For Wilshire Baptist Church
It was one of the most uncomfortable moments of my life, perhaps even a top 10.
I was on my back in the dentist chair, beginning to relax after having a molar pulled. The tooth hadn’t caused any pain or problem, but it was wobbly with little jawbone support, and a root canal wouldn’t save it.
Everything went fine with the extraction and a bone graft, and after the dentist stitched me up, he asked, “Do you want to keep the tooth?” He asked because it had a large gold crown, and even I had thought about that before I went in. I paid for that gold years ago and figured I could get cash for it somewhere. I nodded my head, and he said he would sterilize it. And then he said this: “You might want to be careful where you take it. A lot of jewelers are Jewish, and they won’t take gold from a tooth because it brings back memories of the Holocaust.”
Oh my God! I was horrified. Instantly, my mind leafed through what I’d learned about the Holocaust: the murder of six million people, the horrific practices of medical and dental experiments, the final indignity of harvesting teeth for gold before the bodies were burned. Oh my God . . . there’s no hell deep enough, dark enough or hot enough for the perpetrators of that horror.
And then I recalled a ping on my calendar. International Holocaust Remembrance Day had come and gone the week before and I had given it no thought; I had remembered nothing. I hadn’t reflected on what I’d learned in school or seen in movies and at museums. I’d forgotten about Mike Jacobs, a survivor and a founder of the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum, who I had covered as a newspaper reporter. I had been riveted at the time by his stories of Auschwitz, but the years had faded and dulled those emotions. And more recently? I had shrugged – or at most uttered a weak “oh, please” – at the inappropriate hyperbole of U.S. politicians calling each other “Nazis” as they campaigned.
But now, I had been reminded in an unexpectedly potent and visceral way of what must surely be the most evil atrocity in human history. With my head still groggy and my mouth still numb, I changed my answer. “No . . . I don’t want the tooth.”
The dentist left for a while so the hygienist could clean me up and get me ready to go home. By the time he came back, I was sitting up and my head was clear. Picking up on the previous conversation, he said I’d probably be OK if I took the gold to one of the gold and silver exchange businesses around town. I said, “No, I don’t want to offend anyone.” He said, “You haven’t, and you probably won’t. If you’re not going to resell it, I probably would.”
Perhaps that was supposed to make me feel better, but I couldn’t un-hear and un-see the stories and lessons restored in my memory. I left the office without the tooth.