Filner’s ‘Freedom Rides’ a family response to seeing Nazi concentration camps

By Gary Rotto

SAN DIEGO –The celebration of the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. has become a national day of service in many communities.  For Congregation Dor Hadash, a very activist congregation, it’s difficult to pick one cause.  The congregation creates an annual experience in song and action.  In announcing the program, Dr. Cynthia Sistek Chandler, chair of the occasion,  wrote, “This year, we have selected local issues that help us as a congregation identify with the social injustice of the economy, hunger and the quest for freedom and equality among all people.”  To accomplish this the congregation designed a special “Tabletop Study Program” including hands on presentations from the Hand – Up Food Pantry of Jewish Family Services, Occupy San Diego, the Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice and the Center for Community Solutions.  

One can look to our heritage for examples. Moses is seen as a model for future .  

“The Torah depicts Moses as a young man – ordinary perhaps – but one who did extraordinary things from a very young age,” notes Rabbi Yael Ridberg.  “The few snapshots we have of his childhood/young adulthood are images of him fighting injustice: between and Egyptian and Israelite, 2 Israelites, and then standing up for women as they drew water from a well.  The Torah could chose any stories to help us understand the man whose name entitles our sacred books, and Moses’ quest for justice is what we have received.  Although reluctant to be a national leader, his motivation to liberate his people from an unjust society of slavery was the ultimate in social advocacy,” concluded Ridberg.

The story of the Freedom Rides demonstrates the importance of self sacrifice for the greater community and the quest for justice in the United States.  Many people in San Diego know that Congressman Bob Filner was one of those Freedom Riders in the 60’s.   Filner and is fellow riders were put in the Mississippi state penitentiary for “disturbing the peace and causing a riot”.  But what many people don’t know is that Filner was motivated by his father’s example and his family’s understanding of the teachings of our people

So leading up to the construction of “freedom of speech” megaphones, the “can-struction” with donated food items and the creation of special boxes for people residing in area shelters, Congressman Bob Filner, one of the first freedom riders for civil rights in the South, talked about the importance of social justice in his life.  In particular, he learned about social justice from his father.  

It was during World War II, that the elder Filner first developed his sense of justice.  “He didn’t have to enlist to fight the war because not only was he too old – he was  30 – but he had a child.  But as a Jew, he decided that he had to fight,” relates the Congressman. His father, like many people in the Jewish community  knew what was happening to the Jewish communities in Europe.  He felt he had to enlist.  The father was in several theaters of war, including Italy.

“While he was in Italy, in 1944, the Allies were just moving into Germany, to take back Germany and to go into the prison camps.  They sent back word, ‘who speaks Yiddish’?”  Filner’s father raised his hand.   “So he went up to the front and was in on the freeing of Dachau and Buchenwald.  What he saw changed his life and my life.”  

This life changing experienced was memorialized for the son.  “He wrote to me these long letters of his reactions going into the camps.  What he laid out was what anti-Semitism, of course, but racism and discrimination leads to.  And we as Jews have to be against all racism, all discrimination, all hatred otherwise we are always next.  And it is up to us as Jews to fight… for the little guy, the underdog, for the person who is oppressed , for the person who did not have full equality.”

The elder Filner brought back a universal message of fighting for the rights and welfare of others and applied this in the United States.  Congressman Filner noted that his father, “heard in 1955, about this minister in Montgomery, Alabama, named King giving speeches.”  So he contacted him.  The senior Filner asked the Reverend Martin Luther King Junior how he could help.  He learned that King needed to raise his own salary and  wanted to provide for his kids to go to college, knowing that he would not have a very safe life.

“My father happened to be on his way to a Democratic reform meeting in New York City and got pledges for $100,000 to help King’s efforts.  That became the first money of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.  This was as a result of his experience in Europe,” tells Filner.

His early exposure to King and other civil rights leaders led the younger Filner to become a Freedom Rider.  “It was not very safe.  We all had to sign last wills and testaments before we engaged in these activities.  I had friends killed.  I was several months in the state penitentiary in Mississippi, charged with breech of peace and inciting a riot.  There were 325 of us in jail.  It was not the happiest occasion of my life.  It was the most meaningful and we survived it.”

The point was that the state courts in the South helped to perpetuate the segregationist scheme in the region.  The Freedom Riders had developed the idea that the Federal Courts needed a legal reason to be involved.  And the reason was the Interstate Commerce Clause of the US Constitution.  Filner notes that they “Integrated public facilities that were serving interstate commerce.  We brought in the federal courts and the Supreme Court said that you cannot segregate public facilities.”  He looks back and says that if you can’t segregate a Greyhound bus station, it’s next to impossible to segregate a lunch counter at a Woolworth’s. “The success of our case brought down the system.  We knew that we could change anything.”  

And just like Moses’ early experiences allowed for him to take down the unjust system implemented by the Pharaohs of Egypt, Bob Filner and his fellow Freedom Riders really did take down another unjust system.

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Rotto is a freelance writer based in San Diego.