Preface: This article emanates from an invited presentation given at the 2023 APA Annual Convention in Washington DC on August 4, 2023. The author, Dr. Florence Kaslow, was one of the three panelists/presenters asked by APA President Thema Bryant-Davis, PhD to be on a featured panel. Dr. Bryant-Davis was the fourth panelist. The panel was on Jewish/Black Collaboration – a topic which was central to the 2023 APA Conference.
Growing up Jewish in a totally non-Jewish Community and going to an elementary school where my sister and I were among the half-dozen Jewish students exposed us very early in our lives to overt prejudice, like being called “dirty Jew” or being the only girl(s) in our classes not invited to attend someone’s birthday party. It was not unusual for our family to come home from Friday night services at our synagogue and find a Swastika painted on our house and/or my parents’ adjoining grocery store. How unnerving and distressing. Being different was not tolerated well, and the police would not get involved.
My parents stressed that we had to be good students, go to the library, and excel at school. We both did, and that probably antagonized our classmates more. The importance of a good education was a major value in both of our parents’ families. My dad had immigrated with much of his family from Russia and they all believed a good education was the way to get ahead.
When I graduated at 16 years of age, I started college. I took a trolley car and then the subway to Temple University, an inner-city college with a very mixed population. Many returning veterans from service in WWII were students being paid for under the G.I. Bill of Rights. While in service they had been exposed to the importance of equality and taking care of each other when need be – regardless of race, ethnicity, or religion. Many expressed this non-discriminatory attitude in classes and social gatherings. It was different and refreshing and I incorporated it into my value system.
As my parents could not afford the tuition, I got a part-time job at Philadelphia Fellowship Commission and worked there for the Jewish Community Relationship Council. It was wonderful to be in a collaborative, mutually respectful inter-religious and inter-racial environment. When I went as a commuting undergraduate to Temple University, I was asked to represent Hillel on the Interfaith Council and did so. Again, I valued this intergroup collaboration and exchange and it contributed further to my developing sense of personal and professional identity.
Later when I went to Graduate School at Ohio State University, I decided to live for a year at the International House and was one of only two women from the US residing there. The other 16 women were from other countries, near and far, of various backgrounds. At International House, the orientation and ideology of equality and mutual respect, regardless of race, religion, and/or nationality became even more deeply ingrained.
Decades later, I was instrumental in starting the International Family Therapy Association (IFTA) at the first International Family Therapy Conference in Czechoslovakia. I served as its first President. Our initial board members were drawn from 10 other countries. After a few years I was asked if I would set up and run a Holocaust Dialogue Group for Survivors of Victims and Perpetrators. I said “yes” and got permission from our Hungarian colleagues, who were sponsoring the conference the following year, to do so there, on the condition that one-third of the participants would be from Hungary, one-third would be Jewish, and one-third German, and the group would be limited to 25 individuals, including myself. This became the attendance/composition formula for the next 10 years of meetings at the IFTA conferences each year in a different country.
The first meeting was the most dramatic. I had the participants go around the room and introduce themselves. One German couple, who I had previously worked with when they attended presentations I had given in Germany, each quivered and cried during their introductions, and moaned “How can we ask for your forgiveness for what our ancestors did to yours? We are so ashamed.” As the session was taking place in a group setting, I felt free to go over and stand between them, holding their hands as a gesture of understanding, sympathy and support for their apologies and grieving. Several of the Jewish members present said they didn’t know if they could forgive their losses from the deliberate extermination of their family members and much anger was vented. But everyone stayed and tried to listen and grasp each others’ stories and their impact in the here and now.
Many members came back year after year if they went to the conference in the country where the IFTA meeting was being held. New people filled the vacant seats. Over the years some members became friendly acquaintances, even friends, across the two groups. They recognized that these colleagues were not personally perpetrators, and may not have even been alive when this all transpired. The forgiveness and healing that slowly did occur with some participants was heartwarming – even somewhat miraculous. Others simply could not forgive the losses and grieving that still were so influential in the lives of their families and would not – the hatred was too deeply ingrained.
The Shoah Foundation heard about this annual event from someone who participated and called me to see if they could attend the next session and film it for their collection of films on the Holocaust and its aftermath. Although such a film would have meant our Holocaust Dialogue group could have had an impact on many more people, it was incumbent upon me to say “NO” as the group members and I had agreed at the first session to keep the names of those who had participated and what they said “confidential.”
Unfortunately, the current crest of rising Anti-Semitism is gathering strength and many fear another Holocaust could be brewing. The attack of Hamas on Israel on October 7, 2023, was so horrific as has been the fighting which ensued between Israel, Gaza and Hamas ever since. (This is being written on 1/1/24). This is one of the compelling reasons why many psychologists are involved in Psychologists Against Anti-Semitism. We must help shatter the forces and people perpetrating this and any kind of racism or ethnic hatred. We cannot control what others think and feel, but we can and must band together and educate and legislate against hatred, prejudice, and vilification of those who look and believe differently. In the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, “We shall and must overcome, together.” And hopefully our differences will someday not only be tolerated but will also be appreciated.
Florence W. Kaslow, PhD, ABPP
Board Certified in Clinical Psychology, Forensic Psychology, Couple and Family Psychology
Correspondence: drfkaslow@bellsouth.net