The Neo-Nazis of Thousand Oaks
I was in high school when I realized that some people in my town believed I didn’t deserve to exist
Note: Some of the names in this piece have been changed to protect the identities of those who were minors at the time.
I avoided the news, but my radio forced me to hear their names: Joyce Fienberg, Irving Younger, Rose Mallinger, Bernice and Sylvan Simon, Jerry Rabinowitz, Melvin Wax, Richard Gottfried, Daniel Stein, brothers Cecil and David Rosenthal.
Each syllable rang so familiar — like neighbors my grandmother would have over for dinner, or my aunt’s friend from temple who brought the Passover gefilte fish she made with the rabbi, or my friend’s dad who drove us home from Hebrew school on Thursdays. Though it seemed inconceivable for anti-Semitism to still be prevalent in the United States, the massacre at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue happened. Eleven Jewish people were murdered during their morning ceremonies by a white supremacist shouting anti-Semitic slurs.
I recalled the many Holocaust survivors who had visited my synagogue in Thousand Oaks when I was a child. They recounted stories of escape and loss, and urged the importance of maintaining our Jewish identity. They told us Judaism was more than just a religion — it was our blood…
