Letter to the Editor
11 July 2004
Considering that Fred Schwartz, better known as “Fred the Furrier,” is a Holocaust survivor, I’m surprised that he didn’t question where the fur pelts came from. The lampshades and soap that were products of the Jews who didn’t survive, some no doubt made of members of his family and mine, might have given him an inkling that the “pelts” came from once living, breathing creatures who had family ties and a strong desire to live.
To laud a contribution to a good cause made with blood money is discomforting. Let’s follow the horror back to the trapping itself: An animal remains in a trap frightened for days, starving, thirsty; the killing is often blunt force to the head that has to be repeated over and over; the restraint is done with a boot pressed into the throat; and sometimes the poor animal is skinned alive to keep the pelt soft.
Imagine the screaming, the terror, the atrocity of what humans do to animals for fur.
This isn’t acceptable no matter who does it. That one has suffered at the hands of another does not give them moral license to cause suffering to those weaker than they.
Mr. Fred Schwartz may otherwise have been a nice man. I am just amazed that the Holocaust experience did not arouse sufficient empathy to cause a career change.
Anne Muller, President
Wildlife Watch, Inc.