Igor Rimmer Bench

Looking north on the greenbelt towards Catalina

The Igor Rimmer memorial bench is located on the Covell Greenbelt between the paths leading to the west ends of Equador Place and Flamenco Place. The plaque on the bench is from the Rimmer Foundation, a nonprofit charitable foundation created in honor of the late Igor Rimmer (1956-1998), who was a champion of the rights of Jews living in the former Soviet Union. Rimmer grew up in eastern Russia's "Jewish Autonomous Oblast" and spent four years of his mid-20's imprisoned in a Siberian Gulag.

The phrase "Never Again" is used by the Jewish Defense League to mean that, post-Holocaust, Jews will never again go quietly and submissively to their deaths, although the phrase is used by other Jewish groups, usually with the same or similar meaning.

plaque detail. Plaque from the Rimmer Foundation

2010-07-27 20:46:57   I find the message on this bench offensive. I don't expect it was meant that way, but I wish the wording could be changed. —DanielPotter

• What do you find offensive about it? —CovertProfessor

2010-07-27 23:20:16   Maybe its the part about there being a time for Jews to die? I think the idea of anybody dying "before their time" is kind of silly, anybody could get hit by a bus or something. —NickSchmalenberger

• I've known a few people that are offended by the usage of the word "Jews" as mentioned on the wikipedia page via an American Heritage dictionary quote: It is widely recognized that the attributive use of the noun "Jew", in phrases such as Jew lawyer or Jew ethics, is both vulgar and highly offensive. In such contexts Jewish is the only acceptable possibility. Some people, however, have become so wary of this construction that they have extended the stigma to any use of "Jew" as a noun, a practice that carries risks of its own. In a sentence such as "There are now several Jews on the council", which is unobjectionable, the substitution of a circumlocution like "Jewish people" or "persons of Jewish" background may in itself cause offense for seeming to imply that Jew has a negative connotation when used as a noun. I've known far more people who tend to be offended by the offense taken at the noun usage of "Jew", as perfectly written in the quote above. -ES
• Exactly, ES — most Jews refer to themselves as Jews, as was no doubt the case for the writers of the plaque. As for for being there a time for Jews to die — well, we all die. That much is certain, unless someone finds a way to make humans immortal. But we aren't all the targets of deliberate attempts at annihilation — the phrase "never again" suggests a reference to the Holocaust. I don't know for sure how Igor Rimmer died, but that's my best educated guess. (Evidently, my guess was wrong). —CovertProfessor

2011-12-05 12:44:54   To: CovertProfessor You were right. The reference in the phrase "Never Again" was to Holocaust Thank you Rimmer Foundation —NickCohn