The meeting was held in a beautiful venue: The Jersey Shore Arts center of Ocean Grove. Remember Herb Herbst.

PAUL ROBESON WITH A STEVEN FOSTER DITTY:   Robeson performed in the Great Auditorium many years ago.

A Park Beach.     Public outdoor art is common in A. Park. Where is it in the Grove? Paul Goldfinger photo. Jan. 2023. Click to enlarge.

 Some at the parking meeting said Ocean Grove was “changing,” and not for the better.

MANDY PATINKIN:  Sunday in the Park With George.  By Stephen Sondheim. “Beautiful.”

The old road to an OG parking solution. Paul Goldfinger photo of a road less travelled…so far.

By Paul Goldfinger, MD.  Editor at Blogfinger.net,  Ocean Grove’s only news and opinion source. OG had a newspaper for many years, but it folded around 2000.

Here is a Blogfinger report  about a similar Neptune parking  meeting  in December, 2017.  You can see where this issue has been:

2017 Township parking meeting.

Here is some parking background from a June 2021  Blogfinger article.

2021 parking post.

NOW JANUARY 2023—You may recall our repeated concern, ignored by everyone, that this town has too many cars for the number of spaces in season.   In other words, something needs to be done about unbridled tourism inside this small residential town.   Other towns have done so including Bradley Beach, Belmar, Spring Lake and, believe it or not, Asbury Park, although AP is becoming like a big zoo in season, parking in the Grove and walking or biking into AP.

Now the OGHOA has posted a new “pilot proposal” to provide parking permits on a trial basis in the most vulnerable area of the Grove, over by the border with Asbury Park.

To see the map with colors, click below.

RPPP-Pilot-Proposal-for-012823-Meeting (dragged)

There will be two zones, one is year round  (Zone 1. light blue on the map)  while the other is for prime season. (5/15-9/15.  Zone 2.  green on the map)

You can download the entire program by clicking here:

OGHOA.org

The credit for this proposal is being given to all the major organizations in town including the CMA.   The CMA has, in the past, been very resistant to such a program although they have supported a related plan which would place 3 hour metered parking in the business district.

The announcement sent out by email says that the Township Committee is presenting a “special meeting” on this subject on Saturday, January 28, at 9 am in the Jersey Shore Arts Center.  That email gives credit to Deputy Mayor Tassie York, the 2022 Parking Task Force, OGHOA,  OG Chamber of Commerce, and the Better Parking Alliance.

They also mention  “OG Resident Shane Martins.”  It is unusual to find an individual on such a list, but Shane Martins is a lawyer who also is involved with the activist group, currently under cover, called “Neptune United.”

Blogfinger had the opportunity to speak to him several months ago when he mentioned that he had designed a foolproof permit parking plan for the town.  We did not see his plan then, but could this currently announced plan be his?  If so, perhaps only he should get credit.  The others on the list have been failures in the past with regard to permit parking.

Blogfinger has been preaching about permits  literally for years without any response from players on the list.

At any rate it’s good to know that the residents of OG will finally be given some special treatment to help with their chronic parking woes.

The Committee meeting on Jan. 28 will be interesting since the Committee has been indifferent regarding this issue in the past, with promises made but none kept.  But now they have slipped one of their own, Ms. York, into the mix. She is getting credit as a leader of the current plan. What did she do?

But the Township has been worried about giving special treatment to the Grove while “neglecting” the people of Neptune proper. Even the CMA’s Michael Badger has voiced a similar concern suggesting that no parking plan for the Grove should exclude Neptuners  who need to park at the beach.  A bus shuttle program is currently being worked out.

It will also be interesting to see if the majority of Grovers, those excluded from the RPPP, will have something to say about this matter.   Over at the South End of the Grove, residents will tell you that they also are victimized by freeloader Asburians.  At a  prior town meeting, it appeared that about half of Grovers were opposed  to permit parking.

BEATLES:   “Day Tripper.”

An OG giant flea market where only a few select tourists should be allowed. Is she the Coaster reporter? Please! Paul Goldfinger photo

By Paul Goldfinger,  Editor Blogfinger.net.   1/26/23

In a front page article today, Coaster reporter Carol Gorga Williams took a fresh look at the topic of OG’s parking mess in preparation for yet another Township meeting to address parking; this time, once again, a proposal for residential parking permits in town.

She said, “The Neptune Township Committee will convene a special meeting Sat, Jan. 28 to discuss a proposed pilot program for residential parking permits in Ocean Grove, where narrow streets and summer-season overcrowding have long creating frustration.”    That one sentence is a breath of fresh air even if it is not totally accurate.

Let’s consider her point of view.

a.  The result of our parking problems in season is “frustration.”  I don’t think any prior news report has used that word.  Why is that important, well it is because it reflects what Blogfinger has been saying for years:  This is a QUALITY OF LIFE ISSUE involving most importantly the community of Grovarian residents. It is the residents, home owners and renters, who have been ignored and “frustrated” by the blind-sighted officials and organizations in this town.  The mobs of tourists in season should not be given top priority in any proposed plan. Let’s give our citizens top priority.

b. Ms. Williams spoke in terms of “summer-season overcrowding.”   YES!  Those of us who live here are drowning in tourists, and it is the equation of too many tourists overwhelming too few parking spaces that is the fundamental problem.  Blogfinger has been saying that for years:   reduce the number of giant tourist events, as is done in many shore towns, and the problem will be over.  The Township has control over permits for events that bring out-of-town folks here by the thousands on summer weekends, causing  “FRUSTRATION” for our own tax paying townies.

Let the mega-events be held in some huge space with excess parking like the Monmouth Country Fair Ground.   The giant flea market does not have to be held in our small residential town!

c   And finally the Coasterican reporter decides that that one of our main problems is “narrow streets.”  Well, la-de-dah!   That may not be true, but it is marvelous to contemplate because it is a new idea, and we sure can use new ideas in the Grove.

The meeting will be held at the Arts Center at 9 am this Saturday 1/28/23.   After a stultifying presentation of plan details you will hear questions that will indicate yet another failure to solve the Grovarian parking mess, but I sure would like one of those permits.  And let’s put Ms. Williams on that committee!

LEON REDBONE:

Photo of a concentration camp by Paul Goldfinger from a documentary.

Paul Goldfinger, MD,  Editor Blogfinger.net

The Nazis’ goal was to make the world “judenfrei” (free of Jews) and they nearly succeeded.  The process began in 1930’s Germany and then became full blown as the Nazis invaded most of Europe as well as other areas such as North Africa and Scandinavia.    At first they killed Jews by shooting using “killing pits” (below).    When that was not efficient enough they used trucks that crowded victims and then pumped  carbon monoxide inside. But that was way too slow.

Then they switched to ghettos where Jews were crowded inside and usually died of disease and starvation.   After that they created extermination camps which used poison gas, following which they put the bodies into ovens for mass cremation. The neighbors knew what was emanating from the smokestacks.

Other groups were also singled out, but in much smaller numbers such as gays, Gypsies, mentally ill,  disabled , and Jehovah’s Witnesses, but nothing could compare to the Holocaust which refers to the estimated 6 million murdered Jews.  When Jews tried to escape to other countries, they were often met with hostility and were sent back.

Nazis used cattle cars to transport Jews and others to concentration camps. They offered no food or water to those in the  crowded stifling, filthy  cars.  Some died on the way.  Most  were gassed on arrival and then burned in ovens. Those who lived for awhile usually succumbed to exhaustion and starvation.      Photos by Paul Goldfinger from a live streamed commemorative broadcast from Israel.

Nazi shooting of civilians. Times of Israel.   That method of extermination resulted in an estimated 2.5 million Jewish deaths. Victims were rounded up, marched to an open area where pits had been dug by prisoners, and then lined up to be shot.    Numbers come  from meticulous German records. Yad Vashem has a film of this taken surreptitiously by a passing soldier.

This rare image is from the Holocaust Museum. (Yad Vashem) in Jerusalem. A solder is about to shoot a woman holding a child.

Women in concentration camps had their hair shaved off.  Most who arrived in the camps were murdered in gas chambers . They were stripped naked and marched into “showers.”   Many were accompanied by their children.   Violent sexual assaults were common.

SS guards greet the trains and then storm the doors.

Courageous Jews barricaded and resisting  in the Warsaw Ghetto held out longer than expected, but finally the survivors were marched off to their deaths if they weren’t killed by artillery and tanks. 1943.  Rare photograph. Very few photographs or footage  survived the war. Photography was banned by the Nazis.

In Israel the Holocaust Remembrance Day is  held at Yad Vashem, the amazing Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem.  There also is a remarkable Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. You need two days to visit it.

6 million innocent Jews were killed by the Nazis as were many millions more across  Europe and Russia. An unbelievable number of Russian civilians and soldiers died.  But the Holocaust , specific towards Jews,  was just born out of hatred.  The underlying reason was anti-semitism which had been around long before Nazi Germany.

Hitler almost succeeded in accomplishing the “final solution.”   Despite all the dead, there were some  survivors, and they often dedicate themselves to telling their stories in an effort to prevent hate alone from destroying lives in the future. But for “survivors” and their families, the scars are handed on from generation to generation. In 2012 the Camp Meeting brought a survivor to OG to speak.

Here is a link to that event in the Grove.  This survivor is still alive (2023)

2012 program in Ocean Grove

Survivor is reunited with family in New York City. Still image by Paul Goldfinger.

A personal note: I am a 2nd generation Jewish-American. My family came from Poland and Austria around 1900.  Both sides undoubtedly lived in those locations for at least 400 years.

Most of us lost most or all of our relatives in Europe to the murderous Nazis.  Hitler wiped out the vast majority of Jewish communities in Europe, especially in eastern Europe–where millions lived.  As the German army (Wehrmacht) swept through Poland and Russia, they were followed by the Einsatzgruppen, a branch of the SS, whose job was only to kill Jews or to ship them to concentration camps where gas chambers were more efficient at killing than bullets.

I was going through my mother’s possessions. I knew that our family kept  nothing from the “old country.”  They came here with very little.

But I found a photograph dated 1938 of one of our cousins in Poland. It must have been sent to Mom’s family in Bayonne, NJ.   And the handwriting on the front indicates that some contact was maintained and that we did learn of his fate.

From my mother’s side of the family (Poland.) 1938  “Dr. Maury”

On the back he wrote a personal note:   “To my dearest New World cousins.”

He signed it and dated it: “1938”

Unfortunately he didn’t escape.  I wish we knew more about him, but at least I know that he existed and should be mourned.  From his brief greeting on the back, I think I would have liked him.

Kristallnacht occurred in Germany in 1938.  Little did our cousin know that the Nazis would invade Poland in 1939 and would go about killing every Jew that they could find, and they spent a lot of manpower and resources  to do that.

One Jewish child was killed with her Mom,  and the child  was only 30 minutes old.  The crazed Nazis spared no one.

On April 27, 2022, for the Holocaust commemoration, the Bundestag (Germany) President Barbel Bas was welcomed at an official ceremony in the Knesset  (Israel parliament.) Israeli representatives have gone to Germany for events and to meet with German Jews.  It is hard for today’s Jews to go there. No one in my family has been to Germany.  I bought a Mercedes some time ago, and my cousin Marty, a veteran, asked, “Why are you driving a Nazi car?”

I said, “Many taxis in Israel are Mercedes.”

The German President  said, “The lessons of the Holocaust oblige us to give no place to antisemitism.  Germany’s responsibility hasn’t ended. We stand alongside Israel.”

MICHELE GARRUTI.   “Theme from Schindler’s List:”

Paul Goldfinger still photograph. Tremé. Jan 26, 2023

JON CLEAREY.   Tremé. Season 2.    “Frenchmen Street Blues.”

Jean Bredin. Tent Village. January 2023. Ocean Grove.  Blogfinger.net

THOMAS MATO BLANCHOT   “Isn’t She Lovely?”

Paul Goldfinger. Sunrise. North Carolina.  Route 95.  Paul Goldfinger photo. 2018.

Original Broadway Cast of In The Heights.   “Sunrise.”

Mandy Gonzalez, Christopher Jackson.