Between 1892 and 1954, thousands and thousands of Jews escaping religious persecution came into the United States through Ellis Island. The tired, poor, huddled masses were greeted by the Statue of Liberty, a beacon of light and hope, a symbol of the future that lay ahead. Tall and proud, she welcomed Jewish immigrants to their new home.
Since then, Lady Liberty has become the most prominent symbol of freedom in the United States. But today, Lady Liberty is not free.
Lady Liberty’s crown and the observation deck it houses have been closed for the past seven years. It’s well past time we cut her chains.
After the September 11 terrorist attacks, national parks, monuments and memorials throughout the country closed. Almost immediately thereafter, with some changes to security, every single one reopened, except for the Statue of Liberty. While Lady Liberty’s base and pedestal were reopened in August 2004, her crown still remains closed.
While it may not be the most pressing issue facing the country in the aftermath of the attacks, it is not a frivolous one — Lady Liberty is symbolically important to national morale.I remember when my parents took me to the Statue of Liberty as a child. That iconic experience of climbing Lady Liberty’s narrow staircase is one I will never forget, and it pains me that the youngest generation of Americans has been denied this experience.
The National Parks Service has deemed the narrow staircase leading up to Lady Liberty’s crown unsafe. The problem is, the parks service never tried to make the staircase safe.
That’s why in 2005 I introduced the Save the Statue of Liberty Act, which required the National Parks Service to reopen her crown. Congress has allocated more than enough funding to the parks service. What is lacking is something Congress cannot allocate to the parks service: the imagination, courage and leadership to overcome these security challenges.
That is, until now. Due to Congressional pressure, the National Parks Service finally agreed to investigate options to secure Lady Liberty’s crown and allow public access. The plans are currently underway.
While no place is completely safe, we can make Lady Liberty’s crown as safe as possible. The fact that the National Parks Service has ignored this crucial task for seven years is an embarrassment.
Whether visitors are asked to sign a waiver, check their bags or required to enroll online in advance, Congress is willing and eager to be flexible. We understand changes must be made and we are anxious to see the crown reopened.
Hopefully this past July 4 will be the last Independence Day on which the Statue of Liberty does not stand in all its former glory.
There are 162 steps up to Lady Liberty’s crown, and the experience of climbing them is a thrilling one. When you finally make it up there, you can see for yourself what all the fuss is about.
Rep. Anthony Weiner is a Democrat from New York.
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The persecution of Jews was not religious - not during the pogroms of Russia at the end of the 19th century, nor during the Nazi genocide of the mid-20th century. In the days of the pogroms, the Jews were regarded to be foreigners whose presence in Russia was presented as having a negative impact on the well-being of that society. Hence, the slogan was "strike the Jews and save Russia", an expression that was often repeated throughout the years (even today). In the Nazi era, the Jews were persecuted because of a strange racial philosophy. A Jew converted to another religion could not escape his fate since his identity was regarded to be in his blood. The distinguished congressman simply has no background in Jewish history and does not have the slightest picture of the reality of the Jewish experience outside of the USA. While, indeed, Jews in the USA see themselves as a religious community - still, the historic Jewish experience is a peoplehood experience (a peoplehood that has its own religious tradition). Anti-Semitism was a 19th century phenomenon that opposed the granting of civil rights to Jews - not because of their religion, but because the Jews were regarded to be foreigners.
Granted, the Nazi genocide —and the antisemitic policies that preceded it— were officially based on Nazi racial science. To the Nazis, a Christian, Muslim, or atheist of Jewish ancestry was still a Jew. Nevertheless, determining the ostensible genetic identity of Jews was largely guided by religious affiliation. With no real scientific criteria to physically distinguish "Aryan" Germans from Jewish "nationals" living in the Reich, a person's racial status was often determined by the religious observance of grandparents. Additionally, the Nazis applied a policy of "Aryanization" to conquered territories, which included preferential "Germanization" of individuals of Nordic appearance. A well-known example was the abduction of "racially valuable children" in Poland. Blond, blue-eyed Jewish children were not "racially valuable." The pogroms in Imperial Russia and it's successor states were also driven by elements of religious antisemitism. The 1821 anti-Jewish riots in Odessa —often cited as the first pogrom— began in response to the death of the Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople. One of the legs of Tsar Alexander II's "Official Nationality" was Orthodoxy, as in Russian Orthodoxy, which precluded the incorporation of the Jewish population into the Russian nationality. Alexander II's antisemitic policies also promoted the canard of "Christ-killer." It was no accident that many pogroms started in the Easter and Christmas seasons. Moving beyond the end of the 19th century, the first Kishinev pogrom [1903] was spurred by newspaper reports suggesting blood libel. Although he was eventually acquitted, Mendel Beilis stood trial in Kiev in 1913 for the ritual murder of a Christian boy. Even after World War II, attacks on Jews in Eastern Europe retained religious motivation, e.g., the 1946 Kielce pogrom in Poland: "[While] ...it occurred against the backdrop of political struggle between Communists and anti-Communists. The fact that the pogrom was triggered by accusations that Jews had kidnapped a Christian child suggests that long established prejudices and superstition also played a role" [John Klier, YIVO website]. The causes of antisemitism in the past two centuries have been a complex blend of politics, economics, racism, ethnic rivalry, and religious bigotry. Claiming that the source of antisemitism was that Jews were considered to be foreigners sidesteps the fact that Jews were _made_ foreigners _because_ of their religion, and in spite of Jewish attempts to integrate.