"If you look at who is being attacked -- often they are union activists or people who have been critical of the Government," I told her. I stopped. The conclusion that the government purposefully hurts its critics and working people was so awful that I did not want to say it. "Perhaps the always having to be careful, of course they are very different situations. We are not yet sent as a people to death camps from which we will never return. But it is important to understand what it was like for the Jewish people during World War II," scibe said. "Initially they were not adequately warned of the terrible extent of the danger, so they could not resist as well as might have been possible. Those of us under attack in this country have been put in the same position -- purposefully not told so that we do not gather together to resist, so that our fellow citizens do not know, so that we cannot protect ourselves. We need to be aware of this. To come together as communities." scibe stopped talking for a moment and looked around the gallery at the art works, at the people beginning to arrive. "I have learned that we must create our own hope," she said. "We must break the walls of the virtual isolation chambers in which we have been confined -- to be aware that what now seem like isolated instances of persecution may signal the beginnings of greater repression; to help others throughout the world who are in danger and in need. But at the same time to keep our focus on the importance of freedom in our own country." |
And then Seeger's response to the question about his not relying on the Fifth Amendment. Pete Seeger: "No, sir, although I do not want to in any way discredit or depreciate or depredate the witnesses that have used the Fifth Amendment, and I simply feel it is improper for this committee to ask such questions." The committee sentenced Pete Seeger to a year in jail for contempt of Congress. But Seeger appealed his case and eventually won.
"A few years ago, I had a vision that I would go to a beautiful country where all my family was," scibe told me yesterday. "It was like a dream reoccurring as if someone had planted it in my mind. And then I saw that the possibility of hope was continually held out. But it was always yanked away." As she spoke, I remembered that some of my relatives in Germany, who were put on trains to concentration camps, thought that they were going to a place of safety. I started to tell her this, and then I could not say the words.
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