Let's not sugarcoat how we've failed those who fought, died for us — let's just do better.
My mother’s brothers, my uncles, fought in WWII. So I always knew who the good guys were. I didn’t have to be told or learn it from a book or in a classroom. It was baked into me, like my eye color and the freckles on my nose. It was, it is part of my DNA.
But I’m not sure I understood things beyond that until I saw the tattoo. I’m not sure I understood how deep the depravity, how wide its reach, how fragile the future. I’m not sure I understood evil.
Until I saw that tattoo.
Until I saw those numbers inked into his skin.
His name was Manfred, but I only ever heard anyone call him Freddie, a child’s name but he always seemed old to me. He was a rancher who ran cattle and sheep and raised kids on land in eastern Colorado. He was kind of terse, like a stereotypical German, but quick with a smile and hard-working. He had a son, about my sister’s age, who showed sheep at the county fair and collected the hearts of teen-age girls enamored of his curly hair and farm-boy good looks.
Freddie was a friend of my father’s. They served on the fair board together. My dad represented the Extension Service and thus the 4-H program that made up the bulk of the fair’s exhibits and contests; Freddie, the deeply-entrenched rural community that gave rise to the fair.
The fair board had meetings once a month, on Thursday evenings, in a building at the fairgrounds, which was about an hour’s drive from our home in Colorado Springs. Sometimes, when I was in junior high and high school, I would go to the meetings with my dad — just for a trip to the country or some uninterrupted conversation with my dad or maybe just to make sure he didn’t fall asleep on the drive home down a deserted midnight highway. I would do homework at a table in the back, or write letters, or read a novel, only half-listening to the board members hash out changes and expenses and entertainment arrangements. I wasn’t really interested in the minutiae of the fair, but I was attracted to the camaraderie of the people (mostly men) on the board and the feeling of knowing things that other people didn’t yet know.
It was at one of those meetings that I first noticed the numbers peeking out from beneath the rolled-up sleeves of Freddie’s work shirt.
On the way home, in the car on that long dark highway, we talked about it. Or was it later at the dinner table when others were present? We said the words: Hitler. Nazi. Holocaust. Work camp. Concentration camp. Extermination camp.
Six million.
Horrific words made all the more obscene by their association with our friend.
I don’t know if that was the first time I learned that Nazis, themselves overwhelmed by the sheer number of people they forced into concentration camps, tattooed ID numbers on the arms of their Jewish prisoners, a deliberate humiliation for people whose religion forbade body alterations and a lifelong reminder of the torture they would endure if they did indeed endure. But afterward, each time I learned of some other incomprehensible horror perpetrated by demons, it was like seeing that tattoo for the first time.
Some time later, the teacher in my high school history class showed us a film on the Holocaust. (“Night and Fog”? I don’t remember for sure, but I suspect it was this short, impactful, horrifying film from 1955.) A few stark images from the film remain seared in my memory all these years later — prisoners, not much more than skeletons, huddled together on wooden bunks, recessed into stone walls, their faces, almost vacant, staring out from the darkness; piles of bodies and bulldozers pushing them into trenches and mass graves (yes, actual footage, not still photographs, of this atrocity); and shots inside and out of the “clinics” where medical experiments were forced on innocent and unsuspecting people.
She, like so many others, bore witness to the truth that keeping your head down and looking away can give succor to darkness, that ordinary people can be led to evil.
But what I remember clearest from that day is that our teacher cried during the film and later explained that the tears were for her grandparents who were murdered in the camps. She, like so many others, bore witness to the truth that keeping your head down and looking away can give succor to darkness, that ordinary people can be led to evil.
She admonished us: Don’t look away. Don’t forget. Don’t let it happen again.
It could, you know.
In the past few weeks, there have been alarming events in this country, our country:
In January, a school board in McMinn County, Tenn., voted unanimously to remove the Pulitzer-winning graphic novel “Maus” from its eighth-grade curriculum. “Maus” details experiences of the author’s Polish Jewish parents during and after their imprisonment in Auschwitz. School board members said it was removing the book because they didn’t think it was age-appropriate and thought its use of “rough” language and brief nudity was inconsistent with the community’s values.
Down the road, about two weeks later, in Mt. Juliet, Tenn., a so-called minister held a book-burning, an act of cowardice reminiscent of the tactics of the Third Reich. Saying he was rejecting “demonic influences,” he threw the “Harry Potter” and “Twilight” books on a bonfire in front of a cheering crowd. The event was live streamed on Facebook.
In Orlando, Fla., that same weekend, neo-Nazis demonstrated outside a shopping mall near the University of Central Florida. I was one of the 2.7 million people who watched, aghast, a Twitter video in which people in Nazi uniforms shouted anti-Semitic slurs at passing motorists, waved Nazi banners and stomped on the Israeli flag. One young woman, her blonde hair moving in the breeze, giggled as she gave the Nazi salute. Three people were arrested in connection with an assault on a Jewish student who was capturing the demonstration on his phone. He is the grandson of Holocaust survivors.
And, most notably, a well-known and well-respected TV personality misrepresented the impetus for the murder of 6 million Jews, calling it “man’s inhumanity to man” rather than the simple truth of racism.
Since the beginning of the year, the Anti-Defamation League has tracked more than 50 incidents of anti-Semitism, including a gunman holding hostages for 10 hours in a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas.
In 2020, the Pew Research Center asked adults under 40 (Millennials and Gen Z) how much they knew about the Holocaust. The results were shocking, and frightening. Of the 11,000 people interviewed, only 48 percent were able to name a single concentration camp or ghetto, despite the fact that the Nazis established more than 44,000 camps, subcamps and other detention sites across Europe. Sixty-three percent did not know that 6 million Jews were killed; and 20 percent of respondents in New York said they thought Jews caused the Holocaust.
The survey also suggested that the people with the greatest understanding of that terrible time in history and the greatest affinity for the plight of the Jewish community, then and now, were people who heard firsthand accounts from survivors and witnesses. But as we all know, the “Greatest Generation” is waning.
So what then?
My uncles, who fought for democracy and decency and humanity, are all gone — as are so many who stood beside them in Germany and Belgium and Italy, India and Japan. In fact, 16 million American soldiers fought in World War II; today fewer than 240,000 are still with us.
How do we repay them?
Freddie and his wife, herself a Holocaust survivor, are both gone, but is the debt we owe them?
Of the millions of people forced into camps during Hitler’s Final Solution — Jews, Romani, homosexuals, disabled people, political dissidents, Catholics — fewer than 500,000 are alive today.
What do we owe them? What do we owe the millions who were murdered?
At least this: to keep our eyes open and refuse to turn away, to call out hatred and reject evil, to carry their stories with us, to share them, repeat them, make them a part of our collective DNA.
To never forget.
Marlborough Pie
In the interest of preserving history, I decided to make a Marlborough Pie, a rich delicious apple pie that dates to 1600s Tudor England and gets its deep, rich flavor from two types of apples and a generous helping of sherry.
The origin of the pie’s name is a matter of debate, but there are three credible theories: Some suggest the pie was named after Marlborough, England, a market town about 75 miles west of London. Others suggest it was named for either Thomas of Marlborough, a monk, or for Gen. John Churchill, 1st duke of Marlborough.
In any case, according to the New England Historical Society, Marlborough Pie appeared in the first American cookbook, “American Cookery” by Amelia Simmons, published in 1776. Written by a domestic worker, “American Cookery” is considered the first cookbook for Americans by an American, and it includes the first known suggestion for pairing turkey and cranberry sauce, as well as original recipes for pumpkin pie and jonnycakes. Today, only four copies of the first edition of "American Cookery" are known to survive.
Marlborough Pie made the journey across the ocean and was popular in New England through the late 19th century, often gracing holiday tables in the wintertime.
I found two recipes for Marlborough Pie, both of them flavored with sherry, cream and nutmeg. However, one recipe called for stewed apples, the other using grated apples. That’s the pie I made. I was intrigued to find out if the grated apple would cook down to an applesauce consistency but was pleasantly surprised that the rough, grated texture survived the oven.
The Recipe
Marlborough Pie
1 single pie crust
2 large Granny Smith or other tart apples, cored and peeled
2 large Pink Lady or other sweet apples, cored and peeled
3 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon dried sherry or apple cider *
2 tablespoons salted butter
2/3 cup granulated sugar
3 large eggs
1 cup light cream
¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon grated nutmeg
¼ teaspoon salt
Prepare and parbake the pie crust. Parbake the crust, lined with aluminum foil and weighted with pie weights, dried beans or coins, for about 13 minutes in a 400-degree oven.
Shred apples.
Cook shredded apples with sherry, sugar and butter until tender, just a few minutes.
Blend together eggs, cream and spices. Stir in apples.
Pour mixture into pie crust and bake at 350 degrees for about 35 minutes or until the custard is set but not brown.
Allow to cool before serving. It’s good topped with whipped cream.
* I used a dry Marsala wine because, for whatever reason, I was unable to find sherry.
Recipe
Stewed-Apple Marlborough Pie
1 single pie crust
6 tablespoons butter
Juice on 1 lemon
¾ cup stewed, pureed apples (depending on size, about 4 large apples)
¾ cup sherry
½ cup heavy cream
¾ cup white sugar
4 eggs
2 teaspoons grated nutmeg
Prepare crust. Line 8-inch deep dish pie plate with crust. (You might want to parbake the crust to prevent a soggy or limp bottom, but that is not required.)
Melt butter and set aside to cool.
Juice lemon; remove seeds. Add lemon juice to stewed apples, sherry, cream and sugar. Mix well. Add melted butter. Mix well.
Beat eggs and add to mixture. Add grated nutmeg and mix well.
Spoon mixture into prepared pie crust.
Bake 15 minutes at 400 degrees. Reduce heat to 350 degrees; bake 45 minutes or until knife comes out clean.
Pie Crust
Prepare and parbake the pie crust. Parbake for about 13 minutes in a 400-degree oven. Cut in 1/4 cup shortening (about 1 one tablespoon extra if using hydrogenated shortening) until mixture looks like meal. Cut in another ¼ cup shortening coarsely, until particles are the size of giant peas. Sprinkle with 3 tablespoons water, one tablespoon at a time. Gather dough together and press firmly into a ball. If dough doesn’t all come together, add more water, one tablespoon at a time, until all the flour is worked into the dough.
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