Benjamin was, the SS would have shoved him in an oven in a heartbeat. We know this because so many men like him met that very fate...we just don't have their names in our history books, not even to the level we have his. We don't have counties named for the children that never grew up or the mothers that bore them. So many stories eliminated from our records forever. And as time progresses, the survivors become fewer. Those that remain to tell us first hand are being lost to death. And many of their stories are going with them.

It's all too easy to see a number like six million - 6,000,000 - and dismiss it. Even all those zeroes don't seem to help. In an age where we take about millions, billions, even trillions so casually. But we have to understand this number. We have to understand the humanity on both sides of the number. We have to see the others in Serbia and Rwanda. We have to see it and know we are capable of doing it and it can happen to us. More importantly we have to remember that we can keep it from happening to anyone ever again.

We have to know it's inevitable if we ever forget.