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Inside DC’s Secret Covid Morgue

Written by Luke Mullins

April 21, 2020—The clerics have been sworn to secrecy. On this warm morning, they’ve come to a vast and empty parking lot, instructed not to tell anyone of its location. The pitch of asphalt is unusually secure, hidden behind a 12-foot chain-link fence that’s been swathed in sheets of black tarp to prevent anyone from peering through. At the front gate, armed soldiers stand guard.

Inside, large trailers are arranged behind tented canopies and banks of lights. Metal ramps are affixed to each trailer so that stretchers can be wheeled in. The interior walls of the trailers are lined with seven rows of metallic shelving, sturdy enough to support thousands of pounds. The temperature is 24 degrees.

The clergymen gather with a handful of city officials in front of the canopies. They form a circle, each six feet apart from the next.

Reverend Andre Towner of Covenant Baptist United Church of Christ.

Imam Talib Shareef of Nation’s Mosque.

Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld of Ohev Sholom–The National Synagogue.

Dr. Donell Harvin, a top official at DC’s homeland-security department.

Kimberly Lassiter, a supervisor at the medical examiner’s office.

And Dr. Roger Mitchell, the chief medical examiner himself.

Wearing masks and rubber gloves, they bow their heads. Tomorrow, the first body will be sent here. Today, a blessing.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

One by one, the clerics offer prayers, solemn exhortations for strength and humility, courage and dignity, resonating above the grinding hum of the trailers. Imam Shareef invokes the victims—“Their deaths,” he says, “are not to be in vain.” Reverend Towner prays for the workers, that their bodies will be protected from the virus, that their minds stay healthy during the difficult days ahead. Rabbi Herzfeld stresses the righteousness of the mission. “In Judaism,” he tells the group, “we believe that the greatest kindness is to care for the dead.”

***

It’s an ominous time in the nation’s capital. Several miles away, federal officials are dismissing warnings about the deadly airborne pathogen that has exploded out of Asia. Their unwillingness to act has impelled local governments across the country to launch their own scattered efforts to prevent Covid-19 from decimating their communities. In the District of Columbia, where African Americans make up 46 percent of the population, the task is especially urgent, given the virus’s disproportionately cruel impact on people of color.

Over the previous month, the city has been locked down as panicked residents watch their leaders navigate a 100-year crisis in real time. Mayor Muriel Bowser shuttered businesses. The DC Council pushed through legislation to extend unemployment benefits. Health-department officials opened testing sites and implored residents to wear masks and keep their distance. But away from public view, a weightier matter has come to preoccupy a little-known but essential corner of the bureaucracy: the caretakers of the dead.

“There’s not going to be a parade for you guys. You’re not going to get discounts or big thank-you signs. The work we do, we do in silence.”

It’s a problem of space. As Drs. Mitchell and Harvin prepared for the pandemic, they realized that the city’s morgue didn’t have the capacity to handle the surge of fatalities that the virus would leave behind. And so, over the previous few weeks, they hustled to secure the land, equipment, and manpower necessary to build an additional facility.

The clergy who led prayers on the day the field morgue opened were there to make sure the space didn’t violate the tenets of their three distinct faiths, and to consecrate the site as one. Then the work began. Over the next two and a half months, Harvin, who describes himself as the “general in charge of the death troops,” and his top deputy, Lassiter, who has recovered bodies throughout DC for more than two decades, will oversee the makeshift mortuary. By the time the spring surge is through, 404 Covid victims will have passed through the site.

Still, through it all, almost no one in the city will have any idea the Covid morgue exists. The work is carried out in strict secrecy; staffers are instructed not to disclose the site’s location or tell anyone what takes place there, not even their own family members. A mistake—such as a body being released to the wrong family—would be humiliating for the mayor and the city. News footage of workers moving the dead could upset victims’ families, opening new wounds, or lure gawkers to the site. As much as anything else, though, the silence reflects the professional ethos of those who perform this work for a living. While they’re dispatched to every hurricane and school shooting, their efforts take place entirely behind the scenes. They are the first responders you never see.

The District of Columbua invited an imam, a rabbi, and a minister to consecrate the morgue.

***

“There’s not going to be a parade for you guys,” Harvin tells each new set of workers to arrive at the Covid morgue. “You’re not going to get discounts or big [thank-you] signs. The work we do, we do in silence. Not even the family members of the victims will know what we do. There’s a pride in that. There’s a silent pride in that,” he says. “You’re taking care of someone’s grandmother, grandfather, husband, daughter, son, and that’s a higher calling.” When it’s all over, they’ll return to their previous jobs or assignments and no one will ever know what they’ve done here. “It’s a heavy burden,” Harvin says. “It’s a very heavy burden.

“[But] the world is watching,” he assures them, “whether they see us or not.”

***

Donell Harvin is 48 years old, with a sturdy build and flecks of gray in his goatee. He’s married to a physician and has four daughters. He lives in Howard County and spends most of the year looking forward to his annual scuba-diving trip.

Over the last 30 years, Harvin has been an eyewitness to some of America’s darkest moments. As an EMT, he responded to the World Trade Center when it was bombed in 1993; after joining the New York Fire Department, he was there when the towers were destroyed in 2001. As a deputy director in New York’s medical examiner’s office, he led the effort to identify victims of Hurricane Sandy. And in 2012, at the request of Connecticut officials, Harvin assisted with forensics after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary.

His path from first responder to frontline bureaucrat began in the Bronx, where he spent his teenage years. After dropping out of high school, he got a GED and then a college scholarship from the Children’s Aid Society, enlisting as a paramedic. Though he loved the work, as a young father he began to worry about his safety. He was caught in shootouts while tending to accident victims and lost colleagues in ambulance crashes. On 9/11, his wife and daughters saw him on TV, racing away from the rubble, and then didn’t hear from him for 24 hours. Upon seeing their faces when he finally got home, he knew it was time for a change.

Harvin went back to school and earned a master’s in emergency management. Landing a position with New York’s chief medical examiner, he became an expert in mass-fatality management—the grim business of identifying and processing victims of large-scale tragedies. He also came to know Mitchell, and the two worked together on Sandy Hook. Two years later, when Mitchell was hired as DC’s chief medical examiner, he recruited Harvin.

Donell Harvin, who was at Ground Zero on 9/11, helped devise DC’s Covid death-handling protocols.

***

Their immediate task in the District was to turn around an office plagued by mismanagement. But an equally important project loomed. The previous year, Washington had been shaken by tragedy when a mentally disturbed government contractor gunned down 12 people at the Navy Yard. Although the medical examiner’s office had properly managed those deaths, officials realized that a larger or more complex disaster would have overwhelmed its capabilities. The city needed a mass-fatality division robust enough to absorb the kind of tragedy that Harvin and Mitchell hoped Washington would never face. They went about building it—securing federal funds, adding staff, and running mass-casualty drills.

By early 2020, Harvin had been in Washington six years. He’d since left Mitchell’s office and finished a PhD in public health. He was teaching at Georgetown and had become chief of homeland security and intelligence at DC’s homeland-security agency. But the imminent arrival of Covid meant the District was facing the catastrophe he and Mitchell had trained for, the biggest mass-fatality event in the city’s history.

On March 2, Harvin went to DC’s Emergency Operations Center for the first day of formal briefings about how the city would navigate the pandemic. Halfway through the morning, he found a quiet spot in the hallway and placed a call to his mother. “This is going to be bad,” he said.

***

The city morgue is located at 401 E Street, Southwest. In any given year, only a fraction of the fatalities that occur in DC pass through the facility. When a person dies of natural causes at a hospital, nursing home, or hospice, a physician will typically sign the death certificate and release the body to a funeral home. It’s usually only those who die alone or in unnatural or suspicious circumstances whose bodies go to the morgue, where medical examiners determine the cause and manner of their death.

Initially, Harvin and Mitchell planned to use this same approach for the pandemic, relying on hospitals—where the bulk of virus-related deaths would take place—to serve as de facto Covid morgues. But they quickly revised their thinking. For one thing, little was known about how contagious the disease might be postmortem. Would storing victims at hospitals risk infecting staff? At the same time, Harvin learned from former colleagues in New York—which was being ravaged by the virus—that hospitals were too overwhelmed to manage the bodies properly. The result was an appalling spectacle: forklifts carrying pallet-loads of bodies outside hospitals, decedents stacked on top of one another in trailers. At one point, police discovered nearly 100 rotting corpses in unrefrigerated U-Hauls parked by a Brooklyn funeral home. As the funeral home’s owner told the New York Times, “I ran out of space.”

The city handles the body of every Covid fatality, a process meant to ensure victims don’t pile up at overwhelmed hospitals, as in New York. Above, an autopsy room and viewing area at the city morgue.

***

The truth is that all mass-fatality events carry the potential for this type of disgrace. Amid the chaos of a calamity, victims get misidentified. Morgues fill up. “We saw that with Hurricane Katrina—bodies just left out there,” Harvin says. “And that’s a stain on our society.”

So Harvin and Mitchell made a decision that would set them apart from most coroners and medical examiners in the country. Instead of depending on the hospital system, the chief medical examiner’s office would assume responsibility. Every single person who dies of Covid in DC would be sent to Harvin and Mitchell’s team—a protocol that remains in place today.

By studying the mortality rate and projecting infection levels for the city, the men estimated that as many as 3,500 residents could perish in the pandemic. Or one in every 200. Putting aside the magnitude of the suffering, the math presented a serious logistical problem: The city morgue had an official capacity of only 205. The solution was apparent—they would have to build the Covid morgue.

Harvin immediately began acquiring the materials he’d need. He ordered six refrigerated trailers. He borrowed mobile light towers for nighttime work and generators for power. He acquired PPE, Porta-Potties, drinking water, 500 gallons of hand sanitizer, and heavy-duty body bags specially designed for mass tragedies, 4,000 in all. For families who couldn’t afford funerals, the District agreed to pay for cremations. And to prevent a backlog of fatalities, the city shortened the time it would hold unclaimed bodies before they could be cremated, from 30 to 15 days.

The truth is that all mass-fatality events carry the potential for disgrace. Amid the chaos of a calamity, victims get misidentified. Morgues fill up.

Meanwhile, Harvin combed the local and federal bureaucracy in search of an additional 30 workers—to volunteer. The Army agreed to detail members of its mortuary-affairs unit, which had operated similar morgues in combat zones. A trade association found out-of-state funeral directors who wanted to pitch in. DC’s Medical Reserve Corps, a group of volunteers willing to assist in health-related emergencies, provided workers. The DC Guard and the Air National Guard sent personnel.

As he rushed to get things in place, the virus was already spreading through Washington. Harvin felt the same sense of foreboding he’d experienced six years earlier when he was waiting for Hurricane Sandy to make landfall. “It’s like a slow-moving train,” he says. “You know it’s coming and you can’t stop it.”

***

While Harvin was acquiring equipment and manpower, his top lieutenant, Kim Lassiter, spent two days driving around the District, scouting possible sites for the morgue. At her last stop, she got out of her car and peered through the fence. The property had everything. It was city-owned land—a parking lot for DC employees, empty because staffers were now working from home. It was large enough for the trailers, and it could be secured with tarps and guards. Most important, the site was inconspicuous: You could drive right past it and not realize it was there. “This is perfect,” Lassiter thought.

Lassiter, a 54-year-old grandmother with a soft smile, is the second-longest-tenured medical examiner’s employee, with nearly a quarter century on the job. In the 1990s, she lifted the victims of gang wars off street corners and washed the blood from their wounds at the morgue. In 2002, she used x-rays to identify the remains of Chandra Levy, the 24-year-old intern whose murder had become the subject of national fascination when it was alleged she’d been dating a married congressman around the time of her disappearance. And in 2008, Lassiter carried the remains of four children—ages 5, 6, 11, and 17—from the house where they’d been decomposing for seven months, after their mother, Banita Jacks, became convinced they’d been possessed by demons and killed them.

Lassiter came to the work by way of her own personal tragedy. She grew up in a housing project in Prince George’s County, with five brothers and sisters. Her father wasn’t around, and her mother, who worked in healthcare, struggled to do it all on her own. She eventually fell victim to drug use. It was up to Lassiter—the eldest of the children—to run the household. She cut class three days a week to watch her siblings. At 12, she got a summer job to support the family. Even after she graduated from high school and entered the workforce, there were periods when she would drop everything to nurse her mother through the various chemical fogs and illnesses that encumber the life of an addict.

In 1987, when Lassiter was 21, her mother passed away. Lassiter was called to the hospital. A nurse escorted her to the elevator, and they rode down to the basement. There, in a frigid room, Lassiter found her mother lying motionless on a stretcher. Her eyes were still open. “I felt like,” Lassiter remembers, “she was waiting for me to show up.”

Kim Lassiter, a 25-year veteran of the medical examiner’s office, ran the Covid morgue day to day.

***

The nurse explained that her mother was being taken away for an autopsy. Lassiter didn’t know anything about the process, and the news frightened her. “If I could have gone with her through that,” she says, “I would have.”

Following the funeral, Lassiter obtained custody of her siblings, whom she supported through her job as a clerk at the US Department of Health and Human Services. A few years later, her life took an unexpected turn when she spotted an alarming story in the newspaper: The DC chief medical examiner’s office had released the wrong body to a grieving family. The incident sounded both outrageous and intriguing; more than anything, it reminded Lassiter—by then a mother herself—of when her mom had been sent to the morgue. She called the office, talked her way to a supervisor, and asked if she could help. She joined the office as a volunteer.

This was the late 1990s, and the agency was considerably smaller than it is today. Lassiter was quickly hired and eventually promoted, becoming one of seven technicians responsible for a full sweep of duties: fielding intake calls from police, snapping photographs at death scenes, transporting decedents to the morgue, and assisting with medical examinations and autopsies. She viewed the work not as some macabre responsibility but as an expression of love. While she hadn’t been able to care for her own mother after her death, she now looked after the deceased loved ones of others.

When arriving at a place of death, Lassiter is vigilant about wearing a blank facial expression, to acknowledge the gravity of the circumstances. She offers condolences, then completes her tasks—attaching the toe tag, placing the deceased into the body bag—at a diligent pace so as not to prolong the trauma of those looking on. Once an autopsy is complete, she uses tight, neat sutures to close the incisions. She then washes the stains from the body and wraps it in a crisp white sheet.

Occasionally, when working alone, Lassiter has found herself speaking out loud to the bodies. If she hits a pothole while driving someone to the morgue, she’ll apologize. I’m sorry. Upon entering the morgue’s cold-storage facility, she sometimes greets the people being kept there. Good morning. When examining a crime victim’s body—particularly when it’s a child’s—she often pledges to help get justice. I’ll do everything in my power to find the evidence needed to make whoever did this to you pay.

The hardest days are the ones when she finds herself face to face with someone she knows. One morning, as Lassiter was preparing for autopsies, she checked the manifest and saw a familiar name. It was an older woman, a friend of her mother’s who’d looked out for Lassiter as a child. She walked into the cold-storage room, slid the body out of its cabinet, and said goodbye. It was the only time she ever broke down crying at the morgue.

***

April 22, 2020—The day after the religious leaders consecrate the site, the Covid morgue begins to stir with workers in face shields, gloves, and white protective suits. It’s been six weeks since DC recorded its first case of Covid, and the death toll has exceeded the city morgue’s capacity. Now the first wave of bodies is arriving.

The process begins with a phone call. A hospital official, or sometimes a police officer, contacts the medical examiner’s office. Lassiter, who is chief of the transport unit, dispatches her team to the scene. Two workers, in full PPE, arrive in a black, unmarked van. They present paperwork for the physician’s signature. In the hospital’s morgue, they take custody of the body. Opening the body bag, they attach identification. They zip the bag closed and spray the outside with disinfectant, then place it into a second, heavy-duty body bag. They disinfect it again. The workers lift the decedent onto a stretcher and paste an identification tag onto the bag. They slide the stretcher into the back of the unmarked van.

Every body arriving at the Covid morgue is first accounted for at the intake tent, then transferred to a refrigerated trailer.

***

At the Covid morgue, the workers move the decedent onto a table in the intake tent. Here, they weigh the body, to help confirm identification, and enter the victim’s name into a computer. They wheel the decedent across the blacktop and up into one of the refrigerated trailers. Next, the transfer. If the victim is heavy, the workers—at least two, sometimes four—lift the body onto one of the lower shelves. If the person is light, they place the body on a higher shelf. The staff use internal coding—6D, 2A—to record the exact location. They exit the trailer, remove their protective suits, and put on fresh ones.

A victim typically remains at the Covid morgue a few days, rarely longer than a week. During that time, a separate team calls family members to help them through the paperwork. Once burial arrangements are made, the funeral director schedules a pickup. The workers wheel the victim out of cold storage and into a second tented canopy—the release tent. They again wipe down the outside of the body bag. They again spray it with disinfectant. The funeral director pulls up. They load the dead into the hearse.

***

Though it was difficult to find volunteers, Harvin had assembled what he called “a coalition of the willing.” The active-duty Army morticians and military reservists, the citizen volunteers, the funeral directors, along with medical-examiner staffers and UDC students. While many had backgrounds in mortuary services, others did not. “We had people,” Harvin says, “who had never touched a dead body before—never seen a dead body.”

When each new group of volunteers arrived, Harvin—“the general in charge of the death troops”—brought them together to discuss the effort. The victims had come to the Covid morgue after suffering lonely and terrifying deaths—hooked up to breathing tubes, surrounded by masked doctors and nurses. “These people often were dropped off at the hospital, and they couldn’t see their loved ones for two or three or four weeks,” he continued. “They expired around complete strangers.” The staff’s goal, Harvin told the troops, was to provide each person with a dignity in death that they didn’t experience during their last days of life.

The operation has depended on volunteers—students, funeral directors, military reservists with no prior training.

***

Then he turned it over to Lassiter, who ran the day-to-day operations. She instructed new volunteers how to implement the values Harvin had espoused. When carrying the deceased, move deliberately and with caution. Keep the body as horizontal as possible. Do not, under any circumstances, stack one on top of another. Check, double-check, and triple-check the manifest to make sure each victim is in the correct rack. And pay respect through your words. Lassiter never refers to the deceased as “corpses” or “cadavers” or “cases.” Instead, she calls them “my people.”

“That’s the only way I can get [the workers] to treat them the way they would treat someone that they love,” Lassiter says. “Because it makes them see how special these people are to me.”

***

Gerald Slater, 86, was a television executive at PBS and WETA.

Richard Paul Thornell, 83, was a Howard law-school professor who helped establish the Peace Corps’s first-ever program, in Ghana.

Jose Mardoqueo Reyes, 54, was a refugee of El Salvador’s civil war and a beloved internet-radio broadcaster.

Luevella Jackson, 87, was among the first female bus drivers in DC’s public-school system.

Samuel Shumaker III, 90, was an Army colonel who also taught English and creative writing at UDC.

Florence Gilkes, 97, was a loving wife and aunt, as well as a dedicated fan of the Washington Football Team.

Iraj Askarinam, 76, owned a restaurant in Adams Morgan, where he regularly provided free meals to the homeless. They called him “Mr. Spaghetti.”

***

By May, the pandemic’s bleakest days had arrived at the morgue. The daily influx of new decedents fluctuated—eight one day, 19 the next. As the volume swelled, the workers came face to face with the breadth of the city’s suffering. They began recognizing the last names of victims they’d been dispatched to retrieve, and it dawned on them that these were additional members of already devastated families. Payton McFadden, a UDC premed grad, describes the crushing duty of traveling to a DC hospital to collect the body of a Covid-positive baby: “We had went and gotten one of the [baby’s] family members one week prior. [Covid] was slowly but surely matriculating through the whole house.” In a searing example of the District’s racial inequality, 74 percent of the fatalities were Black. “I will never forget this as long as I live, ever,” Lassiter says. “It just took so many people at one time, so suddenly.”

A Chicago-area funeral director who asked to be identified only by her first name, Stacey, came to Washington to volunteer. She served in the medical examiner’s main office, calling families and guiding them through the process of finalizing death certificates and retrieving loved ones. On one occasion, she spoke with a man whose father was in the Covid morgue, and he dissolved into tears. The man explained that they’d been estranged for years. It was only recently that they’d finally begun speaking again. “We do help carry that burden of grief,” she says. “And it’s hard.” On another day, she had a series of conversations with a police officer whose mother was at the disaster morgue. When the officer suddenly stopped returning her calls, Stacey got hold of his wife, who told her he’d been hospitalized with Covid himself. Nearly a year later, she still wonders about him. “It is always in the back of my head,” she says. “I don’t know [if] he made it through.”

Routine tasks touched off bouts of anguish. A worker might spot a detail about a victim that resonated personally: a birthday shared with the worker’s daughter, the same last name as a best friend.

As the morgue’s lead official, Harvin was spending up to 12 hours a day at the site. “Everyone’s talking about Covid and fatalities, and it’s just numbers to them. We’re actually dealing with them,” he says. “I have a PhD and I’m in there putting on gloves and a [protective] suit and I’m helping the crews move bodies in and out of trailers. It’s visceral for us.”

The staff feared for their own safety. “The scariest thing was [potentially being] exposed ourselves,” says Denise Lyles, supervisor of the investigation unit. Lassiter grew terrified that she’d infect her family. “I have a husband that goes out and he works. I was concerned about him,” she says. “Grandchildren that are asthmatic, concerned about them.”

Routine tasks touched off bouts of anguish. While checking the manifest, a worker might spot a detail about a victim that resonated personally: a birthday shared with the worker’s daughter, the same last name as a best friend. Harvin and Lassiter did what they could to look out for their staff’s mental health. At the end of each day, Lassiter pulled people aside to see if anyone was experiencing symptoms of anxiety or depression, connecting them with counselors or chaplains. Over time, even veterans of the medical examiner’s office began struggling with the weight of their mission.

After several weeks at the site, Harvin found that when he returned home from work, he would drift into a haze. He had no appetite. He stopped engaging his wife in conversation. He passed entire evenings staring blankly into the television. “I don’t even know what I’m watching,” he recalls. “I had no motivation.”

Harvin, of course, had worked mass tragedy before. After hijackers flew the first plane into the World Trade Center, he approached the South Tower on foot. From two blocks away, he saw bodies falling from the sky and his entire body froze. He couldn’t take another step forward. Minutes later, there was a deafening sound and the tower disappeared into a cloud of gray debris. Out of the rubble came a speeding ambulance. Harvin jumped into the back along with dozens of other firefighters and cops. As they neared the North Tower, Harvin turned to one of them. “Doesn’t it look like this one’s leaning?” he said.

He spent the next two days at Ground Zero searching for survivors and recovering the dead. The experience was so traumatizing that he vowed never to return to the site. But he found the work at the Covid morgue even more emotionally taxing. “I survived September 11,” he says. “I didn’t know if I was going to survive this.”

“There were so many women. So many mothers there.”

While he was able to walk away from Ground Zero after the attack,the pandemic was taking new victims each day. Every time Harvin arrived at the Covid morgue, he confronted a fresh supply of misery, and there was no end in sight. “Your mind and your soul get worn down far long before you body [does],” he says. Recognizing that he was experiencing depression, he turned to colleagues at the homeland-security department and found solace in chatting with them virtually.

For Lassiter, the pain manifested not as psychological trauma but as profound sadness. The heartache was always there, growing more intense over time. May 9—Mother’s Day—was the hardest. It had always been a tough one, the day her own mother’s death was most painful. But there was an additional heaviness now; she couldn’t stop thinking about everyone at the Covid morgue. “There were so many women,” she says. “So many mothers there.”

Though she was scheduled to be off, Lassiter didn’t feel right staying home on that particular day. She left her house in Prince George’s County and made the 25-minute drive to the site. Arriving at the morgue, she put on a protective suit and greeted the workers. “What are you doing here?” they asked. “It’s Mother’s Day,”

“I know,” she replied, “but I came down because I wanted to really thank you for what you’re doing.” She understood that some of them were mothers themselves, and she appreciated them for spending the day at the site.

Lassiter walked over to the cold-storage trailers and turned to face her people. “Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms,” she said. As she returned to the car, she noticed a lightness of spirit.

“It felt kind of like a sign of relief,” she says. “Just to speak out. To let them know that someone cares.”

***

June 2020—As summer approaches, the pace at the Covid morgue begins to slow. Fewer victims are arriving; the number of bodies in the trailers is declining. By the end of the month, the volume is thin enough that it can be handled at the city morgue. Washington’s first wave of Covid has reached its conclusion.

It’s time for Harvin to shut down the disaster morgue, at least for now. But before doing so, he organizes a final ritual. On July 7, 2020, Rabbi Herzfeld, Reverend Towner, and Imam Shareef return to the site. They were present at the beginning, and Harvin wants them here today, too.

The faith leaders gather by the intake tent as a group of three dozen workers form concentric circles around them. They offer prayers of thanksgiving that the work is coming to an end. “It is at death that the earth receives its treasures,” says Imam Shareef. “And we want to honor the facility that now has allowed for individuals to be returned back to the earth.”

After the ceremony, Lassiter assembles the men and women on her team to thank them for their two and a half months of service. When she finishes, a soldier who was assigned to the site pulls a patch off his flak jacket and approaches her. “This patch has been around the world,” he tells Lassiter, “and I want you to have it.”

Though the pandemic rages on, Harvin and Lassiter can’t help but feel a certain triumph. They haven’t misidentified any bodies. None of their team has contracted Covid. They know they may be back. But in a dark and painful year, this is a good day.

Months later, Lassiter will remember it, the special pride she felt that despite dozens of workers toiling and thousands of pounds of equipment rumbling, despite 404 fatalities passing through, word of the Covid morgue never reached the public. Her colleagues hadn’t enlisted for accolades. They’d pressed through the fear and the grief in order to care for the innocent victims of a historic pandemic.

“It felt good,” Lassiter says. “Even if no one would ever know about it.”

It’s been nearly a year since the pandemic struck Washington. In the first four months of lockdown, the city lost three times as many jobs as it did during the 2008 recession. By July, small business revenue had been cut in half. Metrorail ridership has plunged by as much as 90 percent. Over the coming four years, the District is anticipating a budget gap of roughly $800 million. All told, more than 933,514 people in DC, Maryland, and Virginia have contracted the virus, and 15,148 have died.

Today, Covid fatalities are being processed at the city morgue in Southwest DC; although the number of deaths is once again elevated, it’s well below the peaks of last spring. At the disaster morgue, the light towers have been hauled away and the generators have gone silent. The trailers are resting on a deserted blacktop. Each day, thousands of cars pass right by the site, oblivious to what happened there. If they knew where to look, though, the drivers could see something that Harvin made sure to leave in place. The DC and US flags, rising above the fence.

***

This article appears in the March 2021 issue of Washingtonian.

#death #long reads #washington DC #covid-19 pandemic #luke mullins

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huntertales · 6 years ago

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Part Four: Home Is Where The Heart Is. (Everybody Hates Hitler S08E13)

Episode Summary: Sam, Dean and the reader investigate the death of a Rabbi who spontaneously combusted. The case becomes ever more confusing when they learn that the Rabbi was researching Nazi Necromancers. The trio are attacked by a Golem who turns out to belong to the Rabbi’s grandson, Aaron. The key to the case lies with the Golem but Aaron doesn’t know how to control him, which leaves everyone in danger. Pairing: Dean Winchester x Reader Word Count: 2,993.

Previous Part | Supernatural Rewrite Masterlist

You didn’t have much of a choice other than to do what the enemy wanted, unless you preferred the other option they thought was going to come after obtaining what they were here for in the first place. You kept your hands up in the air and slowly sat yourself down on the floor while Sam was dragged a foot away so he was leaning against the wall before sliding himself down on the ground. The attention was taken off you for a moment, giving you a small window of opportunity to try and do something, but you feared it was a little stupid to take on three men at once. So you waited for your next chance to take these sons of bitches down before they could do anything stupid that might get all of you hurt.

You and Sam spent over an hour trying to figure out how to control the golem to help Aaron out in controlling him. But there was too much lore out there to figure it out. Erasing non existent words off his forehead was just a myth, and you had your doubts on the scroll lore. It seemed that one was true from what you witnessed. You just needed to know what to say in order to get the golem to do what you wanted. And Eckhart knew exactly how to.

"I command you by the covenant of your makers—clay of Adam, surrender your bond unto me." A scroll, no bigger than the size of his pinky, fell out of the golem's mouth and into Eckhart's palm. He took it upon himself to untie the little white thread around the scroll. The man who had been standing next to Aaron grabbed him by his shirt and pushed him forward. Eckhart examined it for a moment before he chuckled to himself at the foolish mistake the younger man had made. "So you are the golem's rabbi? You woke him...but you didn't take possession of him. You write your name on the scroll, boy. That's how you...yifalchunbee.”

Aaron nervously swallowed at the pediment he was in, unsure of what the right thing to do was that didn’t end up with him dead. "I didn't know what he meant.”

"Knowledge is power, right?" Eckhart said. He thought the smart thing to do was to backhand Aaron right across the cheek, making the man stumble to the ground. You felt yourself slowly becoming overwhelmed with anger at what was going on. While Eckhart decided to take a seat and make himself comfortable, he nodded his head for one of his men to start searching through the place to find his precious book. “Now, which of you is going to tell me where I can find the a certain red ledger?”

"How about you go screw yourself, you Nazi bastard." Sam decided to lend the man a nice little insult, knowing there was no way he was going to let them back it back so easily.

“Can we…” Eckhart frowned slightly at the title he didn’t like hearing after the name had lost its meaning and purpose after so many decades. He slipped off his leather gloves and put them into his pocket for safekeeping, you noticed he was wearing a ring on his left hand. If you had to guess, it was apart of the Thule society. “Could we put the Nazi thing aside for the moment and just talk about this like—”

"Nazi necromancer dicks? Pass." Dean said, the man chuckled quietly at the insult.

“So I take it you’re the commandant?” You asked. From your tone of voice and glare alone, it was clear to see you didn’t think very highly of the man you read about in the red ledger he was trying so hard to look for. "The one that authorized all those horrible experiments.”

"Invented.” Eckhart corrected you. He didn't find your glare the least bit threatening when he smiled, almost making it seem like you were complimenting him.He didn't find your glare or harsh words the least bit hurtful, for his ego was too big for anyone to shatter. You found yourself shaking your head in disgust when he smiled, almost making it out to seem like you were complimenting him. "Those experiments. Thank you."

“Du bist nicht willkommen.*" You replied, your lips stretching into a forced smile. While one of his goons was tearing the place apart to find their special book, you noticed the gun peeking out of Dean's jacket that was conveniently not too far away from him. And not to mention the shotgun lying not too far from Aaron. If you distracted Eckhart long enough, maybe there was a chance all of you could get out here alive. "You sick bastard.”

*You’re not welcome.

“Ah. Du sprichst Deutsch?” Eckhart asked you, speaking in his native tongue. You nodded your head slowly, knowing it was the reason why you knew about his experiments in the first place. Dean took his opportunity to look at Aaron and point his attention to the shotgun not too far from where he was sitting on the ground. The man had his perfect opportunity to grab it, but it was Aaron's nerves that made him shake his head no. "Funny. Someone who looks down upon us knows our language.”

*Ah. You speak German?

“The country isn’t a reflection for your disgusting way of thinking. And I always wanted to tell one of you to go ‘screw yourself’ in your native tongue. So, what your deal? I mean, you’re not... undead. What did you do?” You curiously asked him. “You cast a forever twenty-one spell on yourself? Like your little friend at the library?"

"His name was Torvald." Eckhart said. "And you will suffer for that."

“Sort of like how your friend did?” You taunted him, a smirk spreading across your lips.

You weren’t the least bit scared of his threat, knowing if his attempts were anything like his friends, it was going to end with him suffering. You found your head turning slightly to the side when you noticed one of the men discovered the red ledger hiding underneath the bag, a hiding spot that was the last minute place to think of on such short notice. You felt a curse word or two slip underneath your mouth when it was delivered to Eckhart, making things go in the wrong direction.

“You know, I got to say, spell or no spell, he broke easy, so...” Dean said, doing everything in his power to get under the Nazi’s skin.

Eckhart paid no attention to what the older Winchester said, his focus kept on the book that he had searched high and low for. He flipped through a few pages to make sure it was the exact one he lost. “I'm sorry. So…Let me tell you what I see. A magic Jew at my feet, not a master in sight, and, finally, our secrets secret once again. Which reminds me of a story.” You rolled your eyes in annoyance from how he was still talking. He pushed himself out of his chair to stand up for a moment. “‘A Jew, two gentiles, a lady and a Golem walk into a bar’—and it doesn't end with them coming out.” It seemed he gotten the story mixed up where it ended with all the Nazi necromancers dead by three hunters and a rabbi. You made your move when Aaron grabbed one of the legs from the table the golem had broke, taking Eckhart by surprise and knocking him on the back of the head. You went diving for the gun while Sam fought off the one after he saw what you were doing. Before the Nazi could pull the trigger, you pointed the loaded weapon at him, shooting him straight between the eyes to put him down. Dean seemed to have gotten the same idea as you when he reached for his own gun and shot at the other Nazi. Both of the men dropped to the ground, leaving Eckhart all by his lonesome when the other one of his goons attempted to grab Aaron and run, but got cold feet at the sight of two loaded weapons pointing at him. You might have let him run off, you knew well enough his days were numbered. You moved your gun to the last remaining Nazi and gave him another smirk, finding it amusing at how worked up he was getting, knowing the tables had turned on him.

"Fools!" He shouted. "You can kill me. But you will never kill all the Thule."

You weren't the least bit threatened by his words, because they would be the last he'd ever speak. You shot off another round, putting a bullet in his head, watching as his body drop to the chair he previously had been occupying. While you knew he was right about not being able to take one down hate group today, you felt good wiping out the ones who messed with you, making the group smaller. Every little bit helped. While there is evil out in the world that takes on many forms, it was people like you that put them where they belonged, making everyone just a little safer for everyone.

+ + +

Everything was once somewhat calm in the world again; a handful of Nazi necromancers were dead and rightfully burning in hell where the belonged. Aaron was finally understanding what he needed to do in order to live the legacy his grandfather told him about. All of you headed back into the very trashed motel Aaron had been renting for the meantime, the golem continued to stand where it was since you left him a few hours ago to finish up loose ends, waiting for the man to yifalchunbee. “Well, now we know—paper beats Golem, fire beats undead Nazi zombie freaks.” Dean said, his humor made a small smile and a chuckle escape your throat. A sense of relief came over you, along with accomplishment at what all of you did. You had a feeling Henry and your father would have been proud of all of you for what you did today. “So...What do you say, Aaron?” Sam asked the man, getting down to the giant in the room. Now the Nazis were out of the way, all of you had to worry about the golem that had reeked havoc on Aaron’s life. “I mean, we got a place we can keep him.” “No. I mean... Eckhart might be dead, but you heard him. The Thule are still out there... hidden, active.” Aaron pulled out the small scroll from his pocket, unrolling it just enough to see his grandfather’s last name on the paper. Soon his own would join the legacy. “That's my grandfather. He left me something important. Something only I can do.” Aaron took a pen out from his pocket and wrote down his name on the paper before putting it back into the golem’s mouth like he should have done in the first place. You watched as the golem inhaled a deep breath, coming back to life as he straightened out his shoulders and looked at the man in front of him. “It looks like I'm the Judah Initiative now.” The first word that came out of the golem’s mouth was the infamous yifalchunbee—take charge in Hebrew—that Aaron had grown to think was a bad thing. But when the golem said it this time, it was in respect, Aaron had done exactly what he needed to do. You felt a smile spread across your lips at how everything turned out. Maybe legacies weren’t such a bad thing after all. + + +

You and the boys were back at the bunker by the next morning, and after a hot shower followed by a long nap, you made your way to the library had grown to feel like it was the heart of this place. Somewhere you and the boys were going to be spending a lot of your time in. You made your way to the record player when Sam said he wouldn't mind some music as background noise while he worked and put on a Louis Armstrong record, letting his voice echo through the bunker. Soon enough you joined him at the table, wondering what he had been working on and the things he discovered while doing his own search.

Dean found you and his brother talking among yourselves, you were leaning over the table with your elbow perched up and your palm cradling your head. A look of complete concentration was on your face while you listened to his brother going on about something. Sam had his head down, writing something on a pad of paper, every so often you glanced down to see what it was. Dean found the sight, with the old timey music playing in the background, almost picturesque. The sight gave off an ambience he couldn't quite understand. It gave off...comfort. Content. Relaxed after a long day, happy to be home.

"What're you and Y/N doing?" Dean curiously asked. His voice made you look over to see that it was him. You greeted him with a warm smile before directing your attention back to the younger Winchester.

"Ordering. I'm making a card entry for our copies from the Thule's red ledger for our collection." Sam explained to his brother what you and him had been doing. "And Y/N wanted to know how the filing system works, so I've been going through it with her.”

“It’s very riveting stuff." You might have sounded sarcastic, but in all honesty, you were learning a lot about how the Men of Letters worked. "I mean, the things that found during the time of being active...I can't wait to discover it all. See what else we can learn and add on."

Dean grabbed two beers from the mini fridge, but he found himself feeling like it wasn't right for this moment. He put them back when he remembered there was a scotch he discovered in the kitchen that was dated, but like most things, they got better with age. "So, uh, what? Aaron's a J.I. and you're a Man of Letters now, Sammy? And Y/N, possibly becoming the first Woman of Letters?"

“Hey, it’s the twenty first century.” You said. “Women can do anything men can.”

Dean chuckled to himself at your quick wit, knowing it was something he loved about you. He made his way over a small table to fix himself and two crystal glasses of scotch he'd been eager to try. Dean looked around the place for a moment to really look at the interior; taking in the endless books to hallways of rooms that he was still discovering. A few weeks ago he was a little hesitant about letting himself get used to the idea that this place could be good, because it wasn’t in his nature to settle down so easily, that something good might happen for him.

Dean had a thing about not letting himself get comfortable in just one spot. No home felt safe enough, no woman he loved felt like they would be able to really hold him for long and the insecurities that came with him. And his family slipped away from him too many times to count. Why get comfortable with something temporarily if it only was going to end in misery? Because not everything bad lasts forever. You taught him that.

Here Dean was at thirty-something, his baby brother with the love of his life sitting at one table, in a bunker that kept out everything they hunted. A wicked sweet pad that he had fell in love with and never wanted to leave. Dean grabbed three glasses and made his way over to the table to set two down, one for you and his brother, the other was for himself. You and Sam looked up to see him smiling down at the both of you. He mumbled a good—about the fact that you were warming up to the idea of starting something new in your lives. This wasn't a new chapter, no. This was a brand new book. A new journey all of you were about to embark on.

Sam grabbed his own when his brother took a seat at the other table, giving him some room to kick up his feet and sit back. You found yourself reaching for your drink when you saw both of them about to take a sip. Before they could, you raise your glass in the air, wanting to be a bit cheesy. "To us—the Winchester and Y/L/N, the new generation of the Women and Men of Letters.”

“I’ll drink to that.” Dean said. You smiled to yourself as you put the glass back down on the table, silently adding to your toast about the future generation to come. The man also had something else to say that took you a bit by surprise. “Maybe in the future it’ll just change to the Winchesters.”

You knew well enough what the older man was trying to say. The both of you had talked about marriage once or twice, knowing it was something you wanted to do when things calmed down. Yet he hadn't exactly popped the question just yet. Maybe he would in the near future. You weren't in a rush, but you felt overcome with a sense of happiness at the fact he was still thinking about it.

You looked over at the man, your lips stretching into a bashful sort of smile when he winked at you. You had been with him for almost five years now and he still made your stomach fill with butterflies. You leaned back in your seat and stared at the two men in front of you, three words drifting into your mind that felt right to end with. Home sweet home.

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shefa · 7 years ago

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Walk a Mile in My Shoes

WALK A MILE IN MY SHOES SERMON FOR KOL NIDRE 5778 -- 2017 Rabbi Stephen Weiss, B'nai Jeshurun Congregation

Well here we are on Yom Kippur eve, Kol Nidre, the most solemn day in the whole Jewish calendar. So, I want to begin this evening by invoking the King. No, not the King of Kings, but rather the King of Rock and Roll. And I’m going to ask you to help me out, by clapping along with me, and singing too if you know the words:

If I could be you, if you could be me for just one hour If we could find a way to get inside each other's mind If you could see you through my eyes instead of your ego I believe you'd be, I believe you'd be surprised to see that you've been blind

Walk a mile in my shoes Walk a mile in my shoes Yeah, before you abuse, criticize, and accuse Walk a mile in my shoes

Now if we spend the day throwing stones at one another ‘Cause I don’t think ‘cause I don’t think or wear my hair same way you do O well I may be common people but I’m your brother And when you strike out to try hurt me, it’s a hurtin’ you

Walk a mile in my shoes Walk a mile in my shoes Yeah, before you abuse, criticize, and accuse Walk a mile in my shoes

Now there are people on reservations and out in the ghetto And, brother, there, but for the grace of God go you and I If I only had the wings of a little angel Don't you know I'd fly - to the top of a mountain and then I'd cry, cry, cry?

Walk a mile in my shoes Walk a mile in my shoes Yeah, before you abuse, criticize, and accuse Walk a mile in my shoes

Sing it with me!

Walk a mile in my shoes Walk a mile in my shoes Yeah, before you abuse, criticize, and accuse Walk a mile in my shoes

I’ve been humming that Elvis Presley song a lot lately, because after all, this day is all about shoes. What kind of shoes are you wearing today? Running shoes? Crocs? Dress shoes with a rubber sole? Probably not blue suede shoes. We don’t wear leather-soled shoes on Yom Kippur because leather is understood by our sages as a sign of luxury and comfort. Our sages did not want us to get too comfortable in our own shoes. They wanted us to step outside our comfort zone, to get inside someone else’s skin, their heart, their mind, to experience life through their eyes, to learn what it’s like to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. To experience empathy. Because only through the experience of empathy can we both change ourselves and change the world around us.

Let me share with you a story about such a change. In 2012, Csanad Szegedi was poised to lead Jobbik, an ultra-nationalist neo-Nazi, racist, anti-Semitic political party in Hungary that garnered 20% of the vote in 2014. Jobbik consistently accuses the Jews of being at the center of a cabal of western economic interests seeking world domination.

The opposition research from Szegedi’s rivals revealed the surprising news that Szegedi’s maternal grandmother and grandfather were Auschwitz survivors. It was true. When his mother was fourteen, her father told her the secret but insisted that she never reveal it to anyone. And she didn’t, not even to Szegedi, who was shocked by the news.

When Szegedi first admitted the truth about his Jewish ancestry, one party leader urged him to shoot himself. Another urged him to make a public apology. It was this comment that made him say, “Wait a minute, I am supposed to apologize for the fact that my family was killed at Auschwitz?” When he stepped out of his comfort zone and gave a speech in support of Israel, skinheads and neo-Nazis showed up at his home chanting “Death to the Jews.” He was forced to experience what Hungarian Jews had experienced at the hands of his Jobbik party, at his hands as a Jobbik leader. This changed him forever. In response, he devoted himself to defending human rights. He says, “I am aware of my responsibility and I know I will have to make it right in the future.”

Having learned the truth about himself, he resigned from the party, went to visit a local rabbi, studied Torah and underwent circumcision. Dovid, as he is now known, became a religious Jew, keeping kosher and observing Shabbat, studying Torah and Talmud and davening regularly. And this fall he made aliyah to Israel.

Walk a mile in my shoes.

Szegedi had radical empathy forced upon him by circumstance. But empathy can be a force in our more mundane everyday lives as well.

Let me give you a simple example. It happened once that a young girl’s friend lost her favorite doll which she’d brought over to play with. She was heartbroken. She sat on the steps and began to cry. When the first little girl’s mother came outside to check on the girls, she found them both sitting on the step sobbing. She asked what was wrong, and her daughter told her through her tears that her little friend, Suzie had lost her favorite doll. The mother looked puzzled for a bit, then asked her daughter, “did you lose your doll too?” “No”, the daughter sobbed. “Then what’s wrong with you?” asked the mother, “Nothing” she sobbed. “I’m just helping Suzie cry.”

Helping Suzie cry. You see, that’s what real empathy is. Empathy is feeling what another person is feeling. It is the art of stepping imaginatively into the shoes of another person, understanding their feelings, their experiences, their perspectives, the way they see the world, and using that understanding to guide your own actions.

Walk a mile in my shoes.

Empathy is not sympathy. Sympathy is when I feel for you. Empathy is when I feel with you. Sympathy is when say “I know you are hurting.” Empathy is when I endeavor to feel and understand your hurt from your perspective. When I hurt with you.

Imagine that someone has fallen in a deep dark hole in their lives. And they shout out “I’m stuck, it’s dark, and I’m overwhelmed.” Sympathy is when you look over the edge of that hole and you look over the edge of that hole, and you wave down there and you say, “Wow. That looks really bad.” Empathy is when you climb down into the hole. You stand with them, and you say: Hey, I know what it’s like down here. I’ve been down here. You’re not alone.”

Moses climbed down in that hole. The midrash tells us that Moses among the slaves in the field and put his shoulder to the grindstone. He felt others' pain as his own, and helped alleviate their burden.

Rabbi Israel Salanter, the great 19th century founder of the Mussar movement, also climbed down into that hole. The Jewish community of Kovno operated a homeless shelter which fell into disrepair. Despite various appeals, the community failed to fix the facility. So what did Rabbi Israel Salant do? He went to sleep in the broken-down shelter. And he vowed to continue doing so until proper repairs were made.

The Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, taught that a tzaddik – a righteous person – must go down into Gehenna – to Hell – himself to be able to raise up souls. Not to sin with them. Not to castigate them. But to be with them empathetically and experience their pain. If you cannot experience someone’s pain, if you cannot identify with them, you cannot help lift them up.

Walk a mile in my shoes.

The amazing thing is that we are hard-wired for empathy. Scientists have discovered that some 20% of the neurons in our brain are what they call “mirror neurons.” These “mirror neurons” fire when we see someone else doing or feeling something, and they allow us to participate with them in a kind of virtual reality. You’ve all experienced it: When you see a scary scene in a movie, and you jump just as the actor who is scared jumps. When you are with someone who is experiencing pain and you wince. When you see a face that looks sad and it makes you feel sad. That’s our “mirror neurons.” It’s as if the barriers between us dissolve, as if our minds and our bodies become one.

That’s what eastern religions teach, and that’s what Judaism teaches as well. Kabbalah – Jewish mysticism – tells us that all the distinctions between us are illusory, that in truth we are all part of one unity. You and I, the chairs on which you sit, the trees and grass outside these windows and the air we breathe are all a part of the flow of Gods energy and spirit. That’s the meaning of the Shema. Not just that there is one God, but that God is the singularity of the universe, that everything is contained and unified within God’s spirit, forever connected. To understand this is to understand the true meaning of empathy. It is the God-given ability to dissolve the barriers between us and become one with each other.

Empathy enables us to feel connected to and supported by others. It is a cornerstone of our emotional intelligence, contributing to both our humility and our self-esteem. It opens our minds to new landscapes and challenges us to grow in new directions. It should come as no surprise then that empathy contributes to our emotional wellbeing and our happiness.

Philosopher Mary Gordon points out that at the Nuremberg trials, one of the judges pointed to the war crimes of the Holocaust as a “failure of empathy.” She goes on to say that “Empathy is integral to solving conflict in the family, schoolyard, boardroom and war room. The ability to take the perspective of another person, to identify commonalities through our shared feelings, is the best peace pill we have.”

Walk a mile in my shoes.

And yet it seems that lately we have lost touch with this unique gift that God has given us. Instead of breaking down barriers we seem to build them up, drawing ever more distinctions between “us” and “them.” We live in a world marked by a hostile disregard for the ‘other’ whether that ‘other’ is someone of a different race, religion, gender, orientation, or political persuasion, or a different segment of society. We especially seem to demonize those who hold different opinions from our own.

Indeed, we suffer from an empathy deficit. Studies show that empathy levels in this county have dropped by nearly 50% in the last three decades. The most dramatic drop has been in the last ten years. Why is that?

First, we must acknowledge that feeling empathy is hard for us because it requires us to feel vulnerable and out of control. Feeling someone else’s pain may open up wounds of our own that we have managed to suppress and feeling emotions we may not want to feel. Looking at things from another person’s perspective may challenge our own beliefs and assumptions.

We also suffer from an increasing focus on ourselves. The 90’s was the “me” generation. The millennial decade has been the “I” generation. For decades, our psychologists have told us that if we want to solve our problems and to feel contentment in life we should look inside ourselves to resolve our issues, instead of telling us to look outside at the world and those around us. You don’t believe me? Just go to the bookstore and see how large the “Self-Help” section is. Then do me a favor. Go find the section labeled “Helping Others.” Of course, you won’t find it.

Some of this decline in empathy is also from compassion fatigue. We are flooded daily with news of catastrophes so overwhelming and so frequent as to make us numb: Harvey, Irma, Jose and Maria, the tsunami in Asia, the earthquake in Mexico, refugees from Syria, the genocide of the Rohingya, terror attacks in Israel… it’s just more than we can absorb.

Some of this decline in empathy may be technology itself making us less empathetic. Not just being on our computers, tablets and phones all the time, but technology’s very presence in our lives. Did you know that studies show that if there is a phone just sitting, turned off, on the table between two people, those people listen less to each other? Isn’t that fascinating?

Our resistance to empathy also comes from being in a state of denial. Perhaps we feel shame or guilt that by contrast, we live such privileged lives. Perhaps we turn away because we don’t want to admit that we might be somehow responsible. So we tell ourselves that our actions won’t really change anything.

And if we are honest, some of our resistance to empathy comes as well from our own prejudices that make it difficult for us to appreciate the humanity and uniqueness of other people’s personal stories.

Walk a mile in my shoes.

So how do we regain our ability to empathize?

It starts with the most basic tool: listening. Really listening. What is commonly called “active” or “empathetic” listening. That means that when you speak, I am fully focused on being present with you rather then caught in my own reaction or preparing my response. This is an exercise that I make every couple practice in the months before their wedding. I see some of you in the sanctuary tonight. You can vouch for this! Listen to your partner and then repeat back to them exactly what you believe you heard, without commentary or response. Check in with them: did I hear you correctly? Only once they confirm you heard them fully and correctly do you respond.

Couples are surprised how often they don’t hear each other correctly. And couples find this exercise terribly awkward at first, But those who persist find it becomes natural, a part of their everyday life and relationship. And do you know what? Studies show that active listening increases the chances of a marriage’s success. And it’s not just for our personal relationships. One recent study showed that when corporate management and unions used empathetic, active listening, the time it took to negotiate a contract was reduced by 50%. In his famous treatise I and Thou, Martin Buber taught that we can become fully human only when we have “genuine conversations” that try look at the world through the other person’s eyes and to comprehend their thoughts and feelings. In that book he described what that process was like for him. He wrote: “I imagine to myself what another man is at this very moment wishing, feeling, perceiving, thinking. . ..” He went on to write that the “inmost growth of the self is not accomplished, as people like to suppose today, in man’s relation to himself, but in the relation between one and the other, between men.” It’s only in that dialogue – in the listening – that we can discover each other.

A second tool in regaining empathy is to humanize those hidden individuals in our lives, those that we benefit from but we take for granted. Commentator Karen Armstrong suggests we try this exercise:

“When you get up in the morning, remember those who planted, picked and spun the cotton of your sheets and who collected, treated and exported the beans you grind for your morning coffee. You enjoy their product,” she says, “so you have a responsibility for them, especially if they were working in poor conditions. As you set off to work, reflect on the thousands of workers and engineers who maintain the roads, cars, railways, planes, trains and underground transport on which you rely. Continue this exercise throughout the day.”

A third tool to help us regain empathy is what one social philosopher calls “the character game.” When you see someone who you might treat as other, someone who is different than you, try instead to imagine them in a more human guise. When you see someone on the street who you think looks dangerous, looks different, makes you uncomfortable, or just seems worth your time and concern, try to imagine him playing hide and seek with his child or singing to her elderly mother to cheer her up. In this way you can give people a human face, break through our stereotyped views of them, and open us to new opportunities for connection and conversation.

Finally, we have to be willing to set down our worldview for a moment and put on someone else’s glasses. We must allow ourselves to see the world through their eyes, to experience what they experience, to feel what they feel, to know their truth, and to understand that their truth – whether we agree with it or not, whether we like it or not – exists in the world beside our truth, and that we have to support them in it.

If we want to regain our sense of connection to each other, if we want to heal as individuals and as a society, this is where it all begins: We must learn to walk a mile in each other’s shoes. To learn to humanize the other. To have genuine conversations in which we seek to see the world from their perspective. To understand and accept without judgement what someone else is feeling and be able to be with them in their pain. To let down our guard and allow ourselves to be vulnerable, to be changed by those around us. To break down the illusory barriers that we think divide us and see how much we share in common and how good it feels to be in one unity.

This is the meaning of the words that we sing so often that come from our sacred texts:

Hinei ma-tov u-mah na’im shevet achim gam yachad. “Behold, how good it is when we – brothers and sisters, the children of the One God – can dwell together in unity.

So this Yom Kippur, we know what we need to do. Sing it with me one last time:

Walk a mile in my shoes Walk a mile in my shoes Yeah, before you abuse, criticize and accuse Walk a mile in my shoes

May we all learn to walk a mile in each other’s shoes every day. Amen

#jews #jewish #judaism #torah #kol nidre #yom kippur #sermon #homiletics #preaching #spirituality #empathy #support #caring #listening #civility #dialogue #politics #elvis #love #dialog

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mittensmorgul · 8 years ago

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8.13: Everybody loves Aaron. And his Golem.

After satisfyingly watching a Golem take out a Nazi camp in 1944, we flash to Sam and Dean’s first introduction to the Men of Letters bunker.

*takes a moment to appreciate the fact that this place will come to be their home, only to have it threatened now by the modern corrupted version of the Men of Letters*

Dean switches the lights on, and for once it’s Sam who says “son of a bitch.”

First thing Dean does is claim a dead guy’s robe, while Sam tries to figure out how they even have electricity, or water pressure.

DEAN : Yeah. Yeah, I mean, don't – don't get me wrong. [He lifts a scimitar from a display stand.] This stuff is awesome, and it looks like they ran a real tight outfit here, but I'm just saying, you know, don't, uh, don't think that they knew some big secrets that we don't know. DEAN strikes some poses with the scimitar while SAM’s back is to him. As SAM turns, DEAN quickly straightens up. SAM : Dean... they were a secret society. DEAN : Which means that they made crap up and wore fezzes and sashes and swung around scimitars. They probably didn't even sharp– [DEAN runs his finger along the blade and cuts himself] That's very sharp. [He replaces the scimitar on the stand.] SAM : Dean, look, I think we might have something here – something that could help us, help humanity. Henry certainly thought so. I mean, you know damn well we could use a break. What if we finally got one? [They look at each other for a moment, then DEAN looks away.] Are you gonna take off the dead-guy robe?

And ain’t that pretty much what Sam thought about working with the PEOPLE of the modern MoL in 12.14? Thing is, the bunker HAS proven to be something that could help them, over and over again over the last four years. But the bunker itself is a neutral thing. The people... well, they have ulterior motives. They have The Code. And an evil agenda.

Dean returns from checking on Kevin and Garth, and asks Sam if he’s heard from Cas. Sam hasn’t, and Dean is pretty upset that Cas hasn’t been answering his calls.

(heck that doesn’t sound familiar at all, does it... just an earlier incarnation of Dean’s dialed-up-to-eleven worry in s12)

Sam has been researching the Men of Letters, looking for anyone who might still be alive that is even remotely connected to the MoL. He discovers the Judah Initiative, and learns that their last surviving member has just been killed. Dean complains that he just got back to the bunker and they have to head out again to solve that case.

Poor Dean. :P

(and seriously, Pennsylvania, again?)

Sam goes to the library to see the books Rabbi Bass had been studying, while Dean goes to the bar where he died to talk with some girls that Rabbi Bass had apparently talked to quite openly. They thought he was a kook, talking about Nazi necromancers. But Aaron flirting with him from across the bar proves more distracting than the two co-eds.

(like Sam’s doing the MoL side of things in the library while Dean does the hunter side of things in the bar, yes?)

Instead of the ledger he expected to find, Sam discovers a book of birds. Dean confronts Aaron, who uses the excuse that he and Dean had “a moment” to explain why he’s been following Dean around. And we have the most awkward scene in the history of Dean. And it’s grand.

DEAN (on phone) : Huh. Well, uh, the two very hot co-captains of the women's volleyball team agree that the rabbi's death was very unnatural. I think we still got a case. SAM (on phone) : That would explain why I have something stuck to my shoe. DEAN (on phone) : You being followed? SAM (on phone) : Yeah, I think so. DEAN (on phone) : That's weird. I thought I was being followed earlier. Turned out to be a gay thing.

Well, they were right. Aaron introduces himself, and Dean tells Sam he was his gay thing.

GOLEM : This boy knows nothing, observes none of the mitzvahs, labors on Sabbath, dines on swine. AARON: Everybody loves bacon!

Even God! Confirmed!

AARON: What, do you two just break in wherever you go? DEAN : Yeah, well, our dad wanted us to have a solid career to fall back on, just in case this hunter thing didn't pan out.

pffft...

Sam and Aaron are both shot with cursed darts, and Dean asks the Golem to catch whoever cast the spell. Killing the Thule (and then burning his body) saved them from the curse.

Poor Aaron though, is confronted by all the stories his grandfather always told him, that he’d always believed were wild fantasy and dismissed as complete nonsense. Finding out that all of it was real, that this was his family’s legacy.

Aaron was utterly unprepared to take it on himself, yet he was willing to defend his Golem when Sam and Dean began researching how to destroy the creature if Aaron couldn’t gain control of it.

Let me lay all of these concepts out in terms of my s12 meta-relevant tags:

Aaron needed to face his past, get to the bottom of how his grandfather’s stories became stories, find another better way to deal with the Thule, by using his words to take control of the Golem that was his family’s legacy.

Yeah, I think that sums things up nicely.

AARON : It looks like I'm the Judah Initiative now.

And Sam accepts his legacy as a Man of Letters.

#spn 8.13 #s12 meta rewatch #spn 12.20 #face your past head-on and FIND ANOTHER WAY a BETTER WAY #using your words

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jewishandmore · 5 years ago

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Small Efforts Make a Big Difference

Rosh Hashanah Morning 5780 Monday, September 30, 2020 Temple Beth Zion, Buffalo, New York

On December 7, 1941, “a date that will live in infamy”, the United States military didn’t have enough rifles for the soldiers in the Army. We had no tanks and the soon-to-be-manufacturers of tanks didn’t even know what they were yet.

On June 17, 1942, only six months later, Vannevar Bush, no relation to any presidents, got President Roosevelt to sign onto a budget for a project that was so secret this was the only paper record of it. The President wrote “OK FDR” on the budget, and the Manhattan Project was born.

Like many of you here, I too have a small connection to the war effort, a massive undertaking that involved the everyday efforts of millions of real people. In 1944, my grandparents, may their memories be for blessings, moved from New York City, to Oak Ridge, Tennessee. My grandfather Jerry was a graduate student in Chemistry at Columbia University and his entire department got reassigned. Jerry occasionally commented about that time, saying that he worked on some obscure processes having to do with compounds or isotopes. He never knew any details and tended to talk about the work as a detour from his studies more than part of a massive patriotic effort.

In that small town in Tennessee that went from hundreds of residents to 85,000 in a matter of months, there were engineers and scientists, thousands of people doing every kind of work, and almost no one knew what they were working on. They were all part of the community that helped build the first atomic bomb that would eventually help end the war with Japan.

Looking back at American involvement in World War II, a mere three years and eight months - our country became the industrial behemoth that not only won a global conflict but also sowed the seeds for scientific, economic, and social advancement for decades to come. While we might be able to look back and see some grand plan at work, there really wasn’t one. There were many people with plans, and many people helping everyone they knew try everything they could. What made the biggest difference were the individual efforts of millions of people who knew that each of their small parts could make a difference. The world needed every person and everyone knew it.

As a people Jews have always taught that each and every single individual matters. Divine sparks, shards of God, are in every particle and in every person’s soul. We must reclaim the conviction of our Jewish teachers and the faith embedded in our American spirit: every one of us not only possesses potentially infinite value, but also each of us can make a difference every day. The smallest of our efforts directed in the right way, guided by good values, and coordinated together with others, can move the world. We know this as Jews. We know this as Americans.

The current events each day can confront us with a seemingly ever-expanding list of insurmountable challenges. We often feel helpless. It seems that an individual’s actions don’t matter, that history will proceed forward and things will get better or worse, and they can only be influenced by great events.

It feels like progress towards one idea or another is inevitable. We are mere cogs in the great engine of the world and really, what can one cog do to alter the direction of the ship of state, or the engine of progress?

We can succumb to the idea that great events are need to make great changes.

If only we can find the right leader.

If only we can win the War on Terror or the War on Poverty, end Racism or anti-Semitism, found the State of Israel, build the Great Society, enact the Great Leap Forward, then…

Then we would still have a lot of work to do.

This feels like too much. It is not inspiring to feel that the work will never be done. The bigger the universe gets in our minds the bigger our problems. The more people who live on the planet the more overwhelming our challenges. This is a source of our modern paralysis.

And yet, in a Jewish text from eighteen hundred years ago, our sages wrote:

You are not obligated to complete the task, nor are your free to abandon it. [Pirkei Avot 2:21, translation by Rabbi Rami Shapiro]

By thinking that our problems are totally unprecedented, we also allow ourselves to think that they are unsolvable. If they are truly unsolvable then we don’t have to do anything about them.

Our Judaism defies this.

The world has always felt too big and we have always felt too small.

Jews have always responded with a call to action, understanding that the smallest of efforts can still make the biggest of differences.

A Hasidic teaching: the universe is so finely balanced between creation and destruction, that our own personal actions, even though they are little more than grains of sand, can still tip the balance one way or another. In the face of a vast and impersonal universe we respond with chutzpah. The chutzpah that claims that even the smallest act of kindness or defiance, the smallest extra effort can transform a cog into an essential part that makes all the difference.

While we dream big, and hold ourselves to high ideals, we know that the work takes concerted effort, in small steps over time.

As I mentioned last night, while Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel talked about the lofty ideals of praying with our legs, he still had to walk in the march one step at a time.

Moses had the faith to argue with God for the Jewish people and then had to cope with the fact that he was only going to be part of the beginning of the project. He would never enter the land that was promised. Even Moses didn’t get to finish the job.

The long-term goal of the Jewish project - namely a community of fairness and justice that participates in the improvement of the world - does not demand an all-at-once solution for difficult situations. The American project - our aim to build a better country, one that provides justice and prosperity for all - has shown us that the path of progress does not actually work in grand gestures. Look closely at all of the progress that we have made as Jews or as Americans and we can see among the efforts of countless people putting in hours over the course of weeks and months and years, the individual stories of struggle and tragedy, triumph and experimentation. The massive effort to vanquish tyranny and oppression in World War II happened relatively quickly but was only effective because it was so many individual people working together.

Even a small crisis can motivate us.

Many years ago, as a college student, I saw this first hand. I volunteered on a kibbutz, in the Western Galilee. As volunteers we got to do the jobs that the Kibbutz members didn’t want to do. We washed dishes, mopped floors, shlepped bundles of bananas from the trees to the tractor cart, and did any other menial labor that, literally, fell down the hierarchy to us. Our volunteer morale was little more than the “misery loves company” of the downtrodden at the bottom of the totem pole. We did not see ourselves as taking part in the grand project of the Kibbutz.

A small crisis changed all of that.

A brush fire struck the Kibbutz and the surrounding region during my second week there threatening the agriculture of the entire region and the fate of the Kibbutz. Everyone rushed into service. Some of us went through the rows of banana trees beating out small embers and little fires with shovels. Others made way through avocado groves with water tanks on their backs attempting to put out any small fires that were catching there. While the main effort was with tank trucks and irrigation hoses, everyone knew that each of us was performing an essential task, because any ember could burst into a bigger uncontrolled blaze.

In following days no one complained about washing dishes. We knew that we were all in it together. Kibbutz members and volunteers newly understood we were all on the same team. A crisis united us. Or, we could say that a crisis sped up the normally slow process of community-building that is usually required to get people to trust that we share the same goals and mission.

Each of us can look around and see embers that might turn into wildfires. Each of us, with what we already have in us and between us, can stifle those embers. We are fighting this brush fire together.

The Hasidic teaching that the world is so finely balanced that all our actions can make a difference is borne out by some science as well. Chaos theory was beautifully expressed in the idea of the “butterfly effect” - that the “flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil could set off a tornado in Texas”. We are more thoughtful than a butterfly, and we believe that the conscious application of our efforts can make a much more positive, and much more powerful impact, than any tornado.

Here are three opportunities for us to make a difference.

In Western New York an amazing effort to make our city more equitable, fairer, and more just, started only three years ago. It is called the Racial Equity Roundtable, and it is a project of the Community Foundation of Western New York. Focusing on creating real change - in the lives of Western New Yorkers and in the systems in which we learn, live, and work - the Roundtable has improved the way employers hire, the way young people make their way through schools, and even the justice system. By the end of 2018 more than 1,200 people from more than 80 organizations have participated in the Racial Equity Impact training that shows how a more equal society provides real economic benefits for everyone. The efforts of the Roundtable were inspired by a national study showing that cities with greater equality among all ethnicities provide better living for everyone, rich and poor, from all backgrounds. In only three years, the use of one compelling piece of research, connections between a few people who cared deeply, all led to the coming together of hundreds of people in our community to make a real difference.

I am one of the members of the Racial Equity Roundtable, along with TBZ member Lana Benatovich. We facilitate Racial Healing Circles that are part of the grassroots effort to connect people from different communities so that top-down systems changes are matched by real connections in our hearts and minds. Please let me know if you will join in the efforts of the Racial Equity Roundtable - I can connect you directly. We can make a real difference in our city.

Here at Temple Beth Zion a few congregants connected our synagogue to the Religious Action Center of the Reform Movement and its efforts in New York. We are handing out a survey asking all of you which cause you would like to help us take a stand on. This is a local effort, connected to a statewide effort, that has already brought real results in Albany. We can play an important role because our state’s politics are not decided on the fifty-something floor of a skyscraper in Manhattan. These things are decided through conversations between real people and our New York legislators here in Western New York who then go to Albany and know that we care. We can make a real difference in our State.

Advocacy is only one aspect of the efforts of Reform Jews in New York and the world. Please join us this December at the Biennial of the Union of Reform Judaism, from December 11-15, in Chicago. Thousands of Reform Jews learning from one another, getting excited about what we can do in our home synagogues and together, and then sharing the biggest Reform Shabbat in the world - that’s 5,000 Reform Jews in the same room. If there’s a project that you think Temple Beth Zion ought to undertake, come to the Biennial and find out how other Reform communities have pursued it, or, perhaps even more importantly, come and get inspired about what is possible when we work together. Connect with amazing authors, like A. J. Jacobs and Sarah Hurwitz and our own Cantor Barbara Ostfeld. Meet experts on Israel, like Ambassador Dan Shapiro, Anat Hoffman from Women of the Wall, and Rabbi Gilad Kariv, who runs the Israeli Movement for Reform and Progressive Judaism. Of course, all of the national leaders of the Reform Movement will be there too. We can make a real difference as Reform Jews.

This year we must take actions together. We must be more than butterfly wings affecting the weather. We must find ways to take small steps that bring all of us closer to a better world.

Theodore Parker, a Unitarian minister and prominent abolitionist, most famously quoted by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke about the arc of the universe bending towards justice.

The universe needs us to bend its arc towards justice.

I have faith in the power of the Jewish people to take small steps together that will have lasting effects for ages to come.

Believe in us, called by God, to act together.

Believe in the power of all of us working together.

Let’s get started.

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cabiba · 6 years ago

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Students of the Communist movement are bound to run across the story of how M. Oudendyke, Netherlands Minister in Russia at the time of the Russian Revolution, had warned the British and French governments that Communism is Jewish; but that this warning had been carefully deleted from the official British papers on the subject. Oudendyke had taken over British affairs in Russia at the time.

It may be asserted that such a report never existed. Yet here it is, printed in 1931 as part of the USA State Department papers, and reproduced as Exhibits 256 through 259. The Oudendyke report is long. I have reproduced not all of it but enough so that the context of his warning is clear.

Oudendyke’s communique went to various governments including our own, and included:

“The danger is now so great that I feel it my duty to call the attention of the British and all other Governments to the fact that if an end is not put to Bolshevism in Russia at once the civilization of the whole world will be threatened. This is not an exaggeration … I consider that the immediate suppression of Bolshevism is the greatest issue now before the world, not even excluding the war which is still raging and unless as above stated Bolshevism is nipped in the bud immediately it is bound to spread in one form or another over Europe and the whole world as it is organized and worked by Jews who have no nationality and whose one object is to destroy for their own ends the existing order of things (Exhibits 258, 259)

Oudendyke’s prophetic warnings went unheeded. How Jewish pressure was brought to bear to remove Allied forces fighting with the anti-Communist Whites in Russia is still another story. Bloody Trotsky and Lenin were armed and financed to clean up the job initiated by Jewish Kerensky, and Russia went under sadistic totalitarian anti-Christian, Jewish controlled enslavement, with more countries to follow, until now the entire World is threatened.

The Jews Gloat

At the celebration of the 1917 triumph of Jewry, at Carnegie Hall in New York (N.Y. Times, 3/24/17), it was proudly told how Jacob Schiff had financed Communist propaganda spread among 50,000 Russian war prisoners in Jew-financed Japan, which sent them back to attempt putting over the 1905 Red Revolution in their Russian homeland.

Not only are the agent connections of Schiff with the Japanese war against Russia hailed in his Kehillah sketch (Exhibit 214) and his agent ties chronicled elsewhere in aid of every phase of the Talmudic plan, his own words bear witness to his deeds.

As the State Department communications herein show, Schiff and his Jewish cohorts were, at the time of the Carnegie Hall meeting, financing the bloody terrorists Trotsky and Lenin to finish off the job instituted and furthered under Kerensky.

To further quote the 1917 N.Y. Times report:

“An authority on Russian affairs, George Kennan, told of a movement by the Society of the Friends of Russian Freedom financed by Jacob H. Schiff, which had at the time of the Russo-Japanese war spread among 50,000 Russian officers and men in Japanese prison camps the gospel of the Russian revolutionists … ‘The movement was financed by a New York banker you all know and love,’ he said, referring to Mr. Schiff, ‘and soon we received a ton and a half of Russian revolutionary propaganda. At the end of the war 50,000 Russian officers and men went back to their country ardent revolutionists!’

“Mr. Parsons then arose and said: ‘I will now read a message from White Sulphur Springs sent by the gentleman to whom Mr. Kennan referred.’ This was the message:

“ ‘Will you say for me to those present at tonight’s meeting how deeply I regret my inability to celebrate with the Friends of Russian Freedom the actual reward of what we had hoped and striven for these long years …’”

This was followed by pious hopes that a “proper government and constitution which shall permanently assure to the Russian people … happiness and peace,” and the signature: “Jacob H. Schiff.”

By what followed we know what Schiff meant as a “proper government.”

The New York Times report of the great Carnegie Hall celebration of the Russian Revolution was subtitled:

“Rabbi Wise Ready for War — Relates How Jacob H. Schiff Financed Revolution Propaganda in Czar’s Army.”

To quote:

“Then the rabbi praised the Russian revolution … ‘I cannot forget,’ continued the rabbi, ‘that I am a member and a [page 88] teacher of a race of which half has lived in the domain of the Czar, and as a Jew, I believe that of all the achievements none has been nobler than the part the sons and daughters of Israel have taken in the great movement which had culminated in the free Russia.”’ (Note: for “free,” read “Red Dictatorship.”)

To his dying day, Rabbi Stephen Wise, a tireless Red, never waned in his enthusiasm for the Soviet slave state, the murderer of so many millions of Christians.

“At the close of the meeting pictures of the revolutionary leaders were shown upon the screen,” reported the N.Y. Times.

Next: Chapter XIII.

Modern Jewish “Anti-Communism”

Table of Contents

Index

Introduction to Elizabeth Dilling

Navigate This Site

Very few people are aware of the extent to which Jews were responsible for the Communization of Russia, first through organizing of the unsuccessful revolution of 1905, and then the later and successful Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Both were heavily financed by outside Jewish financial and banking houses, and ultimately resulted in Jews assuming control of what had become the Russian Soviet Government. Concurrently, Jewish machinations in the United States, Germany and elsewhere helped set the stage for the take-over.

This Jewish control still exists, despite propaganda to the contrary, designed to delude and deceive non-Jews.

Long prior to the Revolution of 1905, Jews had conceived a hatred of Christian and Czarist Russia, because of opposition of the Russian people and Government to Jewish Talmudism.

In his introduction to the 1903 translation of the Talmud, for example, Rodkinson details the repeated denunciations of the Talmud over many centuries by nearly every country, the Popes, and others, and also states (see Exhibit 11): ‘Still what has been the result? The Talmud exists today, and not one letter in it is missing. It is true, the persecutions against it are not yet at an end; accusations and calumnies by its enemies, under the new name of anti-Semites, are still directed against it, while the government of Russia legislates against and restricts the rights of the nation which adheres to the Talmud.”

One of the prime Jewish conspirators plotting to Communize Russia was Jacob Schiff, who became head of the enormously powerful New York Jewish banking house of Kuhn, Loeb and Co.

Turn to the laudatory sketch of Jacob Schiff, in the Jewish Communal (Kehillah) Register of New York City, 1917-18, of which Kehillah he was an Executive Committeeman (see Exhibits 210, 212, 214, 215). It is stated there how German-born Schiff came to America and made connections with a banking house. “In 1873, he returned to Europe where he made connections with some of the chief German banking houses” and “The firm of Kuhn-Loeb & Co. floated the large Japanese war loans of 1904-5, thus making possible the Japanese victory over Russia …”

The last paragraph (Exhibit 215) boasts “Mr. Schiff has always used his wealth and his influence in the best interests of his people. He financed the enemies of autocratic Russia. [This was written in 1918, after the Bolshevik revolution had been made secure] … and used his financial influence to keep Russia from the money market of the United States.” It is stated that “all factions of Jewry” hailed him for this.

“Today it is estimated by Jacob’s grandson, John Schiff, a prominent member of New York society, that the old man sank about $20,000,000 for the final triumph of Bolshevism in Russia.” (Cholly Knickerbocker in his society news column in the Hearst Press, Feb. 3, 1949, appearing in the N.Y. Journal-American and other papers.)

The Jewish Bankers

The great Jewish banking monopolies have been interwoven by marriage like a rug. Note three things about the Rothschilds in Exhibit 298, which is from the Jewish Encyclopedia of 1905:

That of the 58 Rothschild marriages to that date, exactly half, or 29, had been to first cousins. This appears in the right hand column.

That the Rothschilds “were the first to make use of journalistic methods to arouse the interest of the public in their loans. They have, however, consistently kept the secret of their own operations!”

A major reason why Russia collapsed and went under the Red heel during World War I also appears in this exhibit, namely, “Of recent years the Rothschilds have consistently refused to have anything to do with loans to Russia owing to the anti-Jewish legislation of that empire.” (This was 1905.)

The Warburg International Jewish banking family has also been closely connected with the Schiffs and Rothschilds. James Paul Warburg, in his sketch in Who’s Who in American Jewry — 1938-9 states:

“Born Hamburg, Germany, August 18. 1896 … paternal ancestors through six generations have been bankers as members of the banking house of MM. Warburg & Co., founded in Hamburg, 1798 … maternal grandfather, Solomon, founder of international banking house of Kuhn, Loeb &Co … Came to U.S., 1902 …”

Paul M. Warburg had married Jenny Nina Loeb, mother of James Paul. Jacob Schiff, after coming to the U.S., had married Theresa Loeb, sister of Nina, and daughter of the Kuhn, Loeb founder. Schiff’s daughter, Frieda, married Felix M. Warburg, Hamburg-born banker who headed the agro joint work for Jewry in Russia to help keep them in power after the Red Revolution. Their daughter, Carola, married Walter M. Rothschild. Felix M. Warburg and Paul M. Warburg of Kuhn, Loch & Co., partners of Jacob Schiff, were brothers of Max Warburg of Hamburg, Germany, the pay-off man, in power with the Kaiser, who funneled funds to Lenin and Trotsky during World War I to undermine and destroy the Russian Government.

[page 80] Jacob Schiff received his banking training in his father’s business, he being a Rothshild agent and associate. The basement of the two-in-a-row houses of Schiff and Rothschild, which I visited in Frankfort-on-Main, Germany, was one room-in-common, with a joint “get-away” which formerly had led beyond a ghetto wall. The little shack at the back was where Kings, hat-in-hand, would come to get Jewish loans. The original name of Bauer had been abandoned for “Red Shield” (Rothschild) and a Red Shield hung out as an address sign at the front of the house.

A ship sign for “Schiff” hung outside the Schiff house, built along the same common wall. Each house was about the width of an entrance hall. The room back of the Rothschild kitchen was a tiny synagogue when I was there in 1934. A skull-capped Jew was the guide, who collected entrance fees for showing the houses, the Rothschild house being the chief attraction. A gambling table was the main piece of furniture in the front room in the upstairs of the Rothschild house. Two rooms on each floor comprised the house.

“When the Kehilla [i.e. the Jewish community] of New York was organized in 1909, the control rested with a group of German Jews including Jacob Schiff, president of Kuhn, Loch and Co., a branch of the Bleichroeder Mendelssohn Bank, affiliated with the big “D” banks in Germany: Deutsche Bank, Disconto Gesellschaft, Dresdener Bank, Darmstadter Bank.” (From Waters Flowing Eastward, by L. Fry, published by the R.I.S.S. of Paris, founded by Monsignor Jouin.)

“In Germany the leading private bankers included the Mendelssohns … and the Bleichroeders … who were bankers to Emperor William I., Bismarck, and the early industrialists … Frankfort, the ‘mother city’ of Jewish bankers … produced its Lazards, Speyers, Sterns, Dreyfuses, and Sulzbachs as well as sending abroad one Jacob H. Schiff.” (The Jews of Germany, Marvin Lowenthal, Longmans Greenand Co., N.Y., 1936).

And, says the same source:

“Toward the end of that period the house of Warburg in Hamburg played an important part not only in the finances but destinies of Germany. Max Warburg was adviser to the government at the Versailles Peace Conference. Carl 1. Mel-choir, another member of the firm … headed the financial section of the Armistice Commission in 1918-1919 and was one of the six German delegates to Versailles.”

Elsewhere herein, through State Department documents, you will note the role played by the M.M. Warburg banking firm in financing the Red Russian Revolution. And, when Max Warburg came here from Hamburg in 1939, the American Jewish Committee placed him on its “Post-War” committee for the reorganization of the World which, in turn, set up the propaganda claque for the ensuing United Nations.

And so, down through the decades, Kuhn, Loch, and international bankers, “Princes of Jewry” remold the World toward the ultimate aim — World Jewish dictatorship, now so rapidly coming about.

The Kaiser

Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany and his Government were used during World War I by Jews such as Max Warburg to channel funds into Russia to breed disaffection in the Russian Army and Navy, and to set the stage for the ultimately successful Bolshevik Revolution.

When Kaiser Wilhelm realized that he had been made a tool of Jewry, it was after the War was over, and he was sawing or chopping wood at Doom, Holland. It was too late.

Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent carried this article, July 9, 1921:

“It is a most significant fact that, as in Washington, the most constant and privileged visitors to the White House were Jews, so in Berlin the only private telephone wire to the Kaiser was owned by Walter Rathenau [who later wrote the constitution of the post-war Jew-controlled Weimar “Republic”]. Not even the Crown Prince could reach the Kaiser except through the ordinary telephone connections.

“It was a family enterprise, this international campaign. Jacob Schiff swore to destroy Russia. Paul M. Warburg was his brother-in-law; Felix Warburg was his son-in-law. Max Warburg, of Hamburg, banker of the Bolsheviks, was thus brother-in-law to Jacob Schiff’s wife and daughter.

“Max Warburg represents the family in its native land. Max Warburg has as much to do with the German war government as his family and financial colleagues had to do with the United States war government.

“As has been recounted in the press the world over, the brother from America and the brother from Germany both met at Paris as government representatives in determining the peace. There were so many Jews in the German delegation that it was known by the term ‘kosher,’ also as ‘the Warburg delegation,’ and there were so many Jews in the American delegation that the delegates from the minor countries of Europe looked upon the United States as a Jewish country which through unheard-of-generosity had elected a non-Jew as its president … The Jews had several objectives in the war, and one of them was to ‘Get Russia’ … In this work Max Warburg was a factor. His bank is noted in a dispatch published by the United States government as being one whence funds were forwarded to Trotsky for use in destroying Russia. Always against Russia, not for German reasons, but for Jewish reasons, which in this particular instance coincided. Warburg and Trotsky — against Russia! While Otto Kahn, another partner in Kuhn, Loch & Co. denounced ‘pro-German propaganda,’ his partner Paul was playing the German symphony string! It is a great international orchestra, this Jewish financial firm; it can play the Star Spangled Banner, Die Wacht am Rhein, the Marseillaise, and God Save the King in one harmonious rendering, paying obsequious attention to the prejudices of each.”

Thus spoke the Ford paper in 1921. [page 81]

Jews in Russian Revolution

of 1905

The New York Communal Register of 19 17-18 (Exhibit 228) related the actions of the American Jewish Committee in the U.S. to protect Russian Jewish revolutionaries. In 1909, so many Red revolutionary criminals had fled to this country from the Jewish war against Christian Russia that the Committee fought to keep two of them, Pourea and Rudovitz, here.

“The Committee appreciated the bearing of their cases upon a large number of Jews who had taken part in the Russian Revolution [i.e. of 1905] and who had sought or might seek, an asylum in this country, and in cooperation with others succeeded in defeating the attempt of Russia.”

The “others” referred to included Secretary of State Elihu Root, who despite the fact that “no substantial evidence was produced before the committing magistrate that the offenses charged against Pourea were political [therefore under the law he could be extradited] delayed in deciding the case until it could be changed in Pourea’s favor.” (Letter of Root to Jacob Schiff — see Exhibit 245). Socialist Jew Samuel Gompers was also among those who intervened for Pourea (Same Exhibit).

Rutenberg and the Russian Revolution

We see in Exhibit 224 how the 19 17-18 Jewish Kehillah report boasted of Pinchas Rutenberg as a founding force in the American Jewish Congress as well as his being the right hand man to Jewish Premier Kerensky in the 1917 Russian Revolution.

Mourning the death of its founder, Pinchas Rutenberg, the American Jewish Congress publication, The Congress Weekly (1/16/42) stated in an article, “Rutenberg’s Mission to America:”

“His role in the birth of the American Jewish Congress was immense … the young Russian intellectual, in other words, revolutionist, soon made his influence felt in the underground council of the Social Revolutionary Party. Rutenberg was the man who, in 1905, piloted the revolutionary activities of the notorious Father Gapon and then sat in judgment and brought about his execution.

“In Italy, during the first World War, he got in touch with Vladimir Jabotinsky, founder of the Jewish Legion. In New York in 1915 he got in touch with the representatives of the Social Revolutionary Party there, Dr. Chaim Zitlowsky and Dr. Samuel Ellsberg, who were now interested in the Poale Zion party, Palestine, and Jewish rights.”

Father Gapon

The above Father Gapon incident is typical of applied Judaism. The dramatic prayer addressed by Gapon to the Czarist government with the threat that if it were not granted, we shall die here on the Square before thy Palace,” combined with mutinies, strikes involving more than 2,000,000 people, are related in William Henry Chamberlin’s The Russian Revolution 1917-1921(1935).

We read: “Gapon himself was doubtful about the wisdom of bringing large masses … to present this petition” (Vol. I, p. 48). Yet Gapon was pushed ahead as the leader. Then, “when the demonstrators refused to obey orders to disperse and go home volleys of rifle fire poured on them … The casualties of Bloody Sunday [Jan. 22, 1905] are estimated at from two hundred to fifteen hundred.”

That the Jew Rutenberg “piloted the revolutionary activities of the notorious Father Gapon, then sat in judgment and brought about his execution,” is not mentioned by historian Chamberlin, who was correspondent for 12 years in Russia for the leftist-oriented Christian Science Monitor, and now writes for the new Jewish-line “Anti-communist” Human Events. He also serves as Contributing Editor of the Socialist Social Democratic Federation party’s magazine, New Leader.

Rutenberg was chosen in 1937 as one of the 120 leading Jews of the world, along with Litvinov (Finkelstein), the Soviet Commissar, and Rabbi Louis Finkelstein, head of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. He died in Palestine in 1942, much mourned, having set up the Palestine Electric Corporation, using huge water rights, issued under British protection, for the use of Jewry.

More Jewish Manipulations in the U.S.

No corner of the earth has been too remote to manipulate for Jewry. We note activities of the American Jewish Committee (Exhibit 228) concerning: “The Jews in the Balkans,” after 1913. And our government was used again to pressure for Jewish power.

Exhibit 229 shows how restriction of immigration from Russia was fought by the American Jewish Committee after 1906, so that the flow of revolutionaries might not be curbed. The literacy test was fought so that illiterate Jews might swarm here — as they did. Of three literacy test bills, we are told, President Taft vetoed one and President Wilson two, under pressure of the American Jewish Committee. And then when one of them was passed, despite the veto, the Committee “succeeded in procuring adoption of a clause which excluded … those who came to this country to avoid religious persecution, whether induced by overt acts, oppressive laws, or by governmental relations.”

The cry of “persecution,” has always been used to cover the crimes of the only people on earth whose very religion teaches them that murder and enslavement and cheating of all other peoples is a sacred right.

We are told in the New York Jewish Communal Register, that the American Jewish Committee considered it “one of its most important functions to bend every effort toward the solution of the passport question.” (Exhibit 230) This “solution” was to circumvent Russia, which sought to bar Russian-born Red Jews, who came to the U.S.A. to get citizenship so as to return to Russia as American citizens, from [page 82] using their immunity to steer the Red Revolutionary overthrow of the Russian Christian government.

Russia had instructed its consuls to inquire of any applicants for passports to enter Russia from the U.S.A., and if they were Russian-born Jews, not to give them an entrance visa. The U.S.A. was at that time full of jailbird revolutionaries wanted in Russia, who thus sought to escape Russian law as American citizens. The aim of the American Jewish Committee was first to overthrow the Russian government, and later to sustain the Red butchers as they enslaved the Christian populace.

Note the sanctimonious “Hearts and Flowers” pose of the Committee (Exhibit 231) about Russia “refusing to recognize the American passport in the hands of American citizens of the Jewish faith.” And what is that holy “faith?” A criminal conspiracy against all humanity, against all civilized laws, all reciprocity, a code which makes that of gangsters seem benign.

Treaty with Russia Broken

Too often unmentioned today is the fact that under Article 6 of the United States Constitution, a treaty becomes the “supreme law of the land; and judges in every state shall be bound thereby; anything in the Constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.”

At one stroke, thereby, all State laws as well as the Constitution itself may be legally nullified by a treaty.

In our time, this has been done. The United Nations Charter, ratified by almost 100% of the Senate, became as a treaty the Supreme Law of the Land, anything in the Constitution or the laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding. The machinery to nullify our freedoms therefore is in place.

That the top American Jewish Committee was well aware of this provision of the Constitution back in 1917-18 when the New York Kehillah report was issued, is evident from the text. The reciprocal trade treaty of 1832 with Russia had to be broken. It had permitted Russia to have some say as to those from the U.S.A. it must admit through its borders. Russia retained some sovereignty which Red Revolutionary Jewry from Russia, armed with American citizenship, could not hurdle. The Jewish mob must be free to return to Russia and put over the Jewish revolution.

The New York Kehillah text states (Exhibits 231, 232):

“The Committee, after serious consideration, determined to recommend to the President the abrogation of the treaty with Russia, and on May 18, 1908, dispatched a letter to President Roosevelt. This began the attempt on the part of the organization to induce our Government to take some effective action to terminate the controversy. Correspondence with the same end in view was also had with President Taft and was supplemented by personal interviews with the President and with Secretaries of State, Root and Knox. [Schiff headed this delegation.]

“The effect of the termination of the treaty, was the declaration of the national policy of the United States that it would not tolerate further discrimination against American citizens of the Jewish faith. Since treaties are, under the Constitution, the supreme law of the land, with the termination of the treaty there no longer exists a law which according to the Russian Government’s contention was susceptible of the unconstitutional construction that our Government permitted discrimination against American citizens on account of race or religion.

“The action of President Taft and of the Congress of the United States was subsequently approved by all the great political parties of the country, in platform adopted by them in 1912, and again in 1916.”

More of the background of these pre-revolutionary activities of the American Jewish Committee, which was headed by Jacob Schiff, was covered in the Henry Ford Dearborn Independent, in an article in January, 1921 entitled: “Taft Once Tried to Resist Jews and Failed.” To quote:

“Mr. Taft once stood out against the Jews, was strongly denounced as unfavorable to the Jews, was soundly beaten by the Jews on a matter on which he had taken a firm stand, and has ever since shown that he has learned his lesson by accommodating the Jews in their desires …

“For centuries Russia has had her own troubles with the Jews and, as the world knows, has at last fallen prostrate before Jewish power which for centuries, has been working to undermine her … The biggest hoax in modern times was the propaganda against Russia as the persecutor of the Jews. Russia devoted to the Jews a large part of the most favored section of the land, and was always lax in those laws which prohibited Jews from settling in other parts of the country that the Jew was able to create an underground system throughout the whole of Russia which controlled the grain trade, controlled public opinion, and utterly baffled the Czar’s government. The cry of ‘persecution’ arose because the Jews were not permitted to exploit the peasants as much as they desired. They have, however, gained that privilege since.”

Reports of U.S.A. Ministers are quoted showing that while 1500 Jews were registered in St. Petersburg with the police, 30,000 were operating there illegally. Jewish editors and writers wielded power on “the leading newspapers of St. Petersburg and Moscow,” and the liquor trade was entirely in Jewish hands. “At every turn the United States Government discovered that Jews were exaggerating their difficulties for the purpose of forcing governmental action … The Jews represented that their life in Russia was a hell … Presently, after years of underground work and open propaganda against Russia in the daily press, until the American conception against Russia was fixed almost beyond correction, the agitation took the form of the ‘Russian passport question’ … Jews demanded nothing less than that the United States should break all treaty relations with Russia. They demanded it.”

How Jacob Schiff, Louis Marshall, Adolph Krauss and [page 83] Judge Henry M. Fogle (Executive Committee members of the American Jewish Committee) walked in on President Taft at the White House, February 15, 1911, is described. They had demanded the conference, were dined at the White House luncheon table, but Taft insisted upon reading them his conclusions that the trade treaty of 1832 with Russia should not be broken as an exceptional favor to Jews, despite his sentiments in favor of Jewry.

Jacob Schiff was enraged. “This means war!,” he exclaimed.

“On leaving the White House, Jacob Schiff refused to shake the President’s hand, but brushed by it with an air of offended power … Neither did the President know what was behind it all … It meant that German Jews would be the intermediaries of trade between Russia and the United States [if the treaty were broken] … The Frankfort bankers and their relatives in the United States knew what that meant … the relation meant power over Russia — and Jacob Schiff lived to overthrow Russia.

“The neutrality of the United States was torn to shreds by a movement organized and financed on American soil for the overthrow of a friendly nation, and the organizers and financiers were Jews! … The United States was to be used as a crowbar to batter down the walls.

“When the Jewish Ambassadors left the White House, orders flew from Washington and New York to every part of the United States, and the Jewish ‘nagging’ drive began. It had a center in every city. It focused on every Representative and Senator — no official, however, was too mean or unimportant to be drafted. American editors can remember the drive: it was operated on precisely the same lines as the one which is proceeding against the press today. The Jews have given absolute proof in the last two months that they control the majority of the American press.

“Jacob Schiff had said on Feb. 15, ‘This means war!’ He had ordered a large sum of money used for that purpose … On December 13 of that same year — almost ten months to a day after Jewry had declared war on President Taft’s conclusions — both houses of Congress ordered President Taft to notify Russia that the treaty with Russia would be terminated. Frankfort-on-Main Had Won!

“Nine years later, at the writing of this article, it is noted that Taft is making speeches for the Jews after the ‘Jewish’ press of the United States berated President Taft with Jewish unreserve. It would be an eye-opener if, at every speech which William Howard Taft makes for his Jewish clients there could be distributed copies of the remarks printed about President Taft by those same Jewish clients nine years ago … Two governments had been beaten … and the glee with which Jewry hailed the event is also known.”

The fact that Taft was that strange phenomenon — a one-term President, is noted and the question raised that this might have been in consequence of his disobedience.

“The President had really done what he could to prevent the Jewish plan from going through. On Feb. 11, 1911, he withstood them face to face. On December 13, 1911, they whipped him. And yet, in the next year, 1912, a peculiar thing occurred; the high officials of the B’nai B’rith went to the White House and there pinned on the breast of President Taft a medal which marked him ‘as the man who had contributed most during the year to the welfare of the Jewish cause.’ There is a photograph extant of President Taft standing on the south portico of the White House, in the midst of a group of prominent Jews, and the President is wearing his medal. He is not smiling …

“That is the story of William Howard Taft’s efforts to withstand the Jews, and how they broke him. It is probably worth knowing in view of the fact that he has become one of those “Gentile fronts’ which Jews use for their own defense.”

At every stage of the game of take-over for Talmudism, the United States was used a base of operations for “the synagogue of Satan” to put Christian Russia under heel. Propaganda flooded this country which inculcated those of my vintage with the conviction that the weak Czar with his outnumbered, outfinanced foes, wielded a blacksnake whip over little “angel” Jews, made to suffer just because they were “People of the Book.” We were taught that to the tune of millions of dollars spent by the American Jewish Committee and others.

You have only to read such Jewish books as Dubnow’s History of the Jews of Russia and Poland, put out by the American Jewish Committee’s Jewish Publication Society of America for its own people to see how every law was flouted as the Talmudists rose to assassinate and crowd their way into complete mastery and butchery in Russia.

Ford “Apologizes” to Jewry

Even one of the most wealthy and powerful men in the World was not immune to Jewish power and intimidation. The unqualified crawl, even the misstatement that he had been unaware of the contents of his Dearborn Independent, appeared over Henry Ford’s signature, June 30, 1927, just about six-and-a-half years after the above article appeared. The apology was addressed to Louis Marshall as head of the American Jewish Committee.

The renowned theologian, Dr. James M. Gray, head of the Moody Bible Institute, wrote, concerning this apology by Ford (Moody Monthly, September, 1927):

“This confession in our opinion is another link in the chain of prophecy. As we read it we were impressed that the great millionaire went further than the circumstances of the case required him to do. To put it another way, we do not believe the editor of the Independent, Mr. Ford’s paper, was either as foolish or as wicked as the confession of its proprietor would make him appear. We believe he had good grounds for publishing some of the things about the Jews which he did publish … Indeed, the pressure brought to bear upon Mr. Ford to make his confession was in itself such corroborative evidence. This pressure came from Jews all over the world, and in the face of it Mr. Ford was panic-stricken. He is one of [page 84] the richest men in the world, and of course, conscious of the power that money brings with it; but he was made to feel that the Jews have more money and hence more power than he, and that in such a cause their money and their power can be quickly mobilized against an opponent and with crushing consequence …”

Dr. Gray knew what he was talking about, having been subjected to Jewish threats himself. But he refused to recant his assertions that the Protocols of Zion represent the program of Talmudic World Jewry.

I knew Dr. Gray. Large numbers of my book The Red Network were sold in the Moody Bookstore. I spoke in the Moody Church and over the Moody radio. Unfortunately Dr. Gray’s successor has quieted down many matters in favor of Jewry.

The Russian Revolution —

Suppressed State Department Documents

Much authentication of the Jewish hand in the successful Communization of Russia through the revolution of 1917 is contained in official United States Government documents — namely Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1918, Russia, consisting of three volumes and published in 1931. (See Exhibit 243) Included are many communications between then Secretary of State Lansing, U.S. Ambassador to Russia Francis, and various consular officials, detailing events as a “moderate” regime took over Russia under Jewish Premier Kerensky, who was then superseded in a few months by the bloody Bolsheviks, led by Jews such as Trotsky (real name Bronstein), Zinoviev (real name Hirsch Apfelbaum), Kamenev, and Sverdlov. Exhibits 244 through 260 (244, 245, 246, 247,248, 249, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257, 258, 259, 260) are excerpts from these Government documents.

All through the State Department papers, most of which are not reproduced, is the picture of Russia in a state of economic collapse as soldiers and sailors are being paid to demonstrate against the Christian government, by Jewry, events which are followed by the final Red take-over.

These documents are today suppressed for public view, and if you don’t believe this to be so, try to obtain copies, or even to find them in any public library. The current Jewish line is that Soviet Russia is “anti-Semitic,” and organized Jewry has no desire to have our people learn of the true origins and beginnings of anti-Christian Communist Russia.

The Revolution Begins

On March 15, 1917, Russian Czar Nicholas II abdicated under revolutionary pressures, naming as regent Grand Duke Michael, until his son came of age.

Not reproduced here is the communication, the very next day from Secretary of State Lansing telling Ambassador Francis to call on Milyukov, Foreign Affairs Minister of the new government, and to “state that the Government of the United States recognizes the new Government of Russia,” to which Ambassador to Russia Francis replied that he had arranged to turn out his entire staff “in full uniform” to recognize the revolutionary regime.

Also omitted here are reports showing the Premiership of Prince Lvov, a sop to the royalty-adoring Russians.

All party functions of the Left had unitedly put over the revolution and this interim regime was to be short-lived, indeed.

Four days after the Czar’s abdication, Ambassador Francis stated: “Financial aid now from America would be a master stroke, immeasurably important to the Jews that revolution succeed.” (State Dept. - Exhibit 244)

Enter Kerensky

The premiership of Prince Lvov lasted only two months. To quote from the 1920 four-volume report of the New York State Committee Investigating Subversive Activities (headed by Senator Clayton R. Lusk): “Alongside of the provisional government headed first by Prince Lvov, the socialist and anarchist elements of Petrograd’s population established a Soviet of Soldiers’, Workmen’s, and Sailor’s Deputies…

Its president was at first Tcheidze [Menshevik leader] and its vice-president Kerensky [leader of the socialist Social Revolution Party]. In May, 1917, the Soviet [Kerensky’s] forced the resignation of the first cabinet … Kerensky then succeeded Prince Lvov, the first premier of the provisional government, who proved to be a weak and vacillating character.” (Vol. 1, Page 218)

Kerensky was “weak and vacillating,” not because he did not know about the Lenin-Trotsky revolution being financed by the Kuhn, Loeb cabal, and which was to follow him. The State Department papers herein show he knew every move in advance and did nothing about it. About five months after Kerensky became Russian Premier, the Bolsheviks took over. The wrecking Red work of Jewish Kerensky during his time in office is described in part as follows in the above N.Y. State Lusk Report: “The liberal decrees of the Provisional Government had destroyed the discipline of the army and the disintegration of the once powerful Russian military machine became complete.” (Page 219) “Kerensky’s Social Democrats distributed hundreds of thousands of leaflets among Russian soldiers” urging “that the soldiers should disobey their officers and lay down their arms.” (Page 215) The “swift success” of the final Revolution was “attributed in large measure by Lenin to a fortuitous cooperation between contending groups and factions.” (Page 217) [Note: Lenin’s real name was Ulyanov. His father was of Mongol origin, his mother a German Jewess.]

Kronstadt

The great mutiny of the Kronstadt sailors of July 16-17, 1917, is chronicled in modern encyclopedias as a Red Revolutionary event. Kronstadt is an island 21 miles from Petrograd (now Leningrad), in the Gulf of Finland.

On July 16, 1917, Kerensky has come home from the front when Milyukov’s Cadet Party ministers resign. And the next [page 85] day, July 17, 1917, we see that the Bolshevik turmoil is used as “the ostensible grievance” for Kerensky to demobilize “two regiments at the front.” Enter Trotsky (Bronstein).

With Kerensky having conveniently “departed for the front,” Trotsky harangues the crowds. The Cossacks, who are anti-Jew, are unable to prevail. (Exhibits 247, 248)

Chamberlin, in his The Russian Revolution 1917-21 describes the march of 20,000 sailors who disembarked from Kronstadt and marched through Petrograd, shooting into homes and killing people on the pretext that they had been attacked. The roaring bloody days of July 16th and 17th left the people helpless at the hands of the bloodthirsty demonstrators: “So the city was really at the mercy of the demonstrators,” says Chamberlin (Vol. 1, page 173). He also says:

“The Kronstadt sailors marched through the main streets of Petrograd … They promptly broke into houses from which shots were supposed to have come and killed with scant ceremony anyone whom they suspected of shooting … ‘five people were killed and twenty-seven wounded before his eyes on Sadovaya Street,’” read one report by one Kantorovitch.

Terrorist Trotsky (real name Bronstein), who was later to gouge out eyes and dismember his victims in sadistic Talmudic fashion, during the Red Terror, was reported by Ambassador Francis to have “aroused great enthusiasm by advocating violent measures.” (State Department — Exhibit 248).

Kronstadt was a rehearsal leading up to the ripe time for take-over, in November, 1917, several months later.

Trotsky had been living in New York, editing the Russian Communist paper Novy Mir (New World), financed by the communist Garland Fund, directed by Jacob Schiff’s rabbinical protege, Rabbi Judah Magnes, and such leading Communists as William Z. Foster and Roger W. Dunn, Sidney Hillman, Norman Thomas and others, serving on the Red Revolutionary battlefield in this country.

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson heard about the abdication of the Czar’s government March 15, 1917, and hailed it. The pretense then, on the part of stooges like Alexander Kerensky and other Jews, was that a “democratic” revolution had been successful, and that “humanity” was to profit from it; the weak Czar, under the thumb of his Jewish bankers and occult Rasputin, having been a pushover achieved by Jewish finance for Jewish power objectives.

The scholar, Jennings Wise, has written (Woodrow Wilson, Apostle of Revolution):

“Woodrow Wilson, despite the efforts of the British police, made it possible for Leon Trotsky to enter Russia on an American passport.” (page 647)

In Document 5 (State Department — Exhibit 254) we see that Lenin got 315,000 marks in June, 1917, just before the Kronstadt revolutionary rehearsal. As the note of our Ambassador states: “Kronstadt, the navy base, was the nerve center from which L’s [Lenin’s] activities radiated during the Summer …”

The funds originated from the “Diskonto Gesellschaft” Bank (Same Exhibit), one of the Jewish controlled German “D Banks” which helped finance the Bolshevik takeover. You may see by referring to the 1943 Universal Jewish Encyclopedia (“Finance, Jews in”) that the so-called “D” banks of Germany were all run by Jews, including the Diskonto Gesellschaft and Deutsch Bank, all being part of the conspiracy.

In September, 1917, Kronstadt is notified that the order to give passports and 207,000 marks “as per order of your Mr. Lenin have been handed to persons mentioned in your letter. The selection met with approval of his excellency the ambassador.” Ira Nelson Morris was Jewish U.S. Ambassador to Sweden at that time.

Jewish Financing Long Planned

As Documents 1 and 2 (Exhibit 251) show, the revolutionary set-up and the banking credits were all ready to function in 1914, and Document 3 (Exhibit 252) specifically names the Diskonto Gesellschaft and Deutsch Banks in this 1914 conspiracy. Exhibit 253, of February 23, 1915, reports the work of revolution, with “W [Warburg] chiefly works from Stockholm” where Jewish Ira Nelson Morris was U.S. Ambassador from July, 1914, until 1922. The “Rhenish Industrial Syndicate” (Document 5, Exhibit 253) advises the Nya Banken in Stockholm and the Stockholm representatives of two of the Jewish-run “D” Banks of Germany that they are to give money for revolutionary propaganda against Russia.

Ambassador Francis detailed (Exhibit 251) documents showing: That, in the name of the German government, agencies had been set up in such Finnish border towns as Lulea, Haparanda and Varda, also in Bergen and Amsterdam. That: “very close and absolutely secret relations [are] being established with Finnish and American banks. In this connection the Ministry begs to recommend the Swedish Nya Banken in Stockholm, the banking office of Furtsenburg; the commercial company Waldmar Hansen in Copenhagen, which are maintaining close relations with Russia.”

Francis adds: “Note: this is an outline of basic financial structure begun in February, 1914, five months before war was launched and still in operation; notice reappearance in subsequent Lenin messages, towns Lulea and Varda, likewise reference to American Banks. Olof Aschberg; one of the heads of the Nya Banken, came to Petrograd a month ago and boasted that N.B. [Nya Banken] was the Bolshevik bank.”

The Guarantee Trust Co., of N.Y. is mentioned, and “Furstenberg,” under the name of Ganetski, and Aschberg are cited as inner group members apt to run the Bolshevik state bank.

Looking at the map of Sweden, you may see that in the North where Sweden joins Finland, and the Gulf of Bothnia ends, washing both shores, there is a little border town of Haparanda and south of it is Lulea, also on the Gulf, with Russia, of today, a short trek to the east across Finland. Those were chosen for the arms-running to the Bolsheviks. The Imperial and “D” Banks of Germany, in the political [page 86] saddle, in cahoots with the Jewish U.S. Ambassador to Sweden, Ira Morris, and the Red Revolutionary Jews, armed with endless funds, put over the job. The Jewish network touched everywhere.

Furstenberg at Stockholm

Stockholm was a cozy place those days for the Reds with the USA Jewish Ambassador friendly to Jewry’s aims. There the “banking office of Furstenberg,” and the “Swedish Nya Banken in Stockholm” are mentioned in Document 1, Exhibit 251, and that was February 14, 1914. Document 8, Exhibit 254, is written to “Mr. Furstenberg” and is from the representative of the Deutsche, one of the German “D” Banks, in Switzerland. He is writing Furstenberg, June 16, 1917, to tell him that Bolshevik pamphlets costing 32,000 francs (Swiss francs were the highest of all in exchange value) have been sent and he would like to know when they arrive. “Maximalist” is used throughout the reports, meaning Bolshevik.

Furstenberg, in good approved Communist style, addresses his letter in Document 9, Exhibit 254, to Raphael Scholnickar as: “Dear Comrade:”, stating: “The office of the banking house M. Warburg has opened … an account for the undertaking of Comrade Trotsky.” The arms have been purchased and sent and a “person authorized to receive the money demanded by Comrade Trotsky.”

Ambassador Francis noted that this communication connected Trotsky “with banker Warburg and with Furstenberg.”

Furstenberg was a busy Jew those days, sending messages of cheer. Document 10, Exhibit 255, is to Bolshevik military leader Antonov at Haparanda telling him that: “Comrade Trotsky’s request has been carried out,” and that a trusty Bolshevik “Sonia,” will be coming to hand him “400,000 kroner.”

We also see that note of Ambassador Francis (Document 10, Exhibit 255):

“This letter from Scheidemann, the German Socialist leader, links him with Furstenberg-Ganetski, with the Nya Banken and with subsidizing the Russian revolution. Trotsky published a paper during the Summer. Another paper spoke for Lenin. Vorwarts would seem to refer to the Socialist organ at Berlin …”

Elsewhere (Exhibit 253) we see the name of Max Warburg, of M.M. Warburg bankers of Hamburg, and related to the Kuhn, Loeb Warburgs of the U.S.A.

As previously mentioned, Max Warburg, later, in 1939, came from Germany and served on the American Jewish Committee “Peace Committee” which drew up and organized the United Nations, its Charter and its propaganda network, consummated at San Francisco in 1945 (See American Jewish Year Book, “Report of American Jewish Committee,” on “Institute on Peace and Post-War Problems,” p. 751, Vol. 43, 1941-2).

Note that Warburg is cited in this Exhibit 253 as one of the three Jewish bankers Rubenstein, Max Warburg, and Parvus, who maneuvered with the Russian revolutionaries, Zenzinov and Lunacharski. Ambassador Francis noted that “Parvus and Warburg both figure in the Lenin and Trotsky documents.”

The Bolsheviks Take Over

While the Army was disintegrating, Premier Kerensky knowing all the time what was to follow, was fluttering with small talk when the take-over by the Red murderers came in November, 1917.

The day of the “Coup D’Etat,” November 7, 1917, Ambassador Francis communicated with Lansing, telling him that the Secretary of the Embassy, Sheldon Whitehouse, had met Kerensky hurrying out of Petrograd, and acknowledging that the Bolsheviks held the city and the Ministers of his government would be arrested (page 224). From then on, the reports go like this: “All Ministers arrested except Kerensky.” “Bolsheviki took possession of Winter Palace where all Ministers except Kerensky were located, all Ministers except Kerensky in Peter and Paul Fortress.” Conflicting reports screen Kerensky’s safe exit, not a hair of his head being harmed. Kerensky later retired to New York, to live graciously after performing his part in the Russian Red Revolution.

It is plain to see from State Department papers that at first Ambassador Francis saw the “German money” financing the Bolsheviks as just that and nothing more. He sensed, however, that a general European revolution was being fomented. And his information came from the files of “Kontrerazvedka, Government secret service organized under Kerensky.”

Concerning this, Ambassador Francis stated in February, 1918:

“If so, unavoidable questions arise why K [Kerensky] did not use evidence against Bolsheviki last July.” “Many clues lead to Stockholm and Copenhagen.”

The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia boasts of the Jews who led the Bolshevik revolution in Russia:

“The political revolution of March, 1917, brought about the complete emancipation of the Russian Jews.” (Page 670, “Soviet Russia”)

“Individual revolutionary leaders of Jewish origin — such as Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and Sverdlov — played a conspicuous part in the revolution of November, 1917 which enabled the Bolsheviks to take possession of the state apparatus.”

The great majority of Jews were Socialists, socialist Bundists, socialist Mensheviks, we are further informed, all of whom had worked for the overthrow of the Christian government of Russia.

Consequent “Anti-Semitism”

It followed, in the fight between the Christian elements and the Bolshevik Jews and their dupes, as the same source states that:

“Wherever the civil war was fought, the Whites identified [page 87] the Jews with the Bolsheviks and singled them out for attack … from the first, Anti-Semitism was severely condemned by the Bolsheviks … The recuperative process which set in with the end of the civil war was furthered by the New Economic Policy (NEP) adopted in the Spring of 1921 … By 1924 nearly one-third of all the stores in Moscow were owned by Jews.” (page 674, Encyclopedia)

From our Embassy in Russia came the report of: “conditions appalling; a veritable slaughter … Men are shot without trial.” (Sept. 21, 1918) And “bloody delirium now reigning at Moscow and Petrograd.” (Sept. 25, 1918, page 694; State Department)

In Exhibit 260, we have a typical report from those on the ground, a communication from the U.S. Consul General at Moscow (Summers) to the Secretary of State, May 2, 1918: “Jews predominant in local Soviet government; anti-Jewish feeling grows among population which tends to regard oncoming Germans as deliverers.”

Another State Department report during this period (Exhibit 261) notes: “Fifty per cent of Soviet Government in each town consists of Jews of the worst type, many of whom are anarchists.”

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