A History of Violence
Some reflections from my family's and America's histories.
During the lockdown, an abundance of free time and a growing interest in how my family shaped my outlook inspired me to do some online genealogical investigations. While my mother’s side were working class Irish and Austrian immigrants with nary any record of their comings and goings, my father’s side was a who’s who in European Jewish —and some Lutheran —aristocracy with tons of records. I’d long known of Israel Friedlander, my paternal grandfather, a noted Ukraine-born, globe-trotting scholar and activist who was killed on a relief mission to his birth country in 1920, and who had his memorial service at Carnegie Hall. I also knew some information about my paternal great grandmother Lillian Bentwich and her family, a British-Jewish clan that included people like my great-great uncle Norman, the first Attorney General of British Mandate Palestine, the early-20th century political entity that laid the basis for an official Israeli state.
I knew less about my paternal grandmother’s family, the Strauses, excepting their connection to one of the largest American organic dairy farms. I knew Isak Straus, my great-grandfather, was a wealthy German doctor and industrialist. I knew he, somewhat controversially, married a Christian woman, Edith Von Viettinghoff-Scheel. I knew Isak, sensing the mortal threat the Nazis posed to his family and fortune, scuttled Edith and four kids over the Swiss border in 1933. I knew he died that same year, reportedly of a heart attack, while settling affairs in Berlin, one day after Hitler became Chancellor.
I also knew the Strauses spent time in the United States during WWI. My grandmother Eva was born in Berlin in 1913, but her sister Charlotte was born in the U.S. the very next year —i.e. the first year of WWI (though several before the U.S.’s official entry into the war). What I didn’t know until recently was what happened to Isak, and to some extent the family, while in America.
A few months ago, I ran across a 2015 blog post in Society for Israel Philatelists about Isak. After learning what a philatelist was, I read the post, which said this about Isak (or Isaac):
Isaac Straus…was president of Alpha Omega Publishing Co., and had been taken into custody by US Naval Intelligence and was under investigation at the alien camp on Ellis Island. He was alleged to have been acquiring tuluol, the chief ingredient in the production of the explosive TNT for export to Germany….He entered the newspaper publishing business, establishing the American Jewish Chronicle advocating close ties with the Russian-Jewish community in the US and Germany. At the same time he established the Chromos Chemical Company with two large plants in Brooklyn. Dr. Straus…became one of the wealthiest and most prominent members of the German-Jewish community in New York, as would become evident from articles in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle and The New York Tribune as well as in papers throughout the US after his incarceration on Ellis Island charged with sedition….[He allegedly] consumed almost $800,000 of German Government monies during the war years to spread German propaganda in the US and to acquire toluol for Germany; as well as having obtained a military contract to construct gas masks for American soldiers, which he planned to sabotage with a defective chemical that would not protect against inhalation of poisonous gasses by allied troops….Straus was kept in detention for the duration of the war at the internment prison of Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia after a harrowing transfer from Ellis Island. Crowds at the train station during his transport were bent on lynching him [emphasis mine].
The post’s author, Jesse Spector, wrote Isak had been indicted in 1920 “for nefarious financial transactions and tax evasion, yet there is no evidence of his having been subsequently found guilty of the charges.” I found several other contemporary press pieces about Isak, including a couple from the New York Times, in which he emphatically professed his innocence and affection for America.
Isak’s internment was something I was completely ignorant of. I have no idea if the charges were true and most of the people I could ask are dead. But the information, coupled with Isak’s fate in 1933 and my other great-grandfather Israel’s fate in 1920, mainly served to increase my distrust of governments and antipathy toward industrialized, international warfare.
Memorial Day is tomorrow and is a day meant to honor soldiers who sacrificed their lives for the safety and sanctity of the American way of life. Yet, at least in my family, and for reasons I’ll likely expand on tomorrow, the wars are usually started based on specious causes, and the sanctity they’re preserving is mostly nationalistic, propagandistic bullshit —America has always had a high baseline of authoritarianism and violence towards its citizens. Throughout history, American soldiers are as likely to preserve slavery, genocide, and oil supply chains as they are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. My sentiment is not meant to shit on the memories of those who died, who I have little doubt were compelled to serve based on mostly-noble reasons. My sentiment is meant to question the reasons wars are waged, asking if what’s being memorialized is rooted in fact or manipulated, romanticized versions of reality that keep cycles of violence alive.
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Song of the Day