Join the Chronicle Book Club!

The Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle invites you to join the Chronicle Book Club for its Feb. 5 discussion of “Waking Lions” by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen. The novel was a joint winner of the prestigious 2017 Jewish Quarterly Wingate literary prize. From the New York Times: “Eitan Green, the protagonist of the Israeli author Ayelet Gundar-Goshen’s novel ‘Waking Lions,’ is a respected neurosurgeon who has been forced by a professional dispute to relocate from Tel Aviv to Beersheba, a desert town where dust is everywhere, ‘a thin white layer, like the icing on a birthday cake no one wants.’ Speeding through a remote area in his S.U.V. late one night, he hits an Eritrean man walking by the roadside. And when he decides that the victim is beyond help, he impulsively flees the scene.... ‘Waking Lions’ is a sophisticated and darkly ambitious novel, revealing an aspect of Israeli life rarely seen in its literature.”

Your Hosts:

Toby Tabachnick, editor

David Rullo, staff writer

How and When: We will meet on Zoom on Sunday, Feb. 5, at noon.

What To Do

Buy: “Waking Lions.” It is available from online retailers including Barnes & Noble and Amazon (new and used editions). There are also several copies available in the Carnegie Library system.

Email: Contact us at drullo@pittsburgh jewishchronicle.org, and write “Chronicle Book Club” in the subject line. We will send you a Zoom link for the discussion meeting.

Happy reading! PJC

Tabachnick

its new gallery space at Chatham.

“Revolving Doors” includes a selection of artwork and artifacts from the Holocaust Center’s collection, juxtaposing Jewish cultural life with persistent antisemitism across time and the devastating impact of the Holocaust on global Jewry. It also examines antisemitism today, including artists’ responses to the Oct. 27, 2018, attack at the Tree of Life building.

History is a pattern of assimilation and antisemitism for the Jewish people, hence the title “Revolving Doors,” Bairnsfather said.

“Revolving Doors” is also the title of a series of collages by surrealist artist and photographer Man Ray. Ray, the eldest child of Russian Jewish immigrants who changed their name from Radnitzky to Ray due to antisemitism, was born in Philadelphia but spent much of his life in Paris, a city he was forced to flee in 1940 because of World War II.

The Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh maintains all 10 prints in Ray’s “Revolving Doors” series and features one as part of the new exhibit.

The exhibit attempts to do a lot of things in a very small space, Holocaust Center manager Jackie Shimshoni Reese explained.

“We’re not just talking about the Holocaust,” she said, “but what were the factors that led up to it and what came after it because there’s a really big misconception that antisemitism started in 1933 and that it ended in 1945, and that Hitler came out of nowhere and that the Nazi policies were these original things. None

Billboard: Continued from page 1

God around. If I need to get people’s attention, I will do that. I don’t do it with malice or meanness. My goal is to have God put back in our country, God put back in our schools along with the Pledge of Allegiance, and God put back in American lives because God is in control, not the government.”

Placek added that the swastika has been used for thousands of years in different cultures as a sign of goodness and that it was hijacked by the Nazis.

Despite his protestations that the swastika could be interpreted as something other than a symbol of hate, Placek said he believes there is an equivalency between the Gestapo and the FBI. To illustrate his point, Placek pointed to the arrest of a Philadelphia man for alleged violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.

“When you arrest a man who is a clergy, and he’s standing in front of an abortion clinic and is arrested because he’s against of that is true.”

Illustrating the point, “Revolving Doors” opens with antisemitic broadsheets published in 18th-century France that tell the legend of the Wandering Jew and the myth of Jews crucifying Jesus.

Other artifacts in the exhibit include a work uniform and a large bronze eagle removed from a Nazi train by a Pittsburgh soldier.

Never far from the vulgarities of the Holocaust is the reality that antisemitism and genocide didn’t begin or end with Nazi atrocities.

An illustrated sign, starting in white and ending in black, lists the “Ten Stages of Genocide”; each of these stages occurred during genocides of the latter half of the 20th century and first quarter of the 21st century. Ceiling abortion by the FBI — not in front of the clinic, but at his home where he has seven children watching the FBI put cuffs on their father. That’s wrong. That’s the Gestapo. That’s what I’m trying to illustrate,” he said.

Placek went on to say there was a need to get America “straightened out,” pivoting to the LGBTQ+ community.

“The gays, bisexuals, transexuals, the queers … My God tells me that’s prohibited and they are the Antichrist. I’m going to go after them, and it’s not going to be popular,” he said.

Placek sees a similarity between the Gestapo and the FBI incarcerating people, pointing to those arrested on Jan. 6, 2021, whom he claims continue to be held without charges.

“Yeah, I think there’s a parallel between the Gestapo and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, no doubt about it,” he said.

In August, Placek faced criticism for similar messages on billboards he owns near his businesses in Worthington.

At the time, he told the Chronicle that it wasn’t his intention to offend anyone, but he tiles overhead help to symbolize these stages, moving from solely white, to white with tiles of black, to pure black, then back to white and black tiles intermixed.

An exhibit highlighting the cyclical nature of antisemitism wouldn’t be complete without acknowledging the massacre at the Tree of Life building on Oct. 27, 2018. The shooting has disrupted and changed Jewish life in Pittsburgh in unexpected ways, including the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh leaving its former part nership with the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh to become part of the new Tree of Life organization, whose goals include the elim ination of hate and antisemitism.

A large replica of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette front page from Nov. 2, 2018, featuring the beginning of the Mourner’s Kaddish in Hebrew as its headline, is displayed on a back corner wall. It speaks to both the tragedy of the attack as well as the sense of community experienced by all of Pittsburgh in the days following the attack.

A large wooden tree surrounded by 11 yahrzeit candles is exhibited next to the paper’s reproduction, as well as a photo of Rabbi Jeffrey Myers.

Bairnsfather said exhibits like “Revolving Doors” are important because the physical items on display prove the story of the Holocaust.

“That’s why it’s so important to have artifacts and be sure that we counter denial by showing this indeed happened — because we don’t want to believe humans are capable of that,” she said. “The Nazi universe was a perverse ethical universe. We cannot understand it on the basis of how we see the world now. It’s something completely different. So, when we thought the raid at Donald Trump’s Mar-aLago home was comparable to the Nazis murdering more than 6 million Jews and stealing their property.

“In my mind, they’re equivalent,” he said. “I know you don’t want to hear this. What happened to the Jewish people, it was criminal. You’re talking to an old colonel from the Army. I served 22 years defending the Constitution of the United States of America. I’m pro-Israel and everything. I’m not antiJewish, but I was trying to make a statement that you can’t just go and do that to people.”

In 2019, following the acquittal of former East Pittsburgh Police Officer Michael Rosfeld in the fatal shooting of Antwon Rose II, Placek displayed photos of both Rosfeld and Rose with the message: “Legal System Works, Justice Served, Get over it.” Another sign featured the billboard owner’s face with the message, “I’m white and Proud of it.”

The owner of both a gas station and pool company, Placek lost his Sunoco affiliation following the Antwon Rose controversy.

Lauren Bairnsfather, executive director of the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh, said it is have questions about how humans could do this to other human beings, we have to understand it’s not how we live now — and this is true anywhere genocide has happened.”

“Revolving Doors” will open to the public on Jan. 23 at the Holocaust Center Gallery at Chatham’s Jennie King Mellon Library. The exhibit can be viewed Monday through Friday, noon to 3 p.m., and the Holocaust Center will eventually add weekend hours. School field trips to the exhibit will begin in February.

The Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh is seeking volunteers to serve as docents for organized tours of the exhibit. Those interested can visit mailchi.mp/hcpgh/call-for-volunteers. PJC important that Placek understand the swastika is a symbol of hate and antisemitism.

David Rullo can be reached at drullo@ pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.

“The Nazis persecuted many different minority groups,” she said. “It’s not a symbol that you use to prove a political point.”

Bairnsfather said that Placek’s billboards are evidence of why what the Holocaust Center does is so important.

“To make sure there’s a deeper understanding of what those symbols mean and why it’s dangerous to use them to prove a political point. You’re recalling a genocide,” she said.

Placek’s messages, she said, are just one way to trivialize the Holocaust and prove there is still a lot of work left to be done.

For his part, Placek plans to push on with his controversial billboards but believes they may cause the FBI to target him soon.

“Watch, they’ll be hitting me next,” he said. “I mean they’ll be putting handcuffs on me and haul me off to jail because I have to state my own opinion.” PJC

David Rullo can be reached at drullo@ pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.