The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Civil War talk reveals fresh divisions on race
The conflict that ripped the country apart 160 years ago has resurfaced as a political issue.
What started with a single question from a voter about the origins of the Civil War has morphed into a sprawling political clash over a monumental event in American history, making the Civil War a major component of a presidential election for the first time in recent memory and exposing fresh divisions over race, history and progress.
Since former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley did not mention slavery when asked last month what sparked the conflict that tore apart the nation from 1861 to 1865, every major presidential candidate has weighed in on it. Their commentary sheds light on how each party is addressing long-standing divisions over the legacy of its most divisive period — and what they mean for the current battles over race in America.
Republicans often downplay the worst components of the Civil War era, arguing that the country has moved far beyond its earlier sins and does not benefit from resurfacing them. Democrats, by contrast, see an integral tie between America’s history of racism and its modern-day reality, and draw very different conclusions about what is needed to address that history.
“The Civil War has never really left American politics — it just seems to have exploded in this moment,” said Tim Galsworthy, a historian at Bishop Grosseteste University and who is writing a book about the Republican Party and memories of the Civil War. “When the U.S. is divided, the Civil War becomes that great reference point, because it’s the ultimate moment of division.”
The subject is especially volatile now, with the issue of insurrection back in the spotlight for the first time in 160 years. Some of former president Donald Trump’s adversaries are seeking to disqualify him for trying to overturn the 2020 election, while his supporters are downplaying the seriousness of the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol, portraying it as a heroic battle against injustice.
In recent weeks, those divisions have been laid bare by presidential candidates’ decision to train their attention, even briefly, on the past rather than the future. Trump alleged the Civil War could have been avoided through negotiation, a notion almost unanimously rejected by historians. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis slammed Haley for omitting slavery as a factor in the war, but he faces scrutiny over his own efforts to restrict how slavery and its legacy are taught in schools.
President Biden, meanwhile, eagerly joined the fray, using the debate over the Civil War to make a broader case that Trump and his election denialism represent a threat to the nation reminiscent of the Confederacy and its aftermath.
“Let me be clear for those who don’t seem to know: Slavery was the cause of the Civil War,” Biden said during a campaign event Jan. 8 at Mother Emanuel AME, a historic Black church in Charleston, S.C. “Now we’re living in an era of a second Lost Cause. Once again, there are some in this country trying to turn a loss into a lie.”
A statue, a riot and a question
Imagery from the Jan. 6 attack and a 2017 white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville — both of which have featured prominently in Biden’s presidential campaigns — provide explicit echoes of the Civil War. The Charlottesville rally erupted over plans by the city to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, while the Jan. 6 insurrection featured a Confederate flag brandished through the Capitol by a rioter.
But it was a December town hall in New Hampshire that brought the issue to the heart of the Republican presidential primary.
“What was the cause of the United States Civil War?” a voter in Berlin, N.H., asked Haley, a former South Carolina governor who has staked much of her presidential bid on a strong performance in the Granite State.
Haley fell back on an assertion that has historically been seized upon by people sympathetic to the South — that the war was not fundamentally about slavery, but
about federal power.
“I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run, the freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do,” Haley said, before continuing on to discuss in broad terms the importance “of the role of government and what the rights of the people are.”
The man who asked the question, who refused to give reporters his name or party identification, told Haley that he was surprised she did not mention the word slavery. “What do you want me to say about slavery?” Haley said.
Historians have long concluded that Southern states’ desire to preserve and expand the institution of slavery was the driving force behind a war that led to the deaths of at least 620,000 Americans. It was emphasized in numerous speeches by leaders on both sides at the time.
Haley acknowledged as much a day after the town hall following a torrent of backlash from Democrats and Republicans alike. She told a local radio show that “of course the Civil War was about slavery.”
We’re still arguing about the war
While politicians on both sides agreed that Haley’s initial answer was deficient, the dust-up laid bare other disagreements about the war, its antecedents and its aftermath.
DeSantis, who once taught history at a high school in Georgia, bashed Haley for answering with an “incomprehensible word salad,” adding that slavery was obviously at the heart of the war. But he quickly came under fire from critics who argued that his state has been aiming to downplay the horrors of slavery and limit how America’s racial history is taught in schools.
DeSantis, whose “anti-woke” agenda has put Florida at the forefront of a nationwide effort to restrict certain books and approaches to teaching about race, last year supported a set of standards for middle school
instruction that included teaching “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”
Many historians criticized the standards, which also noted that other countries enslaved people as well, an effort to soften the brutal reality of slavery in the United States.
Trump’s take — and his history
Trump also mentioned slavery while discussing the Civil War this month, but only in passing. Instead, he focused his commentary on what he described as Abraham Lincoln’s failure to avert the war through negotiation.
“The Civil War was so fascinating. So horrible. It was so horrible but so fascinating . ... I’m so attracted to seeing it,” he said in Iowa on Jan. 6. “So many mistakes were made. See, there was something I think could’ve been negotiated. I think you could’ve negotiated that.”
Historians note that multiple attempts at compromise were made in the run-up to the Civil War and that negotiations came to an impasse over irreconcilable differences over slavery.
The former president did not offer specifics on what kind of negotiation could have headed off the war. His rhetoric has resonated with conservative voters unhappy with what they see as misguided efforts to link historic wrongs to current inequities and demand reparations for long-ago injustices.
Trump has criticized the Black Lives Matter movement for seeking the removal of Confederate statues from public spaces, accusing activists of trying to erase history, an allegation they have often leveled at him. He has also opposed the push to rename military bases named after generals who fought for the Confederacy.
Haley took down Confederate flag
Haley, for her part, has pointed to her efforts as governor to
remove the Confederate flag from the grounds of the South Carolina State House in 2015. The move came after a white supremacist murdered nine Black churchgoers at Mother Emanuel church and photos emerged of the killer posing with the Confederate flag.
“When we turned around and had the worst shooting in a religious place that we had seen in this country, not only did I pass the first body camera bill in the country and keep our state together, not only did I move to bring the Confederate flag down, we came together as a state,” Haley said at a debate of Republican presidential candidates.
South Carolina proves pivotal again
South Carolina, the first state to secede from the Union, in 1860, has become a key locale for Democrats in recent days, as top figures have flooded the state ahead of its Feb. 3 Democratic presidential primary. For Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the state has become a venue for outreach to Black voters, who some polls suggest have become less than enthusiastic about the president’s reelection.
At Mother Emanuel church, Biden accused Republicans of “trying to steal history,” which he contrasted with his own efforts to “make history” by fighting for equity.
Two days earlier, Harris was in Myrtle Beach, S.C., where she spoke at a Black church and accused GOP extremists of trying to “erase, overlook and even rewrite the dark parts of America’s history,” adding, “for example, the Civil War, which must I really have to say was about slavery?”
Biden’s take — and his history
The president has made a direct appeal to Black voters, some of whom have been concerned by efforts to restrict books and revise history as well as moves to roll back voting rights and affirmative action. Biden has made the case that Trump, who is gaining support
among African Americans in some polls, presents a grave threat on these and other issues important to Black voters.
“Anyone negotiating over slavery — the indisputable cause of the Civil War — is contributing to the poison of white supremacy that has infected the MAGA Republicans running for president,” said Michael Tyler, communications director for the Biden campaign. “It’s a sad and unsurprising reminder of how extreme and out-of-touch Donald Trump and his friends are with the American people.”
But the push has opened up Biden to critiques of his decadeslong career in public office, in which his handling of race issues has at times drawn scrutiny. In recent days, Haley’s campaign has highlighted Biden’s own history, noting his positive relations with senators who supported segregation.
“I don’t need someone who palled around with segregationists in the ’70s and has said racist comments all the way through his career lecturing me or anyone in South Carolina about what it means to have racism, slavery or anything related to the Civil War,” Haley said at a Fox News town hall Jan. 8.
‘The absence of wise leaders’
The bickering highlights how the country lacks the kind of unifying voice that can break through the noise in deeply divisive times as Lincoln did in the 1860s, said Tevi Troy, a senior fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center.
“The other side of the Civil War discussion is that despite the trauma and the great cost, the nation survived, thanks to Lincoln’s leadership,” said Troy, whose book “Shall We Wake the President?” focuses on presidential leadership in times of crisis. “The interest in the Civil War reflects these twin concerns, about both political disagreement and the absence of wise leaders who can navigate us through these challenging times.”
The young boy hid under the bed as the Nazi soldier plunged a knife into his mattress. The blade grazed his chin, but George Rishfeld didn’t make a sound.
Family friends, who were Catholic, had taken him in as one of their own in German-occupied Poland. They urged him to stay inside and not to speak if he did venture out.
On one rare outing, a Nazi patrolman approached as he walked along a street in Warsaw. The soldier pinched the boy’s cheek and asked where his mother was. Unused to speaking and still grappling with Polish, Rishfeld responded that she was in the “mud,” when he meant to say “ghetto.” Laughing, the Nazi figured the youngster was a comedian, handed him an apple and sent him on his way.
Nazi Germany and its collaborators killed about 1.5 million Jewish children, according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Many like Rishfeld survived with the help of compassionate gentiles.
Rishfeld will share his story at 2 p.m. today at the William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum in Atlanta. Admission is free, but registration is required. See thebreman.org. Titled “Bearing Witness,” the event comes a week before International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
“I was saved to tell this story. It’s that simple,” said Rishfeld, 84, who shares his story partly to counter Holocaust deniers. “The story has to be told because there are too many nonbelievers out there.”
Fleeing east
‘In saving Jewish refugees, the Frackiewiczes were guided by humanitarian considerations and never expected anything in return.’
Yad Vashem, World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem
There are two parts to Rishfeld’s story, the one he was told by his parents and another he remembers. This is the part he was told.
Rishfeld was born in Warsaw in 1939, months before Germany invaded Poland. His father, Richard, was a successful furrier wealthy enough to hire servants, even a chauffeur. He spoke Hebrew and played on a Jewish men’s soccer
team, which faced antisemitic attacks whenever it won. Richard and Lucy Rishfeld were members of their local synagogue.
Amid the Nazi invasion of Poland, Lucy Rishfeld wrapped her son in furs and fled with him to Russian-occupied Vilna, hoping they would be safe in the region where she’d grown up and still had family. Richard Rishfeld, a reservist in the Polish military, eventually joined them.
The Nazis attacked Russia in 1941, capturing Vilna and forcing the Rishfelds and many other Jews into ghettos. As the Nazis carried out the “Final Solution” — their plan for exterminating all Jews in Europe — they murdered Rishfeld’s aunt, uncle, 9-month-old cousin and maternal grandparents.
As the Germans prepared to destroy the ghetto where they were being held, Rishfeld’s parents secretly tossed him over a barbed wire fence to Helena Frackiewicz, a teenager who had worked as a bookkeeper in the Rishfelds’ fur factory. Frackiewicz’s father, Ludwik, had been the factory foreman. The Frackiewicz family opposed the Nazis and promised to protect young George.
In hiding
Rishfeld’s first memory is of arriving at the Frackiewicz family’s three-story apartment building in Warsaw, where he cried and asked for his mother. His protectors sought to console him.
“They kissed me on my lips so hard — they pressed so hard — my gums hurt. And they were hugging me,” he recalled. “And then they started putting food in my mouth. That calmed me down. Ultimately, they showed me so much love that I just couldn’t refuse it.”
He called his surrogate parents Mama and Papa, and they treated him as their own. He fondly remembers falling headfirst into a pickle barrel in their kitchen.
Knowing they were risking their lives in hiding him, as evidenced by the Nazis’ mattress-slashing search for Jews one day, the Frackiewiczes told him not to speak much and to mostly stay in, even when other children played outdoors. To fight boredom, he’d look out the window, pretending to shoot the wounded Nazi soldiers arriving at the military hospital across the street. When one of the Frackiewiczes would take him outside, they would carry him down two flights of stairs in their building so only one set of footsteps would be heard.
So their young charge would fit in, the Frackiewiczes gave him a St. Christopher medal and routinely took him to church. One day, the Nazis showed up and started dragging Jewish children out of the sanctuary. Helena Frackiewicz urged Rishfeld to grab his stomach and cry, as if he were sick. Their subterfuge worked, and she carried him out past the Nazis.
Rishfeld’s father, who had escaped captivity and joined the armed resistance, visited his son twice during the war. He showed up the second time on Christmas Eve, wearing a stolen German military uniform. He brought his son a toy wooden gun.
“Where is Mommy? Why didn’t you bring Mommy?” Rishfeld remembered asking.
“Don’t worry. She is fine,” his father responded. “She will be with you soon.”
Richard Rishfeld later told his son he had lost contact with Lucy and believed she had been killed.
The reunion
Lucy Rishfeld’s talents saved her. Her Nazi captors recognized her sewing skills and sent her to a forced labor camp. She was certain her husband was dead.
After the Russians recaptured Vilna in 1944, Rishfeld’s parents sought to reunite with him. As Rishfeld’s mother prepared to travel by train to her son, she spotted a handsome man on the platform. He appeared well-fed and clean-shaven and was wearing a stolen Russian military uniform with polished boots. In contrast, she was malnourished and clothed in rags. Lucy realized it was Richard. They hugged. Then she slapped his face.
“How dare you look so good. How dare you smell so good,” Rishfeld remembers his mother’s description of their reunion.
Rishfeld recalls his parents’ arrival at his hiding place as the happiest moment of his life. At the same time, he was sad to leave his rescuers.
The Rishfelds were taken to a crowded camp for displaced people, where they stayed for nearly a year. They slept on the floor in a bleak apartment building and were often hungry. Other displaced children who had lost siblings amid the Holocaust jealously picked on Rishfeld because he had survived. The Rishfelds moved with a family friend to Belgium before resettling in New York City.
Righteous Among the Nations
Gratefully, Rishfeld’s family sent clothes and a gold ring studded with diamonds to the Frackiewiczes, who experienced deprivation living behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. They also contacted Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, to recognize the Frackiewiczes’ heroism. In 1997, Ludwik and Ludmila Frackiewicz and their daughter, Helena, were included in Yad Vashem’s Righteous Among the Nations Program, which honors people who risked their lives saving Jews during the Holocaust.
To decide who is honored, a commission of Holocaust experts seeks survivors’ testimony or documentation. Rescuers receive medals and certificates, and their names are added to the Wall of Honor in the Garden of the
Righteous at Yad Vashem. They also receive honorary Israeli citizenship.
As of January 2022, 28,217 people around the world have been named “Righteous Among the Nations.” Among them is Oskar Schindler, the businessman made famous by Steven Spielberg’s award-winning film “Schindler’s List.” Schindler has been credited with saving more than 1,000 Jews from deportation to Auschwitz, the Nazi complex in Poland where more than 1.1 million people died.
Yad Vashem has similarly honored many Catholic nuns who helped rescue Jewish children. Suzanne Vromen, a retired sociology professor, interviewed some for her book, “Hidden Children of the Holocaust: Belgian Nuns and Their Daring Rescue of Young Jews From the Nazis.” The nuns, she said in an interview, hoped the children they saved would convert to Catholicism, but they also “knew they were saving their lives.”
“They contend that what they did was to be expected; it was simply the humane thing to do,” she wrote in her book.
The largest share of people who have received “Righteous Among the Nations” recognition — 7,232 — were traced to Poland, where the Frackiewicz family aided Rishfeld and other Jews in Warsaw.
“In saving Jewish refugees,” Yad Vashem says in its database, “the Frackiewiczes were guided by humanitarian considerations and never expected anything in return.”
Bearing witness
Dozens of elementary schoolchildren from Decatur listened with rapt attention inside the Breman Museum’s auditorium recently as George Rishfeld spoke. He showed them a photo of Helena Frackiewicz, calling her his hero. He also showed them his St. Christopher medal, which he still wears on a chain.
“I am a living witness,” Rishfeld told them. “Now that you have heard me, you are all witnesses. And I am asking you to tell the story to whoever is going to stand still and listen to you.”
As a young man, Rishfeld experienced flashbacks and nightmares. He slept with his bedroom door open and the lights on. Over the years, his traumatic symptoms faded.
Meanwhile, he attended college, served in the U.S. Army between the Korean and Vietnam wars and worked in the electronics industry. Today, Rishfeld lives in Cumming. He and his wife, Pamela, celebrated their 51st wedding anniversary in June and have two daughters and six grandchildren.
Rishfeld did not begin talking publicly about his experiences until 1994, when his rabbi asked him to speak at a Holocaust remembrance event in Ventura, California. It was cathartic. Pamela remembers how he “cried through the whole thing.” Since then, Rishfeld has shared his story hundreds of times at clubs, houses of worship, public schools and other places. It’s heartwarming for him when people ask for his autograph or want to take photos with him.
“If I speak to 50 kids,” he said, “and one or two of them come up to me at the end and want to shake my hand, I know I am a winner because I know I reached at least those two kids.”