By Brad Weinreb
SAN DIEGO — Masaryk University School of Law is located in Brno, the second largest city in the Czech Republic. I spent two weeks there at the end of last November to teach a seminar course on “The Rights of Crime Victims in the United States.” While the trip afforded experience interacting with law students and legal practitioners, it offered me a great appreciation for being an American Jew.
My background as a prosecutor in the California Attorney General’s Office includes serving as a State Coordinator for the Sexually Violent Predator Act- the civil commitment of sex predators- and the State Coordinator for Proposition 9/ Marsy’s Law Coordinator- enumerated constitutional rights for crime victims. I am also our local Office liaison on issues of Human Trafficking. These duties plus background teaching at California Western School of Law, made me well suited to lecture law students on victim rights issues.
My goal was simply to expose law students to the US criminal justice system and the rights of crime victims with an emphasis on California law, and focus on unique issues faced by prosecutors handing certain types of cases: for example, how do we treat young or elderly victims who might have difficulty remembering events or information?.
The students in my class were eager and appreciative to have an American prosecutor lecture on victim rights. Throughout the course it became apparent the students were inquisitive about more than criminal justice and victim rights, but a whole spectrum of issues and perspectives about our legal system. After the course was completed, my teaching assistant remarked that these exchanges, in which we candidly spoke about difficulties and problems some feel we face within our legal system- whether the topic was tort reform, access to justice, gay marriage, or a number of other legal issues, rather surprised the students. They expected me to be a jingoistic American- proudly and stubbornly defending everything about American politics and our legal system, while refusing to accept the slightest criticism or suggested reform toward any of it.
My travels and tours in the Czech Republic, coupled with visits to Austria and Bratislava, also reminded me of how unique our American experience is when compared to this region. Europe has a history of wars and conflicts for centuries before America even existed. And those conflicts continued after the founding of our nation. Nearby Brno lies Austerlitz, where Napoleon’s victory brought an end to the Holy Roman Empire and created the Confederation of the Rhine, a collection of German states to be a buffer between France and central Europe. Some 80 years later Germany invaded Czechoslovakia. After World War II, this land was under communist rule, and even after independence was a puppet of the Soviet Union until its 1989 independence, as what is now the Czech Republic. There is a contrast between the generally peaceful experience in the United States, with that of students here living in a democracy, whose parents lived under Soviet communism, and whose grandparents stood on the streets watching the German invasion.
And that bears particular relevance to me as someone Jewish. Many of us have family members who immigrated to the United States during these turbulent times, or those who lost family members during the Holocaust. We hear stories about what our families went through, but to walk the streets and see the history come alive was a defining experience. Indeed, one of the other visiting professors I spent time with was an Israeli named Yehuda Adar, whose family started the first kibbutz in Israel and we enjoyed having exchanges about our own impressions about the European experience.
To that point, I spent Thanksgiving Day teaching a class on human trafficking in a building that once served as the headquarters for the Gestapo, and Pearl Harbor Day walking through the Terezin concentration camp outside of Prague. I can’t help but reflect on how grateful I am to live here and appreciate every day the freedoms we have been given by those who wished to escape persecution and seek religious liberty and established what would become a land of democracy and independence. Perhaps that’s one reason why I have dedicated a professional career to public service, working to promote Public Safety and protect our community from violent criminals and sexual predators. And why I’m now running for Superior Court Judge in the hope that I can better serve our community ensuring a commitment to Justice and equal access to the courts for everyone.
Beyond the experience of simply being in Prague, one of the most beautiful cities in the world, I also understood that it held particular significance for me as a Jew. Prague contained a large and flourishing Jewish population before World War II- almost 25% of the persons who lived there. It still is standing and in operation as one of the oldest Synagogues in all of Europe.
But the Terezin experience was of a more particular significance. Terezin served as a gate-way camp where “only” 10,000 persons died but 10 times more were shipped off to gas chambers in other locations. Terezin was the camp Hitler used to fool international observers to believe he gifted a ghetto to the Jewish people; they toured nice facilities which were never actually used, and observed schoolchildren as they studied, wrote poems, painted and performed in plays and musicals – only to then be shipped away as soon as the observers left. It was pure Nazi propaganda. But ironically, it also resulted in the preservation of vast documents and materials that described life and conditions at the camp.
While at the camp I purchased a necklace for my daughter and took it onto the grounds, then hung it next to pictures drawn by young girls. I took a photograph of the necklace hanging there and when I returned home, presented her the necklace and the photograph. I told her that whether she chooses to be religious later in life, she will always be connected not just to her family, but the past of her own culture. She is tied to that experience and it is part of who she is, and who she will be.
I went to the Czech Republic to teach classes about our criminal justice system, a subject I felt quite comfortable I could teach very well. But the experience actually served to remind me to not take our freedom and blessings for granted. To be fair, European history is greater than WWII. But these events seated within me the pride that American ideals of freedom and liberty and democratic representation are a beacon to the world, a solemn responsibility to our children, and an honor to bear, preserve and defend. And a greater understanding that had Jews in Prague been allowed to flourish, the world today would be a much better place.
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Brad Weinreb is a Deputy Attorney General in San Diego. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the Dreyfuss Initiative, started by the Academy-Award winning actor Richard Dreyfuss to engage our children in the teaching of Civics and about our Constitution. He is a candidate for a Superior Court judgeship in the upcoming June election. He may be contacted via www.brad4judge.com.