I found it amusing that two of the letter writers attacked (in the Oct. 4 edition) Stan Ronell for his letter that was in the Port Washington News (Sept. 22 edition). In that letter, “Disrespect is Despicable,” Stan Ronell expressed his negative feelings against those professional athletes who chose to kneel down or sit down when the “National Anthem” is played before a game in the United States.
Stan Ronell has proved himself and earned the right to express his views. The other letter writers, on the other hand, came across as “babies in silk hats playing with dynamite,” (A. Woollcott, 1945).
Letter writer #1, Bob Kleinman, said America was built on protest. He told us how proud he was to protest against the Vietman War in the 1960s and to sit at a Mets game in Shea Stadium in the 1970s when the anthem was played. This type of thing is part of what makes America great, he says. Letter writer #2, Phil Krevitsky, says Mr. Ronell hasn’t the right to think “there are no people in this country (U.S.) who are oppressed.” I believe one’s experience with being oppressed would have a lot to do with how one thinks about this subject.
Mr. Ronell, I can assure you, has a lot of experience with being oppressed, so much so that he was most unlikely to ever see the age of 10. He was figuratively a prisoner of war in WWII, hiding for several years in crawlspaces in Poland and Hungary, protected by strangers. One false move and Mr. Ronell would become a lamp shade in Berlin.
The Nazis don’t protest anything. If they don’t like you, they make you take a “gas” shower, or maybe they shoot you in the head. Every day Mr. Ronell had to think about that. His father was killed early in the war and most of his families died in various concentration camps. He can’t count the number of people he has seen being shot in the street by Nazi storm troopers.
Mr. Ronell came to the U.S. in 1951. He nearly died a hundred times before that happened.
Maybe now you two letter writers can understand better why Mr. Ronell would prefer to shoot himself dead before he would choose to not stand for the National Anthem.
—Alan Hirsch
