------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the March 15, 2001 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- LETTER TO THE EDITOR: STANLEY KRAMER Stanley Kramer Monica Moorehead's recent article on the death of filmmaker Stanley Kramer recalls for me how one of his films and a mass movement changed my life. In 1962 I was a 27-year-old, not totally backward white worker (without a job) living in New York City. Tiring of the rejections my job hunting was producing, I ducked into one of the rerun movie theatres on 42nd Street where Kramer's "Judgment at Nuremberg" was showing. Like "The Defiant Ones" it was not a revolutionary film. In fact, as I later learned, it had serious flaws in its history and its politics. But I did not know that at the time. What I did know was that I on the one hand had grown up in an area of the Bronx with a large Jewish community, of whom many were my playmates and friends. Of the many jobs I had as a very young child, one was heating up the soup and turning on the lights for an elderly Jewish couple on each Saturday afternoon when their Orthodox religion forbade them from doing it on the Sabbath (I was a sabat goy). Another was helping out at the weekly Sunday night dance at the synagogue right across from my house. On the other hand I was raised in a home where anti-Semitism and anti-communism were intertwined and ever present. There were so many pictures of the anti-Semitic Father Charles Coughlin in our house that I thought he was a relative to me or my six brothers and sisters. "Judgment at Nuremberg" attacked my contradictions with a message that the Nazis succeeded because those who opposed them did nothing. Being ignorant I did not know that this was not true. I made a one-to-one relationship between the situation of Jewish people in Germany and Black people in the United States. From this I decided that if those in Germany who disagreed with the Nazis should have joined in active support of the Jewish people, then those here who disagree with the United States form of Nazism should give active support to the struggle of Black people. So I hitchhiked to Albany, Georgia, where I got arrested along with Eddie Brown, a young Black man from Albany trying to integrate the lunch counters in Crowe's drugstore. Our action was sponsored by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, which, along with the Southern Christian Leadership Council, was leading the struggle. We wound up in the same jail with Dr. King and many other fighters. The jail of course was segregated. Had there been no struggle going on I would not have known what to do. But because there was a Movement there, it allowed me to act on the message I got from the film. To act means to fight for your beliefs. It shows that even backward people can be drawn into the struggle and educated. That is, if there is a Movement there when they see the need. I give thanks to Kramer, I give many thanks to those who built the Civil Rights Movement and gave meaning to my life, and I really thank Workers World Party and its newspaper for making the struggle everlasting. Bill Massey Chicago - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org) ------------------ This message is sent to you by Workers World News Service. To subscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Send administrative queries to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
