KATHRYN B. BROWN
Owner
ANDREW CUTLER
Publisher/Editor
ERICK PETERSON
Hermiston Editor/Senior Reporter
SATURDAY, JUNE 4, 2022
A4
Founded October 16, 1875
OUR VIEW
We can
never
forget
T
here’s a lot about Anneke
Bloomfi eld’s story that is
heart-wrenching but what
remains an enduring theme is a
simple motto: We can never forget.
Bloomfi eld, an outreach speaker for
the Oregon Jewish Museum and Holo-
caust Education Center, talked this
week at the Pendleton Public Library
about her experience during World
War II. Her Jewish family suff ered
under the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler
when German army occupied her home
country of the Netherlands in 1940.
Bloomfi eld recounted to a packed house
unwarranted searches by Nazi soldiers,
food shortages and sacrifi ce made by
her mother and father as the family
struggled to hide its Jewish heritage.
Bloomfi eld’s parents sent her away
from their home three times in an eff ort
to keep her safe and her father even-
tually became a member of the Dutch
underground resistance movement.
Bloomfi eld’s experience as a young
child trying to survive under the Nazi
regime is a rich and poignant tale of cour-
age and perseverance but it is even more
important for the lessons it conveys.
The war, and the Nazi perse-
cution, made a deep impact on
Bloomfi eld and her siblings.
Bloomfi eld’s story is unique in the sense
her persecution by the Nazi’s didn’t occur
in one of the Hitler regimes death camps.
Yet her tale of oppression should resonate,
no matter where and how it occurred.
We need, frankly, more tales from
individuals like Anneke Bloomfi eld. We
need to remember that discrimination
and oppression occur everywhere and
if allowed to fester it impacts all of us.
We remain fortunate as a nation that
we still understand that to preserve
freedom we must make sacrifi ces that
carry a degree of risk. That means
sometimes putting our young men
and women in harm’s way on distant
shores. Fighting oppression should
never carry an expiration date and we
must ensure stories like Bloomfi eld’s
are not forgotten nor dismissed.
Her story is a compelling narra-
tive but it remains also a cautionary
account about how oppression can bloom
even within the most seemingly civi-
lized societies and grow into a cancer
that injures all who encounter it.
We must, as a nation, never forget in
this critical moment in history we classify
memories such as Bloomfi eld’s as tools to
help us to fi ght oppression in the future.
EDITORIALS
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Oregonian editorial board. Other columns,
letters and cartoons on this page express the
opinions of the authors and not necessarily that
of the East Oregonian.
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Bentz needs to back school safety talk with action
LES
ZAITZ
OTHER VIEWS
n the hours after the deadly school
shooting in Texas, only one member
of Oregon’s Congressional dele-
gation stayed quiet — U.S. Rep. Cliff
Bentz, a Republican from Ontario.
The state’s U.S. senators and four
other U.S. representatives weighed in,
responding to questions or otherwise
pushing for action.
In the days after 19 children were
gunned down in their classroom, much
of the country was asking: “How can
this be stopped?”
Bentz provided no answer for days.
He issued no press statements.
He posted no comments to his
Congressional website.
He stayed silent on his offi cial Face-
book account.
He didn’t respond to questions from
the Oregon Capital Chronicle’s report-
ers.
While the rest of Oregon’s delegation
has advanced gun safety ideas, some-
times for years, the record shows only
one gun-related legislation in Congress
that Bentz put his name to. That would
have allowed a state’s concealed weap-
ons permit to be valid in every other
state.
That’s not surprising, since he
represents vast regions of Oregon where
guns are part of life.
In his public service as a state repre-
sentative, then state senator, and now
congressman, Bentz has stood fi rmly
behind gun rights, the Second Amend-
ment and the National Rifl e Association.
During his 2020 campaign for
U.S. representative, Bentz posted his
personal inventory of guns on his
campaign website.
“I had and still have my 357 Ruger
single six which I bought in 1969. I have
a Glock 19 9mm Luger, a Winchester
30-30, a Winchester 22, a rolling block
single shot Remington 22 and several
other long guns,” he said.
He also had a concealed weapons
permit, he said.
After the Texas shooting, Bentz told
I
Medford station KTVL, “One of the
things that should be done, I’ve recom-
mended many times, is that we begin to
make sure that our schools are appropri-
ately protected.”
That Bentz might want to protect
schools isn’t surprising, given what’s
happened since he took his seat in
Congress in January 2021.
In 2021, according to Education
Week, the country experienced 24
school shootings.
“A shooting on Nov. 30, in which a
student killed four people and injured
seven at an Oxford, Michigan, high
school, was the deadliest school shoot-
ing since May 2018,” Education Week
reported.
And the months this year leading
up to the Texas school shooting haven’t
been any better. A sampling:
Jan. 19: One student shoots and
wounds another student outside a high
school bathroom in Sanford, Florida.
Feb. 1: Two students shoot and kill
one other student, wound two others at
school in Richfi eld, Minnesota.
March 15: A 15-year-old boy shoots
another teenager at a high school in
Yakima, Washington.
March 31: A 12-year-old shoots and
kills another 12-year-old at a middle
school in Greenville, S.C.
April 5: A 14-year-old shoots another
student in a high school hallway in Erie,
Pennsylvania.
Bentz made his fi rst formal comment
on the Texas shooting that I could fi nd
when he posted on Friday, May 27, to
his Facebook page. He said the Uvalde
shooting was “the very defi nition of
evil.”
“We must ensure that our schools are
provided with necessary resources to
protect against attacks such as this,” he
said. He asked constituents to join him
in “acting, immediately, to improve the
security of our schools.”
He put up a fence around one action
being discussed nationwide — gun
safety.
“While much must be done to ensure
the safety of our citizens, infringing on
Constitutional rights is not the answer,”
he wrote on his Facebook post.
So, what is his solution?
There is no readily available record of
the school safety actions that Bentz says
he has recommended “many times.”
His publicly-paid communica-
tions director, Knox McCuthen, didn’t
respond to emails seeking Bentz’s past
proposals and what he was proposing
now.
The interest in school safety, though,
isn’t a priority for the congressman,
judging from his record and despite
one child after another dying in school
shootings since he took on the title of
U.S. representative.
On his campaign website, Bentz lists
12 issues important to him. Nothing
refers to school safety, but that’s where
he does call out the Second Amend-
ment and off ers up his personal weapons
inventory.
On his Congressional website, the
lead item is: “Afghanistan Resources.”
The closest his page comes to school
matters is his announcement the day
before the Texas shooting: “Bentz
Announces Winner of 2022 Congressio-
nal Art Competition.”
His website includes a search func-
tion, but nowhere on Bentz’s page does
the phrase “school safety” appear.
Bentz has a political reality, of
course. At this point, a lot of voters in
the 2nd Congressional District expect
Bentz to do anything he can to defend
their gun rights.
Let’s give him that, for argument’s
sake.
So, then, doesn’t the congressman
owe Oregon something more concrete
than “don’t touch my guns” to address
the school shootings that plague no
other country as they do ours?
His claims of being focused on
school safety are empty. He hasn’t acted.
He has, like so many politicians, talked.
That’s not good enough.
That’s not good enough for 19 chil-
dren gone to their graves in Texas.
That’s not good enough for the
people of Oregon, who have endured
their own mass shootings and resulting
“thoughts and prayers” solutions.
In his Facebook post, he wrote,
“There is nothing more important than
our children and they must be kept
safe.”
The time’s here for Bentz to act on
those words.
———
Les Zaitz is a veteran editor and inves-
tigative reporter, serving Oregon for
more than 45 years.