jspinner@lauderfoundation.com
info@worldjewishcongress.org
wjc@wjc.co.il
Dear Mr Lauder,
I read with interest of your recent condemnation of McMinn County School’s ban of Art Spiegelman’s graphic Holocaust novel Maus.
The Tennessee school’s board members felt that the book’s graphic depictions of violence, murder, nudity, profanity and suicide are unsuitable for children. However, you adamantly disagreed, and condemned the ban “in the strongest possible terms” – alongside your rightful condemnation of Whoopi Goldberg’s woefully ignorant remarks – offering to distribute over fifty-three thousand free copies of Maus to members of McMinn County members and to Whoopi Goldberg.
Evidently you are a strong proponent of using graphic and explicit images in order to educate the world, including children, about history’s atrocities.
May I suggest an idea for a similar graphic novel that perhaps you could commission? It’s mainly intended for a Jewish community where I believe you have much power and influence; no other medium seems to have been effective in ending an atrocity that is taking place there, and perhaps a graphic novel will send a more powerful message. I’m sure this community and beyond would find it a fascinating, educational and suitably shocking, disturbing and distressing read.
Here are some ideas of scenes that could appear in the book; you don’t believe in sparing any detail, so it should be as sinister-looking as possible. It would depict ACTUAL EVENTS alleged to have taken place in 21st-century Vienna over the last 12 years, more or less in chronological order:
- A terrified young woman running at night through the streets and railway stations of Vienna, searching for a domestic violence shelter to escape from her violent husband.
- The same woman returning home, to be confronted with an entire army comprising her angry husband, his colluding family, a psychiatrist, police and paramedics, all attempting to commit her to a mental institution under false pretences.
- Armed police officers and the now-ex-husband, at half an hour’s notice, storming into the home of the mother of healthy, thriving toddler twin boys; the loving mother screaming and protesting as they seize her crying children away from her and carry them out of the house; she has no idea if or when she will ever see them again.
- Neighbours frequently hearing screams of children emanating from the ex’s apartment; they report this to the authorities, but their efforts are in vain.
- The mother’s horror upon noticing that both two-year-olds are missing front teeth.
- One of the twins, now age four, repeatedly ramming his head into a brick wall at school as a means of self-harm.
- Several courtroom scenes, spanning years, each judgement more cruel, bizarre, illogical and inhuman than the last.
- The bereft mother desperately pleading to a powerful, influential figure to help her bring her children back; he simply turns and walks away from her.
- A legal document forbidding her from contacting her children, age 12, who apparently say they do not want her in their lives.
I’m sure you realize by now exactly which story I’m referring to. You’re familiar enough with the lies, conspiracy, corruption, and callousness that have taken place within Austria’s court system, and, shamefully, members of the Viennese Jewish Community, leading to this utterly heart-breaking saga that has been ongoing for 12 long years.
I could go on and on with more “scenes” but I nothing I write will do justice to the hell that my friend Beth Alexander has gone through.
I’ll allow you yourself to come up with dire but not-unrealistic futuristic scenes for this hypothetical book; these would be based on possible catastrophic consequences of childhood trauma and induced parental alienation. One cannot not underestimate the toll the latter form of child abuse can take on a child’s behaviour, future relationships, and mental health as they grow into adulthood. Anxiety, depression, substance abuse, abusive relationships, violence, withdrawal, to name but a few… and you are undoubtedly aware of some of the worst-case scenarios which maybe you don’t like to think about.
It would not be a pleasant read.
What kind of scenes would you like to see at the end of this story, Mr Lauder? Happy or sad ones? Your influence can determine how this story will play out in the end.
I would love to hear from you with ideas of happy endings to this story, and how the aforementioned influential person might have brought them about.
But if I don’t hear from you, I’d love to assume it’s because you’re too busy doing everything in your power to reunite Beth, Sammy and Benji once and for all.
Yours sincerely
#OpenLettersToLauder #ReunitingBethWithHerSons
http://daattorah.blogspot.com/2015/03/president-of-world-jewish-congress.html
http://helpbeth.blogspot.com/p/email-to-mr-ronald-lauder-chair-of.html
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