When you showed the beginning of the musical-movie, “Fiddler on the Roof” I was happy because that is one of the nicer stories about the Jewish people portrayed in movies. It is also the stereotypical movie people affiliate Jews with and there is not a negative thing about that. Yes bad things happen in the film and we didn’t watch the rest of the movie but I’ll stick to the part we saw.
There are thoughts that a lot of Jews and myself included about the Holocaust, when you watch this movie you see the harmony and wholeness about a whole community only of Jews, where you have Jewish traditions going on freely without hatred or people limiting it in some way. That is something Jews kept striving for and kept losing after all the expulsions, temple destructions, with major powers ruling over them.
It is a great idea for a Holocaust class to show in the beginning weeks of the semester. It is a good idea to show the students on how life was for the Jews before the Holocaust. Things were finally starting to look good for the Jews in Europe as a whole. That the idea of what if the Holocaust never happened, would life be the same for Teviah and the rest of the Jews in that community?
I think about it a lot that if the Holocaust didn’t happen my grandfather might not have left Germany and if he didn’t would he never have met my grandmother who was born in America when it was her own parents who left Russia before the War. If they hadn’t met I would have not been born or if I was born I might have been living in Germany. That many of us whose families emigrated from many countries either during the war or after to America and how many would have not have if things were good in Europe and there was no need to leave. If I were one of them and if things were things were going well for me and my family in whatever European country, then why would there be a reason to leave?
The world itself might have been different if there wasn’t a World War II, the Russians wouldn’t have entered into the war along with the Americans and still might have had their own USSR still. Any time you talk about if a war didn’t happen all the people who had died in the war wouldn’t have but the real thing is that 6 million Jews wouldn’t have died like that. There could have been more Jews in this world who could have contributed with inventions and advances in technology if they hadn’t perished during the Holocaust.
Another thing that might not have happened if the Holocaust and World War II didn’t take place is the creation of a Jewish country. That is something Jews have been striving for a long time and no one would ever say they would trade losing 6 million Jews to have a country of their own. That Israel was supposed to be how it was in the movie where all the Jews lived there and could be Jewish without restraint or someone looking over their shoulders. The world is secular now that I don’t know if Israel or any area could be like it is in the movie and I’m not referring to just how things would be if the Holocaust didn’t happen. If things were like that it in the movie how life would be for all us in the year 2014.