B. U. G. S.

In a documentary on the Titanic, I noticed a comment about the third-class passengers.

Third-class was the way that almost all the wave of immigrants who came between 1880 and 1920 got to New York. Those were the millions who came to the famous Ellis Island.

That was the wave today’s New York Jews descend from. So the crying and moaning about the treatment of third-class has been loud and endless.

Oh, how they SUFFERED!

The only thing discussions of the Titanic ever notice is how the third-class passengers were ignored when the disaster struck. But if you listen closely, some other comments about third-class back then are worth hearing. One thing is that there was always PLENTY of GOOD food for third-class passengers to eat.

They had to sleep in bunks and their other accommodations were small compared to First Class. But compared to where they came from in Europe and Russia, it was a luxury cruise.

Each third-class passenger had his OWN bunk. In Europe poor families did not have a real bed for each of them. Third-class was CLEAN, an experience you seldom found in the poor areas of Europe.

Let me repeat that, for the poor of Europe, third class was a luxury cruise.

When your and my ancestors came over here, the ships were NOT clean. The food was moldy. The first thing people did at the CAPTAIN’s table was to rap their bread on the table to get the worms out. That went on well into the nineteenth century. On those ships, after a week or so, the water was foul. You and I and the third-class passengers who came to Ellis Island would have gotten sick at the smell of it.

So when today’s New York Jews talk about the crowded ships their forefathers came over on in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, it is another example of Jewish SUFFERING.

They grieve over the way their ancestors were treated as Jews when they arrived in America.

If their Jewish ancestors had gone into Boston, they would have seen the place littered with hiring signs that said, “No Irish Need Apply” and store signs that said, “No Irish.” But the Irish are not Jews, so they can’t SUFFER.

When my ancestors got to Jamestown, half the town starved to death. I did not say “died of malnutrition,” I said STARVATION. Unless you have seen and smelled starvation, this does not give you the cold chills the way it does me.

Jane Fonda says in passing that large numbers of children in South Carolina die of starvation. People are always talking about “starvation.”

But real starvation is something else. Even in our poorest days, very few people have died of starvation in America since 1750.

My ancestors, including the sons of a professor at Cambridge, came over on ships with rats the size of dogs. They STARVED often. They were attacked by Indians and were slowly burned alive by experts at torture who could have taught the Spanish Inquisition a few tricks.

But they didn’t SUFFER.

New York Jews are always saying, “The history of the Jews is Suffering.” Let an old American make a statement to the New York Jews:

With all due respect, which is very little*, New York Jews are full of that which makes the little flowers grow.

*Thanks, Sam.