I am heartbroken about the news that Ed Lapinski, Elk Grove Township Republican committeeman, has made comments in a text exchange indicating that he gave credence to the Holocaust-denying claims of a YouTube video. This seems out of character for him and I am struggling to reconcile this with my interactions with him.
Minimizing the horrors of the Holocaust and not acknowledging the well-documented truth about the murders of Jews on an industrialized scale is always wrong.
There is a practice in Catholic tradition of making reparations on behalf of others, and it does provide some comfort to me to take a personal action in response to this news. To that end I have purchased 5 copies each of three Holocaust memoirs which were personally impactful to me but are now out of print, de-accessed from library collections, and/or hard to find. I will be making them available to libraries and/or the general public at some or all of the libraries serving District 53 residents. These books are:
- A Promise at Sobibór: A Jewish Boy’s Story of Revolt and Survival in Nazi-Occupied Poland, by Philip Bialowitz;
- Am I a Murderer?: Testament of a Jewish Ghetto Policeman, by Calel Perechodnik; and
- Clara’s War: One Girl’s Story of Survival, by Clara Kramer.
I will contact individual libraries in late February, or I invite local library staff to reach out at [email protected] in the meantime.
