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Commentary
by Dr. Ursula A. Falk |
A Modern Day Bilbel or
J'Accuse Revisted
A female client came to my office -
ostensibly for psychotherapy - in truth for exoneration from a "Bilbel"
she had perpetrated in her work place. ( A Bilbel is a falsehood that damages
one or more fellow human beings - not unlike the Passover legend of Jews using
the blood of gentiles for baking Matzot, or the famous biography of Alfred
Dreyfus who was falsely accused of treason and arrested in 1894 mainly because
of his Jewishness). The woman, a package examiner, related the following story:
A Jewish fellow employee and she had been working side by side and they were
bantering back and forth - "just kidding each other" when in the
course of their conversation she decided to tell him "I wouldn't f--- a Jew
if he were the last person on earth". The man promptly reported her remark
to the Human Resources division of their company. The woman was called into that
office and confronted. In order to escape any consequence of her antisemitic
statement she alleged that the man had touched her mammary glands (This action,
according to her confession to me, had not occurred). The female employee was
thus forgiven and the Jewish man was suspended and in danger of permanently
losing his much needed employment. It was no surprise to me that this woman had
no remorse for what she had perpetrated and found it rather amusing. She spewed
much anger toward the Jew who had reported her.
My thoughts turned back to history. After the Treaty of Frankfurt which
ended the Franco-Prussian War in which the German military humiliated the French
military, Alsace was annexed by the Germans. France was "seeing spies
in the trees". Dreyfus, a 35 year old captain, an Alsatian, became the
scapegoat. He was falsely accused of giving French defense positions to the
Germans, thus causing the French to lose the war. Lying witnesses were called to
a secret court martial and Dreyfus was was publicly degraded, stripped of his
epaulets and medals and he was sentenced to a life term on Devil's Island. The
Dreyfus story has a happy ending, if you can call it that, because the real
villain, a Major Esterhazy was found, and ultimately Dreyfus was released after
spending many years in "hell" and humiliation. It was not until l906
that Alfred was totally exonerated. It was to the credit of writer Emile Zola
that Dreyfus was ultimately freed. Zola risked his reputation and his freedom.
He was accused of libel and had to escape to England to escape incarceration for
being a just human being.
There are many lessons to be learned from history. One is that
history repeats itself; there is sometimes justice in the world; that
antisemitism is still alive and that we must stand up for our fellow Jews, our
brothers. Am Yisroel Chai! Shalom!
Dr. Ursula A. Falk is a psychotherapist in private practice
and the co-author, with Dr. Gerhard Falk, of Grandparents:
A New Look at the Supporting Generation (publ. 2002)
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