TO DIE IN JERUSALEM: A Novel

By Howard Schwach

To Die In Jerusalem is a novel that delves into the heart of the conflict between American diaspora Jews and the right-wing government of Israel. Morris Gruenwald is eight years old and living in the Kisvarda (Hungary) when the Jews of the town are sent to the death camp at Auschwitz. There, he watches his mother and younger sister marched off to the gas chamber. He survives and is smuggled to the shores of Palestine, evading the British blockade. He is sent to a kibbutz and fights in the 1948 war. Morris believes that his entire family is dead and that his future lies in Israel. He fights again in Israel’s various wars against the Arabs – in Suez in 1956 and in Jerusalem in 1967. A random photograph of him praying at the newly-liberated Western Wall in 1967 is seen by his aunt, who left Kisvarda for the United States. His family brings him to America, where he becomes a pro-Israel Senator until an increasingly right-wing Israeli government and the feelings of his grandchildren bring him to the realization that he can no longer support an anti-democratic regime.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Outskirts Press
• Release date: Jul 29, 2023
• ISBN: 9781977267221

Howard Schwach

Retired New York City teacher and community newspaper editor Howard Schwach is a published author with several young adult educational books and four adult novels under his belt. He spends much of his time when he is not writing facilitating groups of senior citizens who want to empty their bucket lists by fulfilling their dream of writing and publishing a novel. Schwach’s first novel centered on the tragic crash of American Airlines Flight 587 in his hometown of Rockaway (NY) on November 12, 2001. His second, the first in the celebrated Dave Rifkin Mystery series, The Masada Complex, centered on the age-old conflict between Jews and Palestinians in Israel and the kidnapping of a group of aging Jewish tourists from New York City visiting the Holy Land. That led to the second Rifkin mystery, Ain’t Love Enough, set in Music City, Nashville (TN). The Cahokia Conspiracy, the third novel in the Dave Rifkin series takes Dave and his wife, Linda, to the remains of an ancient Mississippian city on the Mississippi River, following the spread of an ancient virus that reveals a conspiracy to cover up the genesis of the virus by a greedy pharmaceutical executive.

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One

Washington, District of Columbia

January 6, 2021

Senator Robert Grossman was frightened and slightly disoriented by the action of the mob swirling around him.

He was frightened, unsure of his safety for the first time in many years, perhaps since he was eight years old and standing in line for the selection process at Auschwitz.

The feeling wasn’t pleasant.

The short hairs on the back of Grossman’s neck begin to stand at attention. His old military sixth sense was beginning to kick in.

Grossman was considered by his colleagues in the United States Senate to be one of the steadiest, least-flappable members of the body, but today he felt like this day might well be his last.

He touched the Kippah, the tradition headgear worn by religious Jews, pinned to what was left of his thinning white hair, perhaps for good luck, perhaps just his nervous habit when he was not sure of what was going on. Perhaps he just wanted to make sure it was still in place.

He saw one of his favorite colleagues, his friend Senator Jesse Slye of Texas, a Republican and an Evangelical Christian almost as old as himself.

Despite their political and religious differences, they were long-time friends who had worked together over the years to pass important laws, many of them impacting the future of Israel.

He wondered what Slye thought of what was going on around them. He suspected that Jesse was as angry and worried as he was.

Grossman subconsciously added the day to the few times in his long life that he was really afraid that his life would soon end: first in Hungary when he was eight years old and had a different name, a different life; He saw again the Nazi soldiers and Hungarian police officers who marched him and what was left of his family and friends to the Kisvarda train station before they were packed into cattle cars bound for resettlement to the east; then, again, when he arrived at the killing field called Auschwitz, as he watched his mother and young sister walk away from him for the final time; the fighting on Mount Scopus, Mitla Pass and again at the Lion’s Gate in Jerusalem. And, finally, when he was attacked by neo-Nazis in his home community in Queens.

The people here today are not much different from those Nazi officers who pushed us to the gas chambers in Auschwitz, he thought to himself. In fact, many of them were emblazoned with Nazi tattoos. Some even carried flags with the dreaded Swastika emblazoned on them.

His thoughts went back to Auschwitz. He had thought to run to his mother and sister after a German officer waved them to the left, while he was waved to the right.

In that hell, left meant instant death, right meant a living death.

It seemed to him that today he was walking on auto-pilot, moving through the chanting crowd without seeing them, without thinking.

He flashed forward in his mind to Palestine, to the King David Hotel in Jerusalem exploding into a thousand pieces, with wounded and dying British soldiers all over the street, and then to the arid deadly road, when he and his fellow teenaged volunteers stood off against Jordanian regulars for several hours until a Palmach unit relieved them on the road to Mount Scopus and, finally, at the Lion’s Gate, the entrance to the Holy City as they drove Jordanian regulars off Ammunition Hill.

Those were the newsreels of his life. Now, that same feeling came once again and the disparate events became comingled in his memory.

He awoke from his reverie back to the real world of MAGA Washington, 2021.

He had never expected to experience real fear such as he was experiencing here in Washington, in the United States that had adopted him many years in the past, but this, he thought, not for the first time, was a new and unpredictable world that he lived in.

Despite the heavy overcoat he wore against the harsh January weather in Washington, he felt a trickle of perspiration fall from his neck down to the inside of his collar.

Grossman leaned heavily on his cane and walked haltingly towards the large Capitol Building where he and his fellow United States Senators were scheduled to join together with the members of the House of Representatives in upholding the Constitution by certifying the election of the new president of the United States.

The idea in his mind was that democracy itself stood mostly on the idea that a peaceful transfer of power after an election every four year was sacrosanct, He certainly expected that constitutional duty would be completed today, but he was beginning to have his doubts as the flag-waving, chanting, acolytes of the recalcitrant, deposed president crowded all the urban streets leading to the Capitol building.

Grossman thought that the odds were now more like fifty-fifty that the vice president would be willing and able to count the votes and declare the election over, that Jesse Biden would be the new president two weeks hence.

He caught up with Slye, who had stopped for a moment to wipe his forehead, sweating although the temperature was in the high 30’s.

Can you believe this? he asked his friend, raising his voice to be heard above the chants.

Slye turned to him and smiled.

I’m glad for company, he said. I was about to turn around and walk away.

We can’t do that. If we do, the bastards win. We can finish our constitutional duty only if your colleagues in the Republican leadership don’t bow to the conspiracy lunatics and overturn the will of the electorate, he said. It all depends on whether or not we can get into the building without being hung.

Few of my Republican colleagues will agree with what is going on here today his friend said sadly. Some will, but most won’t.

How about your president?

Slye was silent for a moment. He looked around and Grossman could not tell his thoughts by looking at his face.

These are his people and they’ll love him forever. I have to admit that he alone brought them here and brought Democracy to this low point.

Yet you supported him, Grossman said, sounding more angry than he meant to."

Slye was basically a good man and often worked with Democrats on meaningful laws.

Yes, Slye answered. "We all did. Part of it was a fear of opposing him and his base. Being reelected, holding power is the prime directive. It remains clear that if a Republican like me wants to be reelected, he or she had to go along with the right wing of the party and that meant Trump.

However, another part of his hold in the party is the things that Conservatives wanted that he got done like the tax cut and the justices he put on the Supreme Court. You certainly should love the things that he did for Israel – moving our embassy to Jerusalem and allowing settlements on the West Bank.

Grossman looked pensive, but he was becoming angered by his friend.

I’ll never understand how you evangelicals could support a man whose morals are in the gutter and are antithetical to everything you believe about family values, Grossman said angrily.

Sometimes you have to forgive bad behavior for the good of an outcome you want. One of the tenets of my faith is forgiveness. That extends to Trump as long as the outcome is what we were looking for all along. Having three new Christian activists on the Supreme Court is what matters.

They walked side by side, silent for a minute.

So you agree he was good for Israel and that means for the Jewish people? Slye asked.

Grossman shook his head and continued to slowly make his way through the mob, Slye at his side.

You don’t understand, Goodman answered. Throughout history, Except for the Temple Period, Jews lived as strangers in other nations. They were persecuted, murdered, taken into slavery and scattered to the winds. They were always at the mercy of others. After the Shoah, Jews demanded their own nation, one that they could call their own and be safe within. To most Jews in America Israel is important as a buffer, but not many consider Israel and what happens to that nation as their seminal issue. Only Trump believes that and can’t understand why Jews don’t 100 percent support him.

Slye just shrugged.

Grossman was concerned about all of the possibilities that might come that day. Failure to have a smooth transition of power would be a blow to democracy and perhaps even the end of that vital American form of government. It would be the beginning of what he had experienced in Europe.

He was young in the late 1930’s, but he understood that similarities between Germany in 1936 and America in 2021.

He dodged around the angry and unpredictable protesters outside the Capitol Building, most of them wearing red Make America Great Again baseball caps and carrying flags showing their obsessive support for President Donald Trump, who, only a few weeks earlier, had lost the election for president to Joe Biden.

Now, almost two months after the election had been lost, Trump, his media acolytes and his right-wing followers continued to push the big lie that the election was a fraud, that the presidency had somehow been stolen by the Democrats.

Many of those in the crowd indicated that they believed the growing theory among the right-wing of their party and alt-right militia groups that the vice president could somehow legally deny the fact that Biden had won the election and put Trump back in the ultimate seat of power for four more years—or maybe, forever.

They wanted the vice president, and then the House of Representatives, to reject many of the Biden electors in swing states and instead insert electors who favored Trump, even though both counts and recounts had proved Biden’s election to be legitimate.

For the first time in the history of the nation, the tradition of a calm transfer of power based on the votes of the Electoral College hung in the balance.

Grossman forced his way through the ever-growing number of protestors, some of them armed with flags, hockey sticks and baseball bats. Many of them chanted Stop the Steal and U.S.A, U.S.A.

A large number of the protestors were dressed in full combat gear, complete with ballistic vests, helmets and combat batons. Some packed pepper spray and even cans of spray designed to keep large bears at bay. Although he could see no open guns, he was sure that a good number were carrying concealed handguns.

A contingent of Capitol police officers, far outnumbered by the rioters, were lined up in front of the steps that led to the doors of the Capitol, standing behind bike-rack barricades. That did little to stifle his fear. The police were obviously not going to be able to stop the large crowd of protestors should they decide to storm the building.

He was both frightened and physically repelled by the protestors, not because of the menace in their voices and actions and the stupidity in their cause, but also because, he thought, it brought him back to his youth and the greatest ethnic cleansing the world had ever experienced. There too, he faced ravenous crowds motivated by a big lie from a demented leader who claimed leadership no matter what the cost.

What are you thinking about? Slye asked.

About a day 77 years ago, May of 1944, when my family and I were forced from the Kisvarda, Hungary, Ghetto and marched through the streets of the town on our way to the railroad station, where cattle cars awaited us. All along the route from the ghetto to the railroad station, brown-shirted Nazis, Hungarian police officers and regular townspeople, many who had been my father’s customers and some who were my friends in school, threw garbage and excretment at us, calling us terrible names, urging our extermination and that of the Jewish race. The Nazis were doing their best to make that happen. I was Morris Gruenewald then, and I held on to my mother and sister as if it were the last time I would ever see them, ever touch them. As it turned out, it was.

Why did they die while he lived? He asked himself again.

That question had driven him for much of his life. Even nearly 80 years later and lots of hours with a therapist, he could not answer that seminal question.

He shook his head to delete that last picture of his mother and sister holding hands as they walked quietly to their death, and came back to the present.

Slye patted him on the back, understanding that he had somewhere else in his memory.

It did not help Goodman that a large number of the protestors he was forced to push through on his way to the Capitol that day brought him back to his childhood. They waved red and black Nazi flags adorned with large Swastikas, and their bodies were festooned with Nazi tattoos. Didn’t those protesters know what those symbols meant? Perhaps they did, but they didn’t care. Perhaps they agreed with the sentiments that the Swastika represented.

This was supposed to be a big day for our democracy.

Maybe bigger than we bargained for, Sly answered with a quick laugh. I feel like Tippi Hedren walking in the school playground while all of the crows sat on the electric wires and the seagulls circled overhead, waiting and watching, Hedren hoping that the birds wouldn’t kill her.

That was a great Alfred Hitchcock movie, and the birds did attack her in the end. Remember, she survived while many of the birds died.

I have a feeling that we’re Tippi Hedren and those shitheads circling the Capitol are the birds waiting to attack and peck us to death.

I hope you’re wrong. We have a lot of Capitol police around, working to make sure they don’t get to us.

I’d feel better if the National Guard was here as well.

Grossman accidently bumped into one of the protesters, a large, burly, bearded man who held a combat baton in his hand and was dressed in full combat kit.

The man looked at Grossman and pushed him hard, almost toppling him over.

Kike traitor, the man screamed in Grossman’s face. Go back to where you came from. You’re not one of us. You Jews will never replace us. Trump is still President. He was anointed by God to give America back to it its rightful owners, the white Christians, and to make this a great white nation again.

Better put this away for the day, Slye said, taking the Kippah from his friend’s head and shoving it into Grossman’s coat pocket. No reason for giving these pricks an additional reason to kill you. It seems like being a Democratic Congressman is all the reason they feel they need. The yarmulke is just a bonus for people like him. "

Grossman started to reply, but decided it was best to keep moving. He knew from experience that there was nothing he could say to the protester that would change his mind. Not for the first time he felt that his life was genuinely being threatened by an American citizen because he was a Jew.

The man bumped Grossman again, this time from behind and the Senator started to stumble.

He felt somebody take him by the arm and steady him. He looked to his right and saw police officer Steve Gephardt, one of the members of the Capitol Police Force who regularly guarded the Senate Chamber. Gerhart was kitted up in combat gear, what the cops called hats and bats.

Traditionally, the most action the Capitol police faced was keeping journalists and other individual pests away from the Senators on the Capitol floor. By and large, citizens respected the building as the seat of the democracy. Not these people. Grossman was really afraid that they were in for a rough day and that there was a possibility, albeit a small one, that he would not live to see the end of the day.

He stopped short, almost toppling his escort.

Standing in front of him was a masked man wearing jeans, a combat helmet and a sweatshirt that read, Camp Auschwitz in large black letters with a smaller Swastika and the word Staff below the hated name.

Grossman looked at the man with blood in his eyes and was so angered by the sweatshirt that he decided that he could not let that pass without challenge.

He walked up to the man and confronted him. Gephardt and Slye were right beside him, trying to pull him away from the confrontation.

The younger man towered over him, but Grossman was livid and refused to back off. That sweatshirt and what it represented to him was a road to far for him to ignore.

He rolled up the sleeve of his coat and shoved his left arm into the man’s face. He showed the man the numbers, 334635, blued by age, which had been tattooed on his arm the first day at Auschwitz, the day his mother and sister were turned to ash.

The man looked confused, as if he did not know what he was looking at.

How dare you, Grossman screamed at the man. Look at the numbers. They were put on my arm at Auschwitz when I was a child. My mother and sister died there in the ovens on that day and perhaps the rest of my family as well. And you have the nerve and the disrespect to believe it was a summer camp. If I had a weapon today, you would die right here.

The man looked at him and laughed. The only bad thing about Hitler was that he didn’t finish the job, he said.

He turned to walk away. Grossman pushed him from behind and he man fell into the crowd.

The man got up and went for Grossman, but he was stopped by Gephardt, who had extended his baton.

You started that with your fucking sweatshirt, the cop said to the man, physically restraining him from getting to Grossman. You want to spend the next few months in jail for assaulting a federal officer, I can arrange that. Back off.

The man turned without a word and walked away, his buddies patting him on the back and congratulating him for confronting the Jew.

The mission of both the Senate and House of Representatives that day was a pro forma requirement written into the Constitution, to simply receive the Presidential and Vice Presidential vote tallies from each of the states and then affirm victory of the winner, who was to be inaugurated two weeks later..

The whole process was designed to be straight forward and simple, to tally the votes and announce the results, but Trump had been complaining that the election was stolen from him and that Vice President Mike Pence, acting as the president pro tem of the Senate, should just refuse to accept the tallies that showed that Biden had won and accept phony tallies that showed that there had been fraud and that Trump had won in a landslide.

Grossman had the feeling that this was going to turn into a disruptive and dangerous day. He had the same thought as when he stepped out of the cattle car at Auschwitz.

He recognized the protestors for who they were and what they wanted – nothing short of overthrowing the newly-elected government by disrupting the Congress from doing its Constitutional duty.

Grossman, Slye and Slye, still escorted by Gephardt, walked into the chamber and saw Vice President Mike Pence on the podium, having a last-minute discussion with his staff.

Although Trump, who was still president for the next two weeks, had ordered Pence to reject the Biden ballots, the vice president had said publically that he did not have the power to do that, that his job was just to collect the state tallies, add them up and announce the winner.

The three senators walked into the cloak room, a large room off the chamber, where a television set was tuned to MSNBC.

Grossman’s age, 86 the following November, gave him some seniority and a younger Senator stood up and gave him his seat in front of the television set.

On the screen, a young reporter in a suit and tie stood in front of a stage that had been built on the Ellipse, about a half-hour walk from the Capitol Building.

There was a large crowd gathered there for promised speeches by President Trump and some of his major supporters, including some of his attornies.

Trump called it the Stop the Steal Rally. In his speech he said that he was disappointed in his vice president, who was now something of a traitor, and that the crowd should walk down to the Capitol and let everybody know that he was still president. It’s going to be wild, he promised.

We have to take a very strong action, he added

The President’s attorney, who spoke before Trump called for Trial by Combat against the process.

Representative Mark Rivers, a Republican from Florida, added a fiery call for the crowd of Trump supporters gathered at the Ellipse that morning to march on the Capitol and to start taking down names and kicking ass. Rivers also noted how our ancestors sacrificed their blood, their sweat, their tears, their fortunes, and sometimes their lives to build a Christian America before asking the audience if they were willing to do the same.

Are you willing to do what it takes to fight for America? he yelled before telling rally attendees to carry the message to Capitol Hill and that the battle for Christian values begins today.

Hang Mike Pence, somebody yelled and the thousands of protestors picked up the chant.

Just like Nuremberg and the Nazi rallies for Hitler, Grossman thought, a chill once again moving up his spine. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. This was America in 2021, not Germany in 1935.His fear for the future of American democracy deepened. Perhaps it was time for him to resign and live whatever was left of his life in peace. Perhaps in Israel. Not that the Jewish democracy was all that peaceful and had lots of problems to solve – the major one a prime minister who was a Trump clone.

Many of his colleagues had told him that nothing like this could ever happen in America. He thought back to his youth, when many of his family members in Hungary thought that Hitler was a clown and that Jews, as Hungarians, Germans or Poles, were completely safe remaining right where they had lived for generations.

It can’t happen here, became the mantra.

The smart ones, the Jews who saw the handwriting on the wall, immigrated to the United States or to Palestine, where the Zionist hope for a Jewish state was growing. The disbelievers wound up in going to the ovens or to the slave labor battalions. Those who believed their eyes and ears and not their hearts ran and therefore survived. One of his favorite aunts had done just that, although he had never been able to find just where she went or even if she and her family were still alive.

A young page turned the television off and called for the Senators to get ready for the joint session –both the House of Representatives and the Senate meeting together.

The procedure went smoothly at the beginning, as each of the states reported to Pence, whose clerk recorded the election results as he announced them.

Pence had counted the votes and declared Jesse Biden the winner and had called for objections from the members when loud shouting could be heard from the hallway beyond the chamber. As Grossman sat there, the yelling and chanting seemed to get louder.

Hang Mike Pence. Nancy, we’re coming for you.

Kill the pigs.

Stop the Steal.

Trump is our President.

We’re coming to kill you Nancy, referring to Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

And, to the cops protecting the Capitol, We are the real American patriots. Join us in destroying the deep state and the traitors in Congress.

A capitol police officer that Grossman didn’t recognize came into the hall and whispered in Pence’s ear.

The Senate stands in recess, Pence said loudly and with some fear and disbelief in his voice. In a few minutes, the capitol police will take you to a secure location for your own protection. Please follow their directions."

The vice president’s secret service detail rushed into the room, some with drawn weapons. They encircled Pence and his family and took them out of the room. The other senators milled around until police officers rounded them up and took them to Hart 216, a large, ornate anteroom that served as a member’s lounge, locking them in and protecting the door. Some Senators just hit the ground and curled up under their seats.

Others, including a number who had been in the military, ran to help the few police officers available to secure the room.

Grossman could hear screaming from the hallway.

Where one goes, so go all!

Burn the place down!

President Trump invited us to come here to save our democracy. Stop the steal.

Q sent us.

Trust Trump’s plan.

Back in the Presidency by August.

Save the children from the Democratic pedophiles.

Hang Mike Pence.

God wants Trump to be our king.

Steve Gephardt grabbed Grossman by the arm." It seemed to Grossman as if Gephardt had appointed himself as his guardian angel and he was glad for the protection.

C’mon Senator, let me get you out of here.

Gephardt and another officer who he did not know half-pulled, half-guided Grossman to a smaller room off the chamber, a room that was used for small-group consultations between Senators. Grossman could smell tear gas and pepper spray in the air. He took his Kippah from his pocket and put it back on his head. It was not a day to deny that he was a Jew and he was damned sure that he wasn’t going to go down without the symbol of his religion on his head.

He had trouble catching his breath and Gephardt could sense his problem. He realized that he was carrying his gas mask and that he should put it on.

Don’t worry, Senator, Gephardt said. We’ll keep you safe. Most of these yahoos are just looking for their five minutes of fame. They want the folks back home to see them on Facebook and Twitter as well as Fox.

The two officers grabbed some couches and coffee tables and barricaded the door, holding off long enough to allow several other Senators, including Sly, Slye and some of their staff members into the room.

There was a television set in the room and Grossman and the others watched as Capitol Police officers and some from the Washington Metro Police force fought for their lives to hold off hordes of protesters attacking the building.

The tear gas was thick in the room and Grossman put on the mask. Grossman began coughing despite the mask.

I’m not going without a fight, Grossman said through his mask to the others in the room. I survived Auschwitz, the 1948 War for Independence, the 1967 War and a long life. He began to take off his suit coat and his tie.

The two cops pulled out their service weapons, Glock-22’s, and pointed them towards the doors that led to the room.

I hope you know how to use that? Grossman teased Gephardt. If not, give it to me. I know how to use it.

We’re under orders not to fire at the protestors unless a Senator is under direct threat of death or serious injury, he answered. I hope the protestors don’t know that. At least the guns might scare them enough to keep them out of here. If we do shoot and kill any of them, even if they deserve it, this will turn bloodier.

The several senators that were in the room with the two cops got down on the floor in the windowless room and made themselves as small a target as possible.

They heard protestors moving through the hallway, screaming, singing, chanting and attempting to knock down the doors that led off the hallway, including the one they hid behind.

The yelling and chanting continued for what seemed like a full day.

After more than three hours and sounds of gunshots, there was a semblance of quiet in the hallway. Grossman continually had to shift his body because it ached all over.

He heard people moving through the hall, but the chants and threats had faded away.

Grossman heard a radio transmission coming from one of the radios the capitol police wore on their collars.

The radio reported that the floor had been cleared of rioters and that it was safe to open the doors.

Just then there was a knock on the door. Gephardt and his partner raised their weapons and pointed them towards the barricaded door unsure whether or not the rioters had captured a police radio.

Hey, if anybody is in there, I’m Second Lieutenant Grant, Virginia National Guard. Open up, he heard from the hallway outside the room.

The furniture was pulled from the door and Gephardt opened it, holding his weapons in full sight, ready to use it if this were some sort of ruse on the part of the rioters.

Several soldiers stood in the hallway, pointing their assault rifles at more than two-dozen protesters prone and spread-eagled on the floor.

You’re going back into session in twenty minutes, gentlemen. We’ve taken control of the Capitol for now, the guard officer said."

Grossman and the other senators were escorted out of the room and back to the Senate Chamber by several uniformed men and women with assault rifles. As they moved through the hallway, they saw small groups of protestors in zip-ties, being taken away by armed guard members, Metro police officers and capitol police.

He stopped to thank Gephardt and shake his hand.

Glad to be of assistance, the cop said with a smile. He holstered his weapon and followed the group of senators out of the room towards the Senate chamber.

Slye came over to Grossman and shook his hand.

I heard that we are going back into session in approximately two hours to finally finish our business, he told Grossman. I wonder is the coffee shop is open. I could use a cup.

The two men walked through the halls of the Capitol building looking at the debris that the rioters left behind.

Doors were broken, windows smashed. There were official papers on the floor all over the building, statues lying prone on the ground and the air was still heavy with the smell and sting of tear gas. Nazi graffiti lined the walls. In one spot a window entering a conference room was shattered and there was a large pool of blood on the floor that maintenance staff was trying hard to clean.

Grossman wondered what the nation that had saved him and then formed his life in the 1950’s had come to.

The two men walked into the near-empty coffee lounge reserved for Senators and their staffs.

A coffee pot with paper cups, milk and sweeteners had been set up on a folding table.

They each took a cup, filled it with coffee and sat down heavily.

I’m sorry you had to see that sweatshirt, Slye said. He knew well of Grossman’s early life. You Jews are getting it from both the right and the left. How can you handle it? Why does that happen?

In every age, people need a scapegoat to blame for their problems. Jews have always been handy. Today’s antisemitism is a little more complicated, Goodman answered.

So, there is really little difference between right-wing antisemitism and left-wing antisemitism, although they come at the question of Zionism from different ends of the spectrum, Grossman said. They both have the same aim – to destroy Israel as a Jewish nation and rid the world of Jews. The right-wing groups such as the neo-Nazis you saw today, do it with guns and bombs. They want to destroy all the Jews throughout the world, particularly in Israel. Their take is that the way to do that is to kill Jews and to force them to become world pariahs, as Hitler did.

He paused for a moment, getting his thoughts in order, although it was clear that his discussion about antisemitism with us was something he had done previously.

Left-wing antisemitism is a little more subtle. That movement wants to destroy Israel with words like social justice, anti-racism, and post-Zionism. They say their antisemitism is a criticism directed at only the present right-wing government of Israel, not of all Jews, but that it a convenient lie they tell themselves. They often force Jews to reduce their support for Israel by embarrassing them and forcing them away from social justice organizations that they had been working with for years. The neo-Nazis are easy to identify. They shave their heads and wear Nazi symbols proudly. The left wing anti-Semites are more difficult to identify. They wear suits and ties, they have college degrees and they call their brand of antisemitism enlightened thinking or anti-racism."

He added, "The latter group likes to ask ‘How can a liberal American Jew, one who is interested in social justice, be both interested in justice and be a racist Zionist as well. They ostracize those Jews who support Zionism and then force them to either retreat or apologize. I’ll give you an example.

"The growing national Women’s March movement had several proudly liberal, Jewish women on the board and in leadership positions. Others on the board were openly anti-Israel and pro-BDS. One of those leaders, Linda Sarsour, openly praised Black Muslim Minister Farrakhan, a man who openly calls Jews ‘cockroaches.

The BDS supporters forced all of the liberal Jews off the organization’s board when the Jews tried to defend Israel, if not its government. Those who criticized Sarsour for her support of an avowed anti-Semitic were called racist, Islamophobias, sexist and misogynists. It took a lot of outrage on the part of the organization’s rank and file supporters to overturn the decision to force the Jewish women out of their leadership positions.

They drank their coffee silently as other Senators came for coffee and sat in small groups.

In an hour, a page came into the room and announced that the Senate was going back into session. Everybody trudged their way to the Senate Chamber.

It had been a stressful day, a day that could have ended America’s democracy.

But Grossman was not thinking of the day’s carnage. Instead, his thoughts went back 80 years, to Kisvarda, Hungary and 1944.

Two

Kisvarda, Hungary

May 28, 1944

Eight-year old Morris Grunewald sat looking out the kitchen window of their small, second floor apartment, watching the activity at the small yeshiva across the street, as he did every day. Several teen-aged boys busily went in and out of the old, decrepit building that the Jews of the Kisvarda Ghetto used as a school, a synagogue and a community center.

It operated only because the Hungarian police, who patrolled the area, looked the other way. Synagogues and Yeshivas were forbidden under Nazi rule.

All of the boys –girls were not allowed -- dressed in black and each of them was carrying a pile of books under his arm.

Morris wished again that he was old enough to join them.

Because of his age he was not allowed to attend the Jewish school. And, because his parents were not very religious, he was not indoctrinated into the traditional tenets of Judaism as practiced by many of the ghett’s inhabitants. He only knew that because he was a Jew, he was not allowed to go outside of their apartment and he was both bored and frightened at his forced seclusion.

There was a time when he went to public school with his friends, but that ended a few years before, when the Nazis marched in with the cooperation of the Hungarian government.

The small, two-bedroom apartment, which housed four families, more than twenty people in all, had comprised his whole world for the past two years, ever since the German soldiers came and forced him and his family from their large apartment on the other side of the town and into a walled-in enclave that his mother told him was called The Ghetto. He didn’t understand why the Nazi soldiers, assisted by the