It will be convenient if we can link contemporary conservatives with the horrors of the last century - even though the political surge in conservative views (limited government, dampening the urge to make regulatory impositions in individuals' lives, and controlled borders) has almost literally nothing at all in common with central European politics of the 1930s. In Austria, Italy, Germany, Britain, and the United States people deliberately and often in the most contorted ways take quotes like this one labeling German NAZIs as bird droppings to "prove" that conservatives are really "neo-NAZIs." Thereby they color the arguments and claim what they think is the high ground. Hofer in Austria was labeled a neo-NAZI for asserting that the Austrian social welfare system couldnt support Angela Merkel's "take all comers" policies as she imposed German policy - and its unwillingness to act against the root cause of the massive immegration problem (al Assad) - on all of Europe. Hofer is no Nazi. He's a realistic 21st century Austrian. Trying to win arguments with heinous labels is not the high ground.
2
From the NY Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/12/us/holocaust-education.html : "Thirty-one percent of Americans, and 41 percent of millennials, believe that two million or fewer Jews were killed in the Holocaust; the actual number is around six million. Forty-one percent of Americans, and 66 percent of millennials, cannot say what Auschwitz was. And 52 percent of Americans wrongly think Hitler came to power through force."
From another NY Times article: "www.nytimes.com/2018/02/27/us/anti-semitism-adl-report.html It says anti-Semitic hate crimes surged by 57% in 2017.
---------------------------
You all know, I assume that multi-billionaire Soros is alt-right "code" for Jews, or to say it another way, "international Jews" or "worldwide conspiracy of Jews?
-------------------------
The past CAN be repeated.
7
How do we make this article part of every grade school and high school history program? A shocking number of millennials do not know what the Holocaust was. Almost 25% of them never heard of it!
see: https://www.npr.org/2018/04/14/602443782/the-startling-statistics-about-...
5
The moral of this piece is that we should never forget the Holocaust, and never allow history to repeat itself.
Anti-Semitic attacks are on the rise in Europe (Kosher market in Paris, Copenhagen synagogue, Toulouse Jewish school, Belgium Holocaust museum, the brutal murder of an elderly dignified Holocaust survivor in Paris, all by Jihadi assailants).
Also, Berliners recently donned Jewish skullcaps to show solidarity with a young Jewish man who was attacked by a Syrian refugee.
There is also a growing anti-Israeli sentiment in the country, and even more so in Europe, primarily by the left, which is often but not in all cases associated with more blatant anti-Semitism. This is also wrong and also should be called out just as you called out the remark made by Gauland.
5
There is dignity in facing death with courage if not resignation. There is also dignity in resisting death even if failure is the outcome. There were many Jewish resistors to the Nazi atrocities whose courage and dignity should not be forgotten. They fought in the ghettos and the forests of Eastern Europe with weapons they seized from the Nazis they killed. Why there was not more resistance in the cities and towns from which they were extracted or on the trains on which they were stuffed like cattle or in the camps where they were separated from their children and stripped of their clothing stiffens the back of Jews today who still smell the stench of rabid antisemitism.
18
War is bad for everyone. Twenty million Russians died in WW2- ten million of them civilians, women and children.
3
And what of us? When will white Christian America acknowledge it what we have done to others throughout our history and wake-up to what we are doing now?
22
Bret Stephens, who is Jewish and who was a former editor of the Jerusalem Post, has every right to be horrified by the genocide committed against his relatives. As a columnist for this American paper and as a regular guest on MSNBC he has no objectivity when it comes to the Middle East and yet when he makes his subjective and personally biased remarks that are so pro-Israel he is presented as an American journalist just voicing his thoughts.
14
"Alternative für Deutschland" and "Make America Great Again"!
Isn't one the translation for the other?
20
I agree with so much of what you write, except this:
Gauland may want to celebrate “1,000 years of successful German history,” but all the glories of Goethe or Beethoven crumble to nothingness next to what happened on that beach.
This binary and reductionist thinking is part of the "woke" mindset that David Brooks recently critiqued. I urge you to rethink your rhetoric!
To put it another way:
Does everything good in America crumble to nothingness because of slavery?
Or if that doesn't work for you, how about:
Does everything good in Israel crumble to nothingness because of atrocities committed against Palestinians?
24
Please lend your family memoir to the United States Holocaust Museum, so that they may copy it.
14
When Stephens invites the MS-13 gang members to have refuge in his home, then he will credibility. Until then, he can save his moral preening for the elitist salons on the upper west side.
4
The only way to contemplate this slaughter is to accept that Jews must have their own country. One, that's enough, in contrast to the 20 Islamic nations and 50 majority Muslim nations on this planet. As one of the French Jews (yes, France, home of liberte, egalite, fraternite) recently said when fleeing to Israel, after decades of their own government ignoring increasing harassment and brutality from French Muslims, "at least here I have an army and police force on my side". So just see human nature for what it is, deeply antagonistic to the other, and try to minimize the effect of, for example, the United Nations General Assembly which will meet this week and, no doubt with cheers, condemn Israel for defending her border, her citizens, her land, while Gazans celebrate launching fire bombs over Israel.
12
Unlike you, I have no forgiveness for Germany. I have met many Germans abroad whose parents and grandparents were Nazis. When we discuss the Hitler era they have all kinds of rationales for the election of Hitler in the first place and their willingness to go along with his policies. I cannot forgive them for killing six million Jews, including my great grandfather.
I have traveled all over the world, have been to almost every country in Europe many times. But, I will never travel to Germany or buy a Mercedes, BMW or Volkswagen whose owners only recently acknowledged using Jewish slave labor in WWII and they are still owned by the same family. They didn't apologize. Some things are forgivable, the Holocaust is not.
31
I struggle to understand a conservative columnist that knows personally how irrational hatred and dehumanization leads to such horrendous suffering and evil, yet still indentifies with a political party that has race baited for years (not just recently, since '68 at least). Why not repudiate the hatered and racism and join another political party? I guess we are all complicated and conflicted or, if not conflicted, have large blind spots.
22
I have to wonder what Holocaust deniers think when they read tales like this one and see the photographs.
Jewish people's share of the population of German-speaking Europe of 1930's was about 2% and Hitler managed to demonize them to the point that Germany's problems were seen to be the Jews themselves.
Now, we have the Muslim ban president trying to obtain "a complete and total shutdown" of people entering the US from Muslim-majority countries. Meanwhile, the percentage of the population here of Muslims is around 1% and Trump succeeds in demonizing in the same way.
The Japanese-heritage Americans lead the way in proclaiming "Never Again." It would be up to all of us who are trying to Make America Sane Again (?) to pay attention, to listen, and to also say, with our votes, even, "Never Again."
12
Stephens: 'I needed to learn anew just what that “speck” had meant for my extended family.'
Stephens and the other critics completely miss Gauland's point. Most importantly, Gauland was *condemning* "Hitler and the Nazis". Further, the Nazi period was about 12 years in "1,000 years of successful German history", so those 12 years should not completely overshadow the rest of German history.
Assuming Gauland meant to say "_otherwise_ successful", there are numerous ways to rebut that.
In particular, "Germany" did not exist until the 19th century, so Gauland's historicity is just plain wrong. And the word "successful" is uselessly vague. Gauland would first need to define "German" and "successful". Next he would need to review 1,000 years of "German" history to show that almost all of it can be characterized as "successful". If Gauland hasn't done that, he hasn't made his case.
3
Best and most honest column he's written since coming over from WSJ.
4
Thank you for this heartfelt column. We must never forget the horrors of the Holocaust. The rise of the AFD in Germany and it's counterparts in Poland, Hungary, Austria, Italy, and sadly in the USA is very troubling and worrisome. I do fervently hope that in the next Parliamentary elections in Germany, that the AFD is driven out of power. They deserve nothing but our contempt!
16
As a Latvian born in Riga, Latvia in 1943 when these murders were being committed I feel shame even if I or my parents had nothing to do with it. Growing up in America in my youth it was never ever brought up in my Latvian community that Latvians were ever involved in murdering Jews by the hundreds and thousands in Latvia. I learned about this history much later in my life. However I did notice the extreme anti-Semitism in some Latvians which left me bewildered. I still do not understand where this hatred comes from especially from people have contributed nothing to world culture and science compared to Jews over the last three thousand years!
27
This column made me go and find another NYTimes document (film) again that is about the legacy of another parent to his Holocaust-surviving daughter: https://nyti.ms/2yWPdfU
I find it deeply touching (besides also being a work of great artistic beauty), and several of my friends that I forwarded it to said they were sending it to their teenage children, because indeed, we cannot forget that very dark sides exist in us humans. This is one reason why we must remember.
11
Many of the people who are always complaining about being blamed for atrocities that "happened before I was even born" believe that ANY public discussion of the events means putting the blame for the events on them.
The very formation of a sentence such as "German soldiers killed..." or "The German SS killed..." means it cannot be spoken without causing them offense.
I'm sorry, but I don't trust people today who complain about being blamed for atrocities committed during their nation's history. I think in the final analysis, what they want is for that past TO SIMPLY BE FORGOTTEN, since it reflects upon them and their nation so negatively.
Now, they are going to accuse their political opponents of bringing up the past to score political points, or accomplish parts of their agenda, but beneath all of these complaints is the simple fact that some events in a nation's past are too shameful and horrible to ever be pleasant to speak about.
Unfortunately for them, though, it is precisely because these events are so shameful and horrible that they have to be remembered.
14
Thank you for your beautifully written and clear sighted essay.
12
When Trump was elected I was willing to believe this his supporters needed someone to blame for the fact that the US wasn't white, male and straight anymore, and that the people they hate, they hate because they represent the "Other."
In the months since, I've realized that his supporters hate for the sheer pleasure of it. They don't need justification.
This is much more dangerous than the "other" theory, because it is nearly impossible to imbue reason into people who don't even bother to justify their behavior.
22
Alexander Gauland, avian-orator,ummenschlich in his ideology, represents more than a violating quote.More than a single party, whatever its numbers of both members and others who identify with their violating-weltanschauung. He
IS wilfullt deafness to voices, words, visible as well as hidden deeds which harm.Temporarily as well as permanently. As well as fostering deafening silence; when outrage is called for. About what is not said and done which is so necessary for achieving and sustaining equitable well being for ALL. By dehumanizing. By excluding. By marginalizing. By creating and enabling the binary banality of WE-THEY. In families.Amidst neighbors. Neighborhoods. Communities. At school and at work.In stores.On public transportation.Sites of leisure. Cultural activities. Places of prayer. and willful blindness to what should never BE, as valenced words and deeds. Seeding and harvesting willful ignorance about existing realities, their documentable implications, consequences as well as clear hints regarding likely, unexpected. outcomes. Gauland is all too easy to note and focus on as socially anchored, man-made complacency covers over spreading toxic complacency.Gauland, as a person, as a function, as a position,as a toxic and even lethal process and outcome, as a metaphor, as a caveat, can’t exist without an enabling US.As each of US consider the Gauland’s in each of our life spaces, what can, will, won’t,enable each of US to be personally accountability for what IS?
6
Thank you, Brett Stephens. We depend upon journalists like you and writers like your relative Raya to stand against what is vicious and to remember what is horrific. But it is not enough to just depend upon you. It is also for us to be the ones who, in the thousands and millions, speak out against what we know to be wrong and fight for what we know to be right. The distortion of history is wrong. Truthful remembrance is right. Speaking out and showing up are right. Equality, in its every form, is what is right. The truth is what is right. We want to be able to say we were not silent, that we were not afraid to speak, and we were not afraid to act. I say that for the sake of the child in the left of the picture, the child who stands barefooted on the beach on December 15, surrounded by silence.
13
A moving article. The speck of avian foulness is not that tiny, unfortunately. I start to notice specks in our country, and they seem quite deep...
23
Brett, you were totally fine with the Republican Party when it was just racist enough to keep power. You and the other "reasonable" (i.e. corporatist) conservatives thought you could ride the tiger of racism, but now it threatens to consume the party, the country, the world. Great job.
26
Fantastic line! Those who disavow historical crimes pave the way for crimes of the future. I want to put that on a t-shirt.
10
The past cannot be forgotten, least it be repeated.
Homo sapien is the apex predator. He kills for many reasons, including enjoyment.
12
Think about it, the American Ambassador to Germany endorsed the party that wants to bring this horror back.
36
This is the greatest column I can recall reading. In an era of fake and politicalized news this op-ed piece stands out, shouting both its legitimacy and its importance. Still drying up tears.
8
Thank you for writing this Bret. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, these pictures are worth a million. For all of those who want to diminish what happened during the Holocaust, take a good look at these and contemplate how scary it is that humans can do these things to one another. And, under the right circumstances, it can happen again. This concoction is starting to brew again at home and abroad.
https://www.vintag.es/2018/04/liepaja-massacres.html
21
The German electorate put Hitler into power and then followed his logic in creating national scapegoats for their dire economic situation which was part of a global meltdown made worse by the post WWI treaty agreements which were highly punitive. A similar thing is happening in Italy and in Greece where a global meltdown was made worse by the EU rules that preceded it. We have largely escaped the meltdown because of the actions taken in spite of the Republicans in Congress in 2010. But we have been losing jobs to the nations with cheap labor and to the use of robots by business. So, what do we do? Parts of our society are doing exactly the same thing as the Germans: picking scapegoats. Our Congress is silent and our President caters to it and revs up the ignorant masses. Is there any difference in the communal response? A little. We, like every other nation that thinks it has no flaws, wallow in our hubris, raise it up, idolize it, and criminalize the innocent. How great are we? Following those who hate, by remaining silent, is not enough to save a nation from the destruction that follows when you justify the grifting of the entire state. Criminalizing the innocent eats away at the purpose and being of a nation to its ultimate demise. We are no exception to history. Those who blame others but otherwise avoid addressing their problems will pull the rest of the nation down with them.
28
Where’s your clarion call and becoming a leader of The Resistence to sweep away the demagogue targeting minorities on US soil?
Or did this kind of threat only become “real” for you because you’re living in Germany? Because this kind of threat intersects with your family?
Think it can never happen in the US? You need to read the history of the US, from “inadvertently” dynamiting (expendable) Chinese laborers building the Western end of The Transcontinental Railroad, of slaves and blacks, and, of course, Native Americans.
22
Re:
For Germans, that requires wiping clean from their Parliament that disgusting speck of avian foulness known as Alternative für Deutschland the next time they go to the polls.
and for Americans... that requires eliminating from their
Congress all those who have assented by their silence
the soiling of our institutions, the promotion of BIG LIES, the
conscious manipulation of facts, or who acted in concert with those who would have one believe that there just isn't enough
evidence to slow the release of CO2 into the lower atmosphere.
19
It's really interesting that someone as intelligent as Stephens continually fails to see the neo-Conservative right as the force that created Trumpism, and is mostly likely the force behind whatever fascism currently enthralls America.
You can't be appalled by acts of fascist brutality in past times and places and then shill for them in the current moment.
21
Mr. Stevens, the polite talk is nauseating.
Germany wasn’t flirting with fascism as the subtitle to your story says, Germany went for a full blown love affair with fascism and as a result your family and millions of others were murdered... by fascists, not by demagogues.
Your commonly shared observation that demagoguery is reappearing in various countries including America is obviously accurate but, once again, to be credible and truthful you’re going to have to drop the polite talk and call it for what it is: FASCISM.
20
The origins of that obscenity the Holocaust predates the Nazi era. In Germany, Europe and here in the United States antisemitism was alive and well feeding into the narrative used to justify the extermination of of an entire people based on bigotry and ignorance. It isn't a fly speak of time but a long arc of history that manifests to this very day, in Germany with the AfD and with the rise of fascism within European and American democracies. History repeats itself with alarming regularity.
16
And yet Brett you support a political party that is trying with all it's might to give us a repeat of the same thing. You are being disengenuous at best.
25
As a child I made the mistake of opening a coffee table book on Jewish history with pictures of the Holocaust. I am left numb at the thought that six million Jews were methodically murdered including two million children. Beethoven you say? Is there any music more appealing than the laughter of children? As to a threat to human rights in our beloved country, Jewish blood runs through most if not all of Donald Trump's grandchildren. President Trump's vigorous support for the modern Israeli state is another key to his attitude. Modern Israel was birthed with the idea that Jews needed to defend themselves after the Holocaust. Additionally a brilliant, African-American, former neurosurgeon, who grew up in Detroit's ghetto, is a key ally for the POTUS and a member of the his cabinet. African Americans under Mr. Trump's watch have the highest employment figures now since the figures have been determined. My sense is, after 73 years on this planet, that some of the concern in Mr. Stephens article and many of theses comments may be overstated.
2
I grew up on the Upper West Side in the time of Father Coughlin. The first time I felt fully comfortable as a Jew was in West Berlin where I lived on a Fulbright for the academic year 1955-56. I can have no idea how I would feel today, but I do hope that at least in Berlin if not elsewhere in Germany, the feeliing would be the same.
1
Thank you for writing your poignant column. Though I am a liberal, I have come to respect your honesty and thought-provoking columns. I listen carefully to your analysis on MSNBC and am happy you are a part of that network.
The worldwide trend of countries, including our beloved one, is a cause for alarm. Please keep writing and let us hope that someone will educate our president on our history, including the fact that Great Britain, not Canada, burned down the White House. I learned that over sixty years ago while in grammar school. What a fine scholar President Trump is indeed!
15
It is difficult in the United States to resist the growing authoritarianism, for it is broadly supported by good Americans and its leader condemns all who object to his crude viciousness.
The wave grows.
It was the same in Germany. The best-educated fled. Those who couldn't capitulated or died.
11
Like you, I was brought up with the shadow of the Holocaust. My family had roots in Germany, Poland and Russia. Of those who did not emigrate to places like the US, the ones who remained in Europe during those years, few survived and those that did were mostly silent and bore their scars internally.
While the numbered tattoos of my remaining relatives spoke of their tortured history, you rarely heard their stories.
They were silent, stoic and haunted by such unspeakable horror and inhumanity.
Raya Mazin's memoir helps you come to grips with the specific horrors of Nazi Germany, but it does not end there Bret.
It is part of the human psyche. The yin and yang of our nature and the temptation to fall prey to it. After all, human history has been colored by many holocausts.
Decades later, I went to Germany, toured the country and reluctantly found myself falling in love with the country. I was especially taken by Berlin. Such a cosmopolitan and beautiful city.
Everywhere you go, there are reminders of the Holocaust and rightfully so. Germans still need to question how a person like Hitler came to be.
Yet, if you look at the Berlin of today, it becomes impossible to understand how it happened and yet it did.
In that sense, Alexander Gauland is speaking a truth.
12 years out of a history of 1,000 years is but a speck, but what he is not speaking of is all the blood split during those 1,000 years and how modern Germany came to be.
He has much to learn. As do we all.
6
How interesting that so many of the comments about this column start out with a strident defense of today's residents of the former Third Reich -- that thousand-year Reich that crumbled in flames in 13 years. Yes there was terror but it's not on us, we didn't do it.
Neither Stephens nor I would suggest you "did it." What this column warns about is being oblivious to the potential that scapegoating and hatred of others could again surge to the political front, and just as easily as it did before. Pretending that it's all over and done is fertile ground to the next would-be autocrat, such as Mr. Gauland.
As for the deeper issue, I can say this: I am a white American who tries to be a good person and works in a helping profession. I don't have personal responsibility for the horrors of slavery or the slaughter of Native Americans. But there is a collective responsibility that some of my ancestors have forced upon me. The least I can do -- and really, it ain't much for a regular guy with no access to wealth or power -- is to face the facts of history and agitate toward greater justice in our nation, and in our world.
23
Great, Mr. Stephens.
Now, justify the Nakba.
2
Just know that I am not afraid - This gave me chills!
I am African American and I have always felt kinship with Holocaust survivors. It might be due to the fact that my first job in graduate school was an assistant to a Holocaust survivor. She shared her story with me and what I should do if the US becomes another Germany, which is happening. The bigot-in-chief is supported by his equally bigoted supporters and cowardly Congressional Republicans. These are dark times for our country.
30
It is very sad that so many Germans (alt-Germans belong to the third largest political party in their country?) are unwilling to acknowledge their terrible history. Why do these people still feel victimized? They need to get over it, just like so much of white America needs to get over its unwillingness to recognize the true horrors of slavery. I agree with you Mr. Stephens that generations of people born after 1935 have no need to feel guilt about the Holocaust, just as Americans, born after 1860 have no responsibility for slavery. But, it is imperative that people know their countries' history so as to be vigilant and vocal against all present and future incidents of bigotry and inhumanity.
6
Thank you, Bret Stephens.
7
Silence in the face of oppression is acquiescence, now as well as then.
NIE WIEDER! TO ANYONE, ANYWHERE, ANY TIME.
5
Thank you for this reminder of what human beings are capable of. The minute we forget how deep the horrifying depths of racism can descend is the moment we set ourselves up for it to happen again.
7
Regarding the notion of a guilt that might carry over from one generation to the next:
I would hope that there would be factual awareness and deep regret by the children and grandchildren of Nazis, or terrorists, or slaveholders, or of people who used and abused farm laborers, etc.
I would hope the children and grandchildren would reject the character traits that led to such behavior, and would cringe at how the ancestor had considered some people to be subhuman.
I would hope the children and grandchildren would make extra effort to do extra good for humanity.
THAT is a productive form of ancestral guilt, and of moving beyond that history.
4
The four episodes of "Einsatzgruppen" shown on Netfilx are worth watching. Stephens is right to relate this indescribably dark period to the return of demagogues in Germany and other countries as well as our own.
11
The AfD seems to speak to the need that some Germans have to maintain a country of their own- one where their culture is protected.
It seems much the same as Israel- a land where the Jewish faith, and culture, is protected and nurtured.
Nationalism, and the protection of culture, need not lead to mass murder or violence. Look at any country in the Middle East- they do not celebrate multiculturalism. They do not open their arms to foreigners.
I am sick and tired of hearing that Westerners cannot protect their way of life and culture. I am sick and tired of hearing that tolerance is a death pact- a principle so great and holy that our entire way of life should be placed at risk.
Tolerance can not be pushed to the point of tolerating the intolerant. The mass flood of economic migrants (what some call refugees) into the West is going to destroy Western values.
Most of the economic migrants hold values that are diametrically opposed to those of the West. It is naive to assume that they will change. It is sensible to assume they will not and, instead, our societies will change.
AfD is saying no to having their society dramatically changed. They are using the democratic process to fight back against the fringe minority that has made tolerance and multiculturalism a new god and who are forcing their society and its values to commit suicide.
7
Thank you for that article. We can't imagine in our modern society here in America about the struggle to survive during those times. A few Americans were introduced to those struggles, I would guess, as part of their military, government service, etc.
I wonder about the civil wars that took place in Latavia, Poland, Estonia, Hungary and the Ukraine as the Germans and Soviets divided Eastern Europe and then engaged in warfare. Did you have to take a side to stay alive? What would you have done starring down a gun barrel? What would you have done to survive? I don't know what I would do, I'm afraid.
5
Well said, Bret. Let us not forget Hitler was going to make Germany great again and many if not most Germans went along for the ride. When people dehumanize the "other" as the Nazis did with the Jews and as Trump is doing with brown skinned immigrants, very bad things happen.
WW II is fading from our collective memory. Your column is a reminder of why that history needs to be remembered.
27
I see the pro-illegal economic immigrant groups dehumanize common American citizens who have deep moral reservations with the endless importation of desperate people in order to enrich big business and decimate the working class.
Being opposed to amnesty for illegal economic migrants is not being a Nazis or even racist. Such a comparison is dehumanizing and dangerous. So is assuming people have a problem with illegal immigration because of 'brown skinned immigrants.'
3
"I have no patience for the idea that guilt carries over from one generation to the next."
I agree completely. We should not forget the past but we must also stop any identity politics that seeks to continually rub people's faces in the dirt of their ancestors, e.g., slavery for instance. I refuse to carry the 'white' guilt for something I had no part of and do not now nor ever have ascribed to. Identity politics seeks to divide and it creates backlash from other 'identity' groups. It's a dangerous ideology. Together we stand, divided we fall, and I fear we are falling fast.
4
However, Germany admitted its sins and made reparations for them. America has never officially recognized its original sin of slavery and certainly never attempted any economic reparations. I am the granddaughter of 20th century immigrants but I know that I have personally benefited from slavery that my people never participated in. Every American alive today has also.
6
I don’t wish to rub anyone’s face in the dirt of slavery, but we also cannot forget that this country was founded with the idea of slavery and separation of races. We can’t forget that after slavery was ended black people were segregated and their political power violently suppressed. When black people moved to northern cities to escape that violence like other generations of immigrants the cities were abandoned and industries moved out leaving them mostly trapped and excluded from the prospering suburbs by implicit and explicit rules. That the economic impact of those injustices are still with us today, that rules designed to exclude black people from our society are still very much alive. We really can’t make ourselves better without facing our pasts.
Interestingly the radio show “on the media” just had a show that contrasted the post war German reflection on atrocities with the lack of a serious reexamination of America post slavery. Really good.
1
If you don't think the blood of the Union Army soldiers and the Emancipation Proclamation was an official recognition of the "sin of slavery" I really have no words for you.
4
Thank you, Mr. Stephens, for a moving and frightening reminder. The comments that say the ones who were born after the events do not share responsibility with those who attempted to slaughter an entire people are wrong. "I have nothing to answer for" is wrong. I, a child of the slave-owning South, may not have participated in the actions of my slave-owning ancestors. But if I'd been alive then, I probably would have. And I do have to answer for and seek to redress my blindness to the truths of the desperation of the children, grand-children, and great-grandchildren of the slaves of my grandparent's. They lived truncated, restricted lives, to say the least. They had poor jobs, poor education, poor nutrition, restricted medical care. No opportunities to rise. The Holocaust ended. Slavery ended. But the ideology behind both is still very much alive. And we whose families participated in those crimes are the best ones to give the slaves' descendants a chance at opportunity, to keep our culture's vigilance alive. It is all too easy to hate and blame those different from us, those whom we perceive has "taking something from us," and to persecute those who remind us of the horrific acts we and ours committed against "them."
9
No one should, because of his/her serendipitous circumstance of birth (nationality, race, language, ancestors or family), be forced to bear a burden of guilt of something he/she did not commit. We understandably take pride in our heritage of the same factors I just mentioned, however we shouldn't be punished for someone else's sins. Vigilance and responsibility to our society are the key words.
3
Stay vigilant, Mr. Stephens. Your Republican party has become too uncomfortably close to becoming exactly what we battled in Germany just 80 years ago.
It CAN happen here, as the rise of trump and the unmasking of the Republican base has made all too clear.
20
Brett,
Your opinion brought tears to my eyes. We must not forget, what man can to do.
We once again are at the doorstep of inhumanity, but unlike Raya I am very afraid. How much damage will our Leader do to humanity and the world, who will step forward to stop the trajectory?
It appears that we have become very selfish, it's only about me and mine. Have we forgotten?
10
Thanks to Mr Stephens for sharing the terrible tragedy in his family that was perpetrated by the Nazis. The photo was heart-rending. At the end, he writes of the importance of memory, and his family story adds to our collective memory.
Beyond the horrors of the Nazis and their modern cousins, I was saddened at what Mr Stephens' story told us about ourselves. We actively repress those horrible memories: Mr Stephens would not bring himself to read the memoir until now. We are outraged by injuries to our own groups--Mr Stephens' disgust grew in the context of reading how his own family was affected by the Nazis--but we rarely achieve the same compassion for others. Just look at the modern state of Israel and its treatment of Palestinians.
There are many cautionary messages in this tale, most of them below the surface.
8
'Every generation has its demagogues to target minorities, extol a mythical past, and minimize or disavow historical crimes. It paves the way for the crimes of the future.
We are witnessing the return of those demagogues today — in the Philippines, Italy, Hungary, Poland, France and the United States. Germany, too. '
These are wise words.
9
As I would expect from Bret Stephens, an outstanding column.
My parents were among the lucky ones who managed to get out of Nazi-occupied Europe, but their parents’ efforts to escape were not successful, and they were all murdered. Although my mom and dad went on to lead successful lives of service as physicians in the United States, I believe their experience under the Nazis marked them for the rest of their livers.
I totally agree with Mr. Stephens that present day Germans bear no guilt whatsoever for the crimes of the Nazi era. But they do have a responsibility to remember what happened in their country. And, notwithstanding legitimate concerns about the massive number of immigrants admitted to their country without proper vetting, they now have a responsibility to vote against AfD.
14
We have not reached this point at all, but we are seeing a resurgence of exclusionary nationalism based on claims of purity and self-esteem righteous demonization of in immigrants. The level of passivity and indifference to these developments should set off loud alarm bells.
8
Please read Elie Wiesel's "Memoirs." He was with his father in Buchenwald. When his father died there, Elie wanted to cry but couldn't. "I couldn't cry. My heart was broken, but I had no more tears. I had taken leave of myself: the dead do not weep. Hardly anyone wept in the camp, as though feeling that if you started, you could never stop. Freedom, for us, would mean being able to weep again."
11
Thank you for this moving column. The collective loss of memory and the willful distortion of history is causing the world to make some tragic choices. Again.
4
Agreed. One of those choices is the flirtation once again with Marxist socialism (we just have to do it right this time) and the forgetting of the millions who died under communism at the hands of the USSR and China.
3
Great piece. I am descended from Baltic Jews who got out in time. As such, I am entitled to put a curse on those who, in whatever country, do not face up to their own society's evils and sins. This goes for right wing Germans, those who glorify the Confederate South, those who forget our genocide of Native Americans, and, unfortunately, too many others in denial over evil.
14
Why would you throw out a book? Donate it to a library book sale or Goodwill.
3
Thank you. More like this, please.
3
It amazes one to read such a liberal op-ed by a southern-strategy conservative republican. Yet Bret is not able to realize it.
5
I've visited Libau (Liepaja) Jewish cemetery in 1972 with my aunt and her mother-in-law (who was born and raised in Liepaja) and who wanted to find her family's graves from before the war... It was a horrible experience... The entire cemetery was brutalized, with the graves' stones overturned and in many places totally destroyed! Never again!
13
Keep writing the truth. Keep writing the truth. Keep writing the truth. It is the only way we have to preserve, for those who are coming behind us, what little truth is left in our world.
"Tell them I was not afraid." Oh, God, what nobility!
I, however, am afraid. Afraid of Trump. Afraid of Giuliani. Afraid of S. H. Sanders. Afraid of K. Conway. Afraid of Ryan. Afraid of McConnell. Afraid of all those for whom truth has no relevance, except in its ability to be twisted into the next nightmare.
20
People wonder why we are so protective of our homeland, Israel. So vigilant in our protection of her borders. So willing to strike with overwhelming and most often deadly force to annihilate threats to the security of our "tiny speck" of geography. The Alexander Gaulands and his ilk are the reason why. I was born 6 years after liberation of the camps and as a Jew photos such as these have haunted me my entire life. Never again....never again.
7
"…I have no patience for the idea that guilt carries over from one generation to the next. But memory, vigilance, and a sense of responsibility must."
It can't be said any better; but it can be repeated over, and over, and over.
6
I see all the makings of the kind of putrid evil that gave us the Holocaust all around us. Least we forget, America has its own long and wide history of the kind of genocide, slavery, exploitation, bigotry, hate, and indifference that made the Holocaust possible. The fact that it was so easily brought to the surface and taken such control over our nation is truly sickening.
Raya may not have been afraid of the fate that awaited her, but I am very afraid of the fate that awaits our nation.
13
I appreciate very much what Mr. Stephens is saying about the magnitude and horror of the crimes committed by Nazi Germany and the importance of never forgetting. Perhaps US citizens then might reflect on the country's slaughter of millions of natives and the kidnapping, murder and enslavement of millions of blacks, perhaps the greatest crimes against humanity every perpetrated. You know what they say about people in glass houses ...
6
Thank you.
3
I lived in Germany in the 1960s and then again from 2005-2014. The Germans of today have faced their past. Not all but many. Different then the education system in the US they teach their children in school about the War and the murder of the Jews of Europe.
In Berlin there is a memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe. It's a full city block square with a museum under the memorial. In another location is the Jewish museum recording the history of the Jews in Germany. The good and the bad. The New Synagogue, destroyed during Kristal Nacht partially rebuilt and is a museum . Outside of Munich in Dachau the first concentration camp remains as a museum and reminder of the insanity. In Nuremberg the Documentation Center is a museum about the rise of the Nazis. And there are more places where the horror of the Nazis are on full display.
To a great extent the German people get it, but not all. the current generation has moved on but not without knowing about the past. I worry more about us. DJT ran his campaign right out of the Adolf Hitler playbook and we elected him. Our collective ignorance of the past and a how fascist despots come to power scares me. Hitler at one time was a nobody. As he grew with the Nazi party and grew in popularity he was emboldened and worse in control. I think we maybe reliving the 1930s and unfortunately too few of us see the similarities. As it happened then it comes slowly until it all of a sudden becomes obvious the tyrants have arrived.
16
I concur with your impassioned post with one small but important quibble: we, the people of the United States did NOT elect The Orange Nightmare to be our president—the Electoral College put that creature in office.
4
Bret - a moving story, and I have deep sympathy for Jews and feel deep shame as a member of the human race that allowed this to happen. Today, fascists are marching in America, jack booted storm troopers are ripping babies from screaming mothers, kicking down doors and taking away fathers. How can you, of all people, support this?
16
The Israeli people lived in and had a vibrant society and built a temple in Jerusalem. They would not worship Ceasar and rebelled. The Romans exterminated them and sent them fleeing to the four winds. They were the victims of a genocide. They did not abandon their homeland.
Christians continued the genocide against the Jewish people culminating in the smoke of Auschwitz.
The Palestinians were given a homeland by the United Nations. It was created along with a Jewish state. The Palestinians and Arabs went to war instead and Israel defended and continues to defend itself.
The Palestinians could create the Singapore of the Eastern Mediterranean in Gaza. Instead of building a nation their leaders steal billions of dollars, live like kings, exterminate a democratic opposition and build rocket factories and tunnels instead of schools, infrastructure, roads and hospitals.
Israel is not the problem. The Palestinians have miserable tyrants for leaders who wage war instead of peace.
Look at what happened to the border between France and Germany after Germany became a democracy. It disappeared except as a line on a map.
10
Thank you.
3
Masha Gessen's latest book, which deals with Russia and the Putin regime, makes two (of many) points about totalitarianism. First, the autocrat needs a scapegoat and second he (always a he) looks backward to a time when the tribe was in its glory. For the Nazis it was the Jews for Putin it is the gays. For the Nazis it was the glorious days when the Teutons beat the Romans. For Putin it was the glorious days of the Soviet era. No nation has ever gained by advancing either of these reprehensible ideas. BTW, for Trump scapegoats are the Mexicans, gays, Muslims and the press and the glorious days were when the white race ruled the world.
3
Thank you!
2
Moving account. It brings a knot to my throat, though not quite. When I was younger it did, until it hurt upon witnessing or empathising with accounts like these. I guess I get less emotional now: but we must never surrender to Evil - to its banality. We must maintain the rage. It’s interesting that Gauland, the name of the proto-Nazi member of AfD, reminds me of the military grade of ‘Gauleiter’ - regimental leading officers in the Nazi SS, the most hideous scourge on humanity. It makes the language of Goethe and Beethoven repugnant - such is the abysmal corruption of all that is noblest within us that these unspeakable cowards would have us relive. Maintain the rage!
4
Any would-be leader who scapegoats minorities needs to be marginalized as quickly as possible, as no country is immune from evil.
Trump has tried to blame immigrants for wage stagnation and other problems plaguing the white majority, when the main cause is their own voting against their own economic interests.
Growth in jobs, GDP, and the stock market have all been higher historically under Democratic Presidents, a fact even President Trump has acknowledged.
It was Obama who raised taxes on the 1% to help 20 million lower-income persons get health insurance. He also argued for a higher minimum wage and more overtime pay, both blocked by Republicans.
The economy has been in record territory on most major variables since 2013-2014; Democrats simply were concerned about inequality and didn't brag about this accomplishment the way Trump is doing now.
7
The Germans have performed an interesting trick. They refer to the Nazi's as the perpetrators of WW II and the wholesale slaughter of those the Nazi's thought to be inferior (all Eastern Europeans, slavs, Russians, Poles). They don't refer to the perpetrators as Germans. And much of the world has adapted this practice. Yet the German people strongly supported the Nazi's, basked in their glory when the early victories came and in fact, were the Nazis. If they didn't buy into Nazi extremism, they still followed orders.
5
Fear this Fascism that is on the rise, this lazy sliding toward simplistic authoritarianism. Fear it!
Take the time as I have to start watching some of the Netflix documentary series on Stalin and Hitler. Look at the crowds in the background of the newsreels, whether they are crowing or cowing or cheering. Then look at some of our own American rallies for Donald Trump. Why are they worse? Hitler goes on with a vision for the German people, a compelling, spellbinding vision for his people who felt victimized by their past and oppressed by the dim future that Depression held for them. Hitler "identifies" the enemies and then vilifies them. Stalin simply removes all obstacles to his power like the gangster that he was. He speaks plainly and calmly but the effect is just as chilling as the gulag fills.
What do we have here instead? Trump, standing up there and spouting contradicting lies, seemingly incapable of finishing a sentence to his cheering crowds. He too is talking to his mostly white "victims".. The economy is roaring, Americans have hot water and two cars per family. Yet his crowds still roar at his fascist and paranoid conspiracies.
Fear him! Organize! Resist!... If you don't wan't those words to take on a grimmer meaning than make sure that you and your family vote in the coming elections! The canary in the coal mine of democracy is gasping for air. Do your share!
13
If poetry and God died at Auschwitz, and Nazi Germany soon afterward, the human spirit, its love of hope and its joy in art never died, it just slept after a nightmare.
Germany is back, a roaring economy, a culture of complexity and comfort to many, a democracy trying to adapt to tomorrow. And the liars about the nightmare times and leaders of racial warfare, they are back, too.
But the newsreels, the Nazi photos, the hundreds of books, the hundreds of poems, the scores of films and dozens of play - the museums, the university courses, the commemoratives, the new Israel are here today.
Let tomorrow bring what it may.
We who hate tyranny and racial murder are here, and not afraid. We have law and the arc toward justice and toleration, music and books and films. Let the evil on the racist Right, in every land, be afraid. Anger and race hatred die, hope keeps marching on. Hope: "Hatikvah" in Hebrew., the anthem of Israel - and a notion in the minds of all who march for freedom, in Tel Aviv, Mexico City, Selma Alabama, the West Bank, or our inner cities. Here we come again... be afraid, for we are not afraid.
5
This is one of the most beautiful stories I've read in a newspaper - certainly in many years, possibly ever.
Specks.
We've become so certain that our privileged lives are secure and that our existence has no connection to past - no connection to the DNA we are fascinated by and claim proudly - we can look at this picture and 'carry on'.
Those voices are the most precious gifts. These voices, so powerful in their simplicity - manage to pierce through all the "interference" we've created. The static of diversions and excuses, the erasure marks and smoke blown... now, standing so far down the road and looking back through that smoke, airwaves filled with that chatter and cacophony, we hear those simple words, clear and pure: "If you see my children, tell them I wasn't afraid."
That speck.
4
First article I read in the paper this morning. Of course I didn't want to look at the photos in the attached link but I felt I had to. While sitting here in the quiet of the morning watching the ocean, it was quite the sickening paradox of cruelty and peace. I'm glad I looked so I'm reminded of the work still to be done
9
It's so vital - if harrowing in the details - to read pieces like this that don't mince words. Damned right, Mr Stephens.
7
Beautiful piece. Thank you Mr. Stephens.
5
Anyone, regardless of their political persuasions, who is not outraged at the trajectory of the rhetoric and its consequences laid out in past is prologue is not paying attention. Period. Thank you Bret.
9
Mr. Gauland, that “speck of bird shit in over 1,000 years of successful German history” as you referred to it killed more than 60 million people during WWII and more than 41 million more people in WWI.
While all of those deaths may be in a far distant past to some it’s a very real and painful memory to millions more. The German and Japanese people have never really apologized to the world and the millions of families who lost loved ones due to that “speck of bird shit.”
4
Call it what one will it is still men killing women. Men killing children.
This takes the shine off heroism. The luster off war.
The dignity of man Mr Gauland? ....."a speck of bird shit"
6
Thank you, Mr. Stephens, for such a moving story. But I am afraid.
12
"... I have no patience for the idea that guilt carries over from one generation to the next."
I like Germans. I work with them. Sometimes I laugh at how utterly German they are.
But, interestingly, Mr. Stephens, I do have that patience. You state your view so dismissively of alternatives that I have to ask, who made you the judge of that?
Jews (and others) were not killed by Martians, or Australians, they were killed by Germans, in an astonishing display of the bureaucratization and mechanization of murder that enabled the act to be done on a massively industrial scale, and necessarily in full view. Everybody knew.
I don't believe the German nation as a whole has yet fully repaid its rather large debt to humanity for the enormity of the crime, and it is a quibbling detail, when speaking of responsibility, to say that those German crimes were not committed by these German people.
It is arguable, and I would certainly argue, for reasons that space won't allow to be discussed here, that the Holocaust was a uniquely German thing. We don't have to condemn living Germans to any opprobrium to state clearly that the nation, the culture, the state and the country continue to bear responsibility, and responsibility carries with it atonement.
Maybe the Tausendjähriges Reich ought to bear responsibility and atone for a thousand years. There might be a certain rough justice in that.
6
So when will your thirst for vengeance be satisfied? And by what means? And how will you track Germany’s atonement over 1,000 years?
Are you willing to demand atonement by White citizens of the US for the 300 years of slavery of Black Africans? How about the genocide against Native Americans?
Incidentally, your comment about the First World War is interesting. Surely you know that Germany didn’t start that war? A little-known place called the Austrian-Hungarian Empire did.
1
"I have no patience for the idea that guilt carries over from one generation to the next."
Well, you and the rest of the media relentlessly reminding Germany and the world of the Holocaust, to the elative exclusion of history's other horrors, appear to act otherwise.
The amount of newsprint devoted to the Holocaust, in comparison with the horrors of more recent atrocities such as Vietnam (two million dead and 10 million lives destroyed by carpet bombing, Napalm, Agent Orange and other indiscriminately deployed Weapons of Mass Destruction), the 21st century 'Holocausts' in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen causing another two million deaths and 20 million displaced citizens in 5 simultaneous civil wars, appear to have been largely forgotten in the cynical environment of "Victor's Justice."
Wasn't "Might Is Right" the principle that fuelled anti-Semitism and caused the Holocaust to begin with?
And as for prior 'holocausts', the slave trade and the genocide of the indigenous natives deserve at least a few replicas of a slave ship and burning teepees right next to the Washington Monument as permanent, life size memorials to human barbarity.
No, Mr. Stephens, horrific and unprecedented as the Holocaust was, human suffering is not a monopoly of the Jewish faith.
5
"No, Mr. Stephens, horrific and unprecedented as the Holocaust was, human suffering is not a monopoly of the Jewish faith."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
He did not say that it was; he wrote an article about someone in the German government who is trying to minimize the Holocaust. Yes: 6 million Jews were tortured, shot, hung, raped, experimented upon, and murdered in other ways during the Holocaust, 4 million non-Jews were tortured and exterminated in the same ways during the Holocaust:Poles, homosexuals, the retarded, the handicapped, the chronically ill, and any Christian that was found helping a Jew, or anyone who opposed the Nazi doctrine. No, the Jews do not have a monopoly on human suffering, but they are often singled out for anti-Semitism because of their Jewishness, just as African-Americans are singled out to be targets of racist haters. Human barbarity has no bounds. trump and sessions remind us of this every single day, as they rip children from their parents and put them wherever the hell they put them. It doesn't matter where they put them; there is no law mandating this foul act of removing these children from their parents, even if they placed them with families in trump tower. As for "Might is Right," isn't that what trump is doing and showing the world? And isn't he fueling hatred with this philosophy? Hate our allies, hate immigrants, hate minorities, hate Democrats, hate women, hate children, hate the sick, the elderly, the handicapped. HATE!
16
@Elin Minkoff, yes, I am fully aware and sickened by the atrocities the Jews suffered under Nazi Germany, but my point (which you seem to confirm later in your comment) is that suffering is universal and transcends religion and nationality.
You correctly mention Jews were "tortured, shot, hung, raped, experimented upon, and murdered in other ways during the Holocaust." But how does this differ from the genocide of native Indians, or the widespread murder of slaves and raping of their wives by plantation owners?
If it's a question of degree you have a point. But my point is that the overwhelming media focus on Jewish suffering does an injustice to other suffering peoples, including the Armenians at the hands of the Turks, the suffering caused by U.S. Wars of Choice and, not least, the one-sided war of attrition against Palestinians by Israel that is using some of the methods of the Nazis including inordinate force, collective reprisals and a strategy of "shock and awe" designed to spread humiliation and hopelessness in people whose lands are being illegally stolen on a daily basis, with only the U.S. defying global opinion in actively encouraging these atrocities.
Exclusive focus on The Holocaust will ultimately be self-defeating as the vast majority of the globe has sided with the Palestinians.
Well said!
5
This was a very moving piece. My mother was in Auschwitz and survived. We can never forget.
Thanks for writing the article.
16
Lest we forget. There are those who will sweep aside our national principles for a “deal.” Who will barter with the devil to affect a perceived “victory”, ignoring not only the consequences of their actions but the erosion of international standing and the concepts upon which this nation was built. At what point do we sacrifice all that this country has stood for over 200 years for the short-term gain of a deal or a 15-second sound bite? I take comfort in the fact that this will pass, not without some effort on our part to eradicate this cancer but that its blemish, while always discernable will ultimately not define what America means to the world!
7
Thank you for sharing this important story and reminder to be ever vigilant and brave. Sadly we are living now in our own country a slide down that path. We need people like Mr Stevens to continue speaking out.
12
It's always deeply touching to be exposed to the courage and spirit of those victims in '40's Europe. The horrors they endured were so much more horrible than anything in our experience here.
But...similar precursors are in evidence here. Because we have not experienced the horrors of Hitler and the last generation's German homicidal insanity, we cannot easily see that the same dynamics are at work in our present TrumpoRepublican Party and could not be more obvious in Trump Himself.
Do not be afraid, yes, but do not pretend that because only immigrants have died -- so far -- that the some version of the horrors cannot happen here.
Don't be deluded by the daily political chaos, which, while horrible in its insidious anti-democratic portent, masks the same venality -- albeit restrained mostly to virulent rhetoric, so far -- of the German Nazi demonization of non-white, non-cult-members.
Watch a Trump "rally". Watch Trump incite the crowd. Watch their visceral roars when he tells them who to hate.
Do not be afraid -- but do not pretend you don't see what's happening.
26
fairwitness: I am AFRAID. I SEE it, and I AM AFRAID.
6
I'm afraid too Elin.
But I think we have to conquer our fear somehow.
By speaking out, by writing, by sharing our voices we help stand against this.
By voting and helping others to vote we stand against it.
It isn't much I know but simply, one voice talking to another then another forms a chain and finally a wall, a bulwark of hope and courage.
I hope it will be enough.
1
In the beginning there was faith, which is childish;
trust, which is vain;
and illusion, which is dangerous.
Elie Wiesel "Night"
#NeverAgain2018
#VoteBlue2018
11
Much of my Ethnic Russian family perished in the Stalinist Holocaust, and under similarly hideous conditions. At times, I am challenged that our agony is less than another. Since this proposes a contest, an unseemly game, I respond in kind: "Listen, I'll see your martyrs and raise you ten".
We share equivalent horrors. I can't really "raise you ten", and vice versa. It is time to leave the game, to make of the unspeakable fate of our progenitors the inspiration for universal catharsis.
The opportunity is given to us to help the world toward that healing of its soul.
We come from traditions, each laced with both innocence and guilt. To adapt a stolen line: Each society is victimized in its own way; all societies are murderous in the same way.
Let us heal the haunting. Let us embrace each other, tell our stories, cry, shriek, and understand that our dear ones shared one universal agony. Coming from traditions, each victim and aggressor, we should be sisters and brothers one to another.
Mr. Stephens, your memoir evokes a great emptiness, coldness, and awe in me. As it must do for many multitudes.
However, in the spirit of healing, let me mention your one error.
You write that "all the glories of Goethe or Beethoven crumble to nothingness next to what happened on that beach."
To the contrary. Our relatives were killed by Unreason. Let us memorialize them by exalting Reason. Which was carried by Goethe or Beethoven as much as by any other human.
11
Trump's latest approval rating of 44 percent marks an uptick! It tells us that millions of Trump supporters are incapable of imagining there is even the remotest connection between the horrors described in this column and Trump. And though some of this 44 percent undoubtedly would say they do not like him "personally," and would prefer if he didn't shoot off his mouth and tweet so often, all of them think things with Trump are honkey dory. That they and their president are marching down the same path that led to the horrors described in this column doesn't dawn on them.
Looked at from above, the way outer space sees it, Trump's demonization of migrants, his articulation of a longing for a mythical past where minorities and women knew their place, his extolling of such authoritarian regimes as Russia and North Korea, his alienation of democratic allies, his (faux) religious appeals, his disdain for intellectuals and his contempt for reason, his lies, his bellicosity--these things and many more mark him as a fascist in the making.
All we have right now to stop Trump is a free press and free elections. In my darkest moments, I ask myself, "How long will this be the case?"
The choice we have before us is simple: Vote Blue in November.
20
Very well thought and written. Thank you! AfD is a disgrace to Germany. We are deeply ashamed.
7
The common denominator of the Holocaust, Native American extermination and every other purge is a belief that the victims are somehow less human and less valuable than the perpetrators. Scapegoating is a way to direct any group or nation's fear and frustration away from the real and often difficult causes/solutions by blaming a minority that can easily be labeled an "other". There is not a lot of difference between the United States "Manifest Destiny" which necessitated the extermination of millions of Native Americans and the Holocaust.
It is disingenuous to praise one and condemn the other. The past is past and the perpetrators are dead. The only way to honor the victims is to acknowledge their suffering and vow "never again" in their memories. Then actively work to defy human nature to insure that "never again" really is never.
11
Thank you.
I am heartbroken for the state of the world and the trend we see in the bold rise of racism and xenophobia here and abroad, as if our history and others hasn't been lesson enough. Raya's mother may not have been afraid at the end, but I am.
Thank you for her story.
Just thank you.
Jane
15
We shouldn't forget our own past, and we should fight hard not to resurrect it now that Trump has given white supremacists and garden variety racists his tacit approval. Thank you for this column.
6
We in the USA have our own specks of avian foulness -- Trump & the GOP-- to wipe clean come November. Thank you for a lucid and moving column.
13
Thank you, Brett, for your piece. It is a beautiful hymn to your Jewish ancestors.
Please, do not reduce Germany to those 20 years of history. Yes, no matter how awful, which indeed it is, if not the whole history of the country. That would be like saying that slavery defines the whole history of the USA.
Alexander Gauland is an extremist, but the AfD is not, and I wish they would expel him from the party.
Political Islam in Europe and Germany is a very serious threat, and the dangers are felt by all Germans, but especially by German Jews.
Jews are fleeing France where they are no longer safe because of political Islam. Unless something changes, Jews will be forced to flee Germany. Again. And not because of the AfD.
6
Rosemaria, please provide any examples or cites of 'political Islam' driving out Jews in Germany. Color us skeptical of your faux concern. You don't have to create a straw man out of Muslim/Jew tensions. The AfD are Nazi-lite, and you KNOW of their dangers. Just address the known evil; don't try to gin up hatred for another group. Cite, please. Oh, and kudos for the term 'political Islam'. Nice touch.
4
The alt-right is also trying to rewrite history and the status of white people in American history and culture. 'Alternative truths" are lies, pure and simple. They must be resisted with all our resolve to squash the racism, bigotry, and xenophobia gripping white America.
10
As time creates more distance between us and these events, it is so incredibly important that wonderful writers like Bret remind us of how some can rationalize unthinkable behavior and get more than enough followers to participate in the atrocity. The notion that "We will never forget. We will never let it happen again" can and is being ignored every single day. How many people die every day in this world because they don't agree with a certain political view or because their corrupt government is taking the money that should be used for essentials for survival or because we will not help to protect them from brutality? For here in America many find it easy to say "Not my problem" or to brandish another people as rapists and drug abusers and murderers when all they really are is scared. In any neighborhood in America you can find at least one person engaging in behavior that is dangerous, offensive or criminal. But we don't burn down the area to oust the offenders. We are more than willing to throw out the entire bushel of apples after finding one or two rotten ones in the mix. Many are so eager for winning or for greatness they would rationalize just about anything and cheer on those who embrace offensive thinking and behavior. What we choose to ignore is that we don't have to be the ones who turn on the gas to participate in the atrocity. The ones who turn the other way or ignore the pleas for help are just as guilty as the ones who do.
7
"But memory, vigilance, and a sense of responsibility must. For Germans, that requires wiping clean from their Parliament that disgusting speck of avian foulness known as Alternative für Deutschland the next time they go to the polls."
Either "America First" or "Alternative fur Deutschland," both call to alienate, divide and demonize those who look or sound different from "us." This is all going in a very wrong direction.
7
I'll never forget the sentiment I read about decades ago from a holocaust survivor in Vienna. She was warned to flee from the impending Nazi persecution but stayed because she couldn't conceive that such barbarity could possibly occur in the enlightened, modern, cafe society she grew up in. By the time she accepted that the unthinkable was happening, the window of opportunity for her family to leave was gone.
Few of my European relatives survived the holocaust. Some were able to get out before it was too late.
7
"Every generation has its demagogues." True enough, but now western democracies are voluntarily voting them into power.
As institutional memory of the unspeakable horrors wreaked by Nasism and Stalinism fade into the wallpaper, uncurious citizens begin to tolerate, then mindlessly embrace, monsters and quislings to control them.
Fascism by default; it has happened before and will happen again in the absence of energetic activism and confrontation from decent people.
15
"Fascism by default; it has happened before and will happen again in the absence of energetic activism and confrontation from decent people."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Yes, John, there is another saying, something like: "The only thing necessary for evil to triumph if for good men to do nothing in the face of evil." And as far as trump and his good 'ol "boys" are concerned: "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Fascist trump, and his equally Fascist henchmen must be stopped at all costs. If they are not, The United States of America, and all you THOUGHT that it was, and all you THOUGHT that it stood for...will be gone, and in its place an authoritarian, despotic, dictatorial, Fascist band of RULERS (not public servants...yes, we pay their salaries, but they RULE us...they are supposed to REPRESENT us) will make of your lives, and of your children's and grandchildren's lives, (if you have any life left that is worth living after they remake this nation in their own greedy, arrogant, racist, entitled, selfish, hate-mongering images) something small and ugly...something that you would have never thought of as "American," or as "Freedom," or as "Decency," or as "...One nation, under God, with liberty and justice FOR ALL..." Yes, in the face of what trump and the gop are doing to our beloved country, the Pledge of Allegiance has become just a sick joke...and that is why those NFL players take a knee.
2
And yet despite the horrendous event in human history, Jews in Germany and Latvia lived as ordinary citizens of those countries with no interest in emigrating to a separatist state for Jews(."Her memoir recalls a happy Jewish childhood during Latvia’s independence between the wars....") Read "Black Earth" by Yale scholar T. Snyder. It will open your eyes as to how an unusual confluence of mad German politics and Russian aggression stoked latent anti-Semitism abetted ironically by some secular Jewish led radicals, in a power vacuum.
The absence of any institutional process of justice or law enforcement left vulnerable citizens, including Jewish, Gypsies, and other minorities, subject to violent anarchy, and vulnerable to loca gangs allied with German anti-Semites. The breakdown of law and order led to the spontaneous lynch mobs and injustice.
6
Yes, Germany shouldn't ignore its past. But neither should the U.S. ignore our treatment of Blacks, Indians and others.
6
Every time I see a picture of these people before, during, and after they have been murdered something dies inside of me. Its as if no amount of empathy, grief, or despair can ever be enough to ever match what a horrific act of barbaric cruelty and inhumanity my eye has now become a witness to.
What's worse to contemplate is that dark inner physical expression of hatred and contempt still exists in the hearts of many people today.
7
Be sure to see Mr. Stephens' slobbery praise of Richard Grenell, the U.S. ambassador to Germany (NYT May 12) who recently said it was his goal to "empower" anti-establishment conservative forces in Europe in an interview with right-wing news outlet Breitbart.
"The Alexander Gaulands of the world" surely applauded.
So much for "memory, vigilance, and a sense of responsibility.."
5
Mr. Stephens, thank you.
2
Excellent article. The willingness of human beings to brutalize and murder their fellow human beings has always boggled my mind. Never again!
6
Claiming that Gauland speaks for all followers of Alternative for Germany is a little extreme. It's like saying that whenever David Duke speaks he is reflecting what Donald Trump thinks.
But, wait ...
5
Thinking that somehow humans have evolved from a mere 78 years ago is a fools errand. We must always be on guard that those amongst us that embrace hate and demagoguery are never allowed into power and if they attain it are removed as quickly as possible.
8
Thank you for sharing this story.
4
Glad to see the awesome writer Bret Stephens emerge from his political cacoon and give readers this gem. The lesson to be learned is not only that any rebirth of Fascism in Germany must be erased before it becomes normalized, but also that there is no place for Far Right Nationalism any place in the civilized world. Nationalism is toxic for minority populations of every country at any time, and will only degrade the humanity of the majority. This is true not only in Germany, but also in Trump’s America, where previously assimilated racial and ethnic minorities now live in fear, despite Constitutional protections, and the humanity and decency of the elected majority has been degraded. Unlike Mr. Stephens’ Holocaust ancestors whose bravery was remarkable, we should all be very afraid and rid ourselves of this Nationalist plague before we are all contaminated.
10
In the environmental community there is a saying "that the fight is never over, one wins a battle only to go on to the next one". It would seem like when it comes fascism "one wins a war, only to go on to the next demagogue".
4
Your beliefs become your thoughts,
Your thoughts become your words
Your words become your actions,
Your actions become your habits,
Your habits become your values,
Your values become your destiny.
Mahatma Gandhi
In my heart, Gaulands has already returned to dust.
Raya’s spirit lives forever.
6
Bearing witness is what journalism does best. It’s why authoritarians first attack the media.
4
Beautifully written. I didn't know the extent of your intelligence until I saw you on the Bill Maher show. You acquitted yourself very well and I look forward to hearing you again. I liked that you identified as a Republican and were so clear minded and intelligent. It gave me hope. Perhaps you can change more people's minds who identify similarly.
7
Thank you for writing this.
4
What a fabulous message to pass down to the ages: "Tell them I was not afraid."
Let's all remember, here in the United Stattes, that we have our own "disgusting speck of avian foulness" to remove the next time that WE go to the polls, this November, and again in 2020.
2
A deeply moving account and one that needs to be repeated time and time again. But I'd like to pick up on your impatience "for the idea that guilt carries over from one generation to the next." I'm not quite sure what you mean, so I may be misunderstanding. I do know by painful experience that victimization by one generation can set up the same behavior in the victim toward members of the nexst generation.
3
Raya's mother wasn't afraid. But fear, of Blacks, of Hispanics, of independent and powerful women, fear seems to be the driving motivation behind Mr. Bannon and Mr. Trump's ideology. Look at photos of Trump as he walks around striking manly poses--look in his eyes--fear looms there. Make America Great (read: White) Again is based in fear of the future, fear of change, fear of not being automatically hailed as an ubermensch just for being a white male. It's all rather pathetic, really.
But what a way to go out--"tell them to continue living knowing that I was not afraid." I hope I will keep that with me until I can use it at my end.
6
I do not for a minute discount what happened under the Nazis in the Final Solution/Holocaust/Shoah , but wonder about the whitewashed genocides in American history from the systemic destruction of the First Peoples to the uncounted death & suffering of Africans brought to these shores as slaves followed by the lynchings & firebombings of Jim Crow.
How many American children told of the sorrows of the Holocaust have been told the full and true story of the Trail of Tears which was a death march that unfolded multiple times as the tribes of the southeast were systematically driven to what is now Oklahoma? How many know that was not one event but a repeated one that resulted in the death of countless people from the very young to the very old. How many know that this was done despite a Supreme Court ruling against the removal? Or that apparently the American people were fine with this crime against humanity? One of the paths followed on the trail passes right through my home town and is noted only by a small and largely forgotten roadside marker.
How many Americans have a fully informed understanding of what was done to the Africans brought to the Americas and their descendants for hundreds of years of slavery followed by another century of repression, discrimination, marginalization, systemic incarceration and other indignities?
America seems to have given itself a pass on a bloody and brutal past while pointing a finger at Germany. We need to own up to our own evil past.
6
We have come a long way since I was a child in the 1950's. Ignorance protected us but it began to peel away and as it did, and as artists and musicians and writers and people who were honest, fearless and curious forced themselves to look we began to see.
America IS seeing. We see what we did and we are ashamed and determined to stop further depredations. But it's crucial to ensure that our children are educated honestly and fearlessly.
And, adults must continue to learn as well. I'm getting old and didn't realize until fairly recently the extent of Jim Crow, how many people were murdered, how people were driven off their land, deprived of a livelihood and of course, of a political voice.
Native American history is if anything even more obscured and less understood. But it's there if only people will see it. It must be taught. We have made progress. When I was a kid Indians were "savages," in just about every TV show or film. That began to change though, and the power of media to obscure can also enlighten.
I'm scared to death of our current "president" and his dehumanization of people. That's translating into brutality, at the border, in cities, even businesses are being attacked. Citizens are being attacked because they look Hispanic.
The Holocaust isn't something that happened. It is always on the verge of happening again.
2
I am undertaking to study up on Weimar Germany because I fear that is the best analogy for where we are and the peril we face as a nation. I don't think the demographics can catch up fast enough.
3
A powerful piece, Mr. Stephens. Extremely powerful.
Unfortunately, it will go unread by those who most need to hear its message: You may talk all you want of alternative facts; there are no alternative truths.
6
Wow. Courage and grace. Breathtaking to understand its truth.
21
"Tell them I was not afraid" strikes the heart like a dagger. Bravery in the face of certain death but more worried about the effect of her death on her children, and how they would remember her is of the very highest order.
55
Superb.
But don't reduce Latvia to mere victimhood. In one sense, Latvia's choice was between Hitler and Stalin. Or even worse they had to choose between joining whoever occupied them and fighting the powerful occupier. But Latvia went beyond what Hitler required. Before the Wehrmacht even arrived in 1941, Latvians massacred whole villages of Jews. And Latvia's Waffen SS units never lacked for volunteers. The Nazis rated only one other of the many Waffen SS units throughout the German Empire to be as reliable (not an entirely nice thing to be, actually) as Latvia's.
28
And yet somehow it is not the Alexander Gaulands of the world that I find as frightening as the "liberal" darlings Tamika Mallory, Linda Sarsour, under the cover of a faux "liberalism" attack Jews under the guise of criticizing Israel. The narratives emerging about Jews and Israel's right to exist - and by extension the denunciation of those who support it coming from a segment of the left are downright scary these days. Recasting Jews as committing a genocide - as the white colonialist rather the victim of white Europe - creating a wedge between Jews and the civil rights causes they have championed for decades. The threat is real - talk to any young Jew on a college campus out here in LA - and they feel excluded, threatened and a vitriolic atmosphere on campus. Gauland and his ilk make strange bedfellows with sympathetic segment of liberals- who rationalize their anti-Semitism they inherited from Europe by saying that Jews lost the right to be viewed as sympathetic minorities because of Israel's fill in the blank political activities. Interestingly, I've never once heard those passionate Israel critics care at all about a similar dispute at the Pakistan/India border. I wonder why...
35
Since you ask -- and people who reflexively defend Israel's policies so often do ask -- we criticize Israeli aggression because we enable it and we are paying for it. I may find Hindu aggression shameful but it is not my shame and I don't see what I can do about it. Those weapons killing Palestinians were bought by Americans. We are complicit.
6
Opposing Likud and their racist policies is not the same as opposing Israel. It most certainly isn’t anti-Semitic. Israeli’s have a choice; reject Likud and Netanyahu, or face a global divestment campaign modeled on South Africa. Apartheid cannot survive in a true democracy.
5
Because they expected better of a formerly persecuted people? I'm Jewish and ashamed of Israel.
8
This phenomenon is not just Germany. It's throughout Europe. To make matters worse, it has been the US leading the charge.
“Let them call you racists,” Bannon said to members of the French National Front party at their annual congress. “Let them call you xenophobes. Let them call you nativists. Wear it as a badge of honor.” This is the guy who was instrumental in getting us to DJT.
“history is on our side” because “globalists have no answers to freedom.” In case you don't know, "globalist" is white supremacist for "Jew".
DJT opened his run for president with a blatantly racist attack on Mexican immigrants, legal and otherwise.
Read the posts of trump supporters in your local media. One of the big changes has been the fact that there is no longer any effort to hide their neo-nazi views. And yes, the proud marchers with their tiki torch parades really are neo-nazis, just like in Munich in the 30's.
65
So true--my husband regularly points out little similarities to the early Nazi days that are occurring here--things that could easily pass by unless one knows of the insidious ways the Nazis came to be in power. If the Nazis were a speck of bird shit as Mr. Gauland says, then Germany has very large birds.
6
Mr. Stephens has written an important piece about the history of Germany and its effects on individuals in that awful time. I have just finished reading Jon Meacham's book, "The Soul of America."
I was hoping that this book would make me more optimistic about our country's future by looking at the finer parts of our history. Alas, it did not. Only kicking out the people in charge of our government will make me feel optimistic, not by looking at the golden moments of our American history. I'm looking for a "golden moment" this November.
31
We must never forget and we must not be afraid!
Hate is the same wherever it is and whoever it is directed at and we must all work to stop it.
Thank you for a wonderful article and story.
13
The Poles were caught between the Nazis and the Soviets in WWII. They lost two million civilians in German camps. They fought the Nazis in Warsaw against impossible odds. And many Polish refugees fought with the Allies on D-Day and after. Upon liberation from the Germans, Stalin took control of the country, redrawing the borders so that the wealthiest industrial areas became Soviet. During Soviet rule Poland lost hundreds of thousand of civilians.
Many Polish treated the Jews badly. Nonetheless, Churchill said his greatest regret was not being able to liberate the Poles from Soviet rule. There is no debating that the Poles suffered terrible losses during World War II and after. And there is no debating that however much some Poles mistreated the Jews, they were not responsible for the Holocaust. The Polish government has made it illegal to blame the Poles for the Holocaust, which is entirely accurate. Somehow this is seen as a despicable right wing enactment. Those who adopt this view need to study history.
5
Yes, the idea of passing of guilt to following generations is a difficult one to support even though few have qualms about extolling the virtues of noble ancestors and it’s implications for them and their families centuries later.
With that in mind what would you make of a later generation extolling the virtues of the technical “accomplishment” of a previous generation such as this item from a 1993 NYTimes article dealing with a German patent:
“I was particularly struck by the quoted statement of the senior engineer Fritz Sander that the company's diabolical design innovation -- a crematorium that used the fat of the burning corpses as fuel to operate the furnaces -- "could not yet be approved" for a patent because it was classified by the Third Reich as a state secret.
Topf did eventually receive the patent it coveted for the crematoriums the company had supplied to the Nazis. The patent (No. 861,731) was issued by the (West) German Patent Office to "J. A. Topf & Sohne, Wiesbaden" on Jan. 3, 1953 -- eight years after the war's end. The official patent document's title is "Process and Apparatus for Incineration of Carcasses, Cadavers and Parts Thereof." “
Maybe guilt is not inheritable but something awfully close to it may be.
9
Brett, thank you for this. Thank you for telling Raya's story - and thousands, millions like her. I understand why it took so long to read her story.
I grew up in the 50's and, as a fifth-grader, discovered Hitler and the concentration camps (because I loved The Sound of Music). I always wondered, with fear in my heart, if it could ever happen in America. That fear has never left my heart completely. Most of the time it's been just a tiny sliver. I've watched politics/governing all my life, waiting, watching to see any glimmers of 'yes, it could happen here'. Now the fear is more than a sliver. Way more. With Trump, the Tyrant and the cowardly Republicans and weak Democrats, with xenophobia and racism and misogyny growing daily, even with all the big steps we've taken to be a more inclusive country, I am now afraid.
Perhaps I should use the words, 'very concerned'. Perhaps I must break myself of saying the words, "I am afraid". Fear freezes the body and the soul into inaction for me. Growing up in an abusive household, I know what fear does to me. I freeze.
I will think of Raya's mother. She will be my light that I carry to fight Mr. Trump with all my being so that it never, ever happens here.
22
"Successful history?" 1000 years worth? No place has such a thing unless all the mistakes and crimes are ignored. Visiting family in Germany & Austria 40 years ago, none of my cousins had learned about their own history of the 30's and the war - it was ignored in school as irrelevant to the present day. Austria claims to be the "first victim" of Hitler, not a willing participant. Delusional. Gauland was born in 1941, so he knows from about 1947 on, and, living in the east, he had the benefit (?) of revisionist east German education - Soviet perfectly good, but German, British & American totally and always bad. Gauland is a product of his time and place. That is, an old fool.
12
"It paves the way for crimes of the future"
Bret, you are a Republican, you do not see the intolerance that seethes within your party? On the Left, it exists as well, but that intolerance is for ignorance and deceit.
6
Mogwai -- pay intention. The intolerance on the left is for any who disagree any of the pillars of the progressive church and that narrative that surrounds them.
1
Thank you, Bret.
3
Patriotism is the belief in action that makes the ideals of your country come to life in politics, in how we act in everyday transactions, in how we present ourselves to the world. Patriotism demands we act for change for the better.
Nationalism, jingoism, and a lot of other -ism use the ideals as a disguise and distraction from actions and beliefs that are corrupt or heinous. Alexander Gauland excuses genocide and vast killings of civilians who had no protect as a "blip;" nothing can dent his picture of national greatness, not even the mechanical killing of millions of women and children.
We aren't anywhere near there yet, although our policy of separating immigrant families is a step in the direction of not seeing others as fully human. Our national idiocy of conflating kneeling during the anthem as anti-military rather than a pro-life protest, demonstrates that we are blind to our flaws and willing to remain so. That is jingoism, not patriotism.
We have to be able to believe that we can be heinous and act heinously, to assure that we will put in place protections that keep it from happening. In a year that has seen neo-nazis marching with torches, immigrants treated as trash, and corporatism running amok over personal rights, I'd say we have built the base for Fascism to thrive.
21
Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.
--Albert Einstein
This was before the measles vaccine that prevented people from actually dying from it.
9
This is horrible! This is an example of Trump's very fine people!
6
Beautiful column Sir. In my twenties my father finally spoke of his WWII experiences. The one that troubled him the most was when he liberated a concentration camp in what was then the British sector. The horrors he witnessed there stayed with him for the rest of his life.
My family includes Jews and Muslim's. I am neither but when I hear people deny the holocaust I am reminded that history can repeat itself. Today's demagogues are no better than Hitler, Stalin, etc. and that includes Trump.
Recent news of a young man ripped from his school in Iowa and deported to Mexico where he was then murdered brings it home to me. Trump, Sessions, GOP leadership, and the 40+% of Americans who approve of Trump are complicit.
So, I fear for my family.
Thank you for this column Mr Stephens.
24
We should all abhor fascism, but of both the right and the left. The idea that Germans should have to wear Stephen's badge of shame of "Nazi" because they were born German, is the same type of race based thinking that Nazis promoted. Germans who are not Nazis themselves have nothing to prove to him or anyone. This isn't promotion for AfD, a group that I don't think I like much either (although, I don't know if there is a group or political party I do like). But, he can't tell Germans or Germany if they want absolution, they must vote the way he thinks. They don't need his absolution.
1
slavery...native Americans & glass houses
21
Sigh...
You don’t get it.
This article wasn’t about placing blame or finding scapegoats. It was about facing humanity’s worse with humanity’s best. It is about keeping one’s eyes open and it’s about the willingness to accept truth. It’s about making sure that this murderous behavior doesn’t happen again.
The fact that the USA has sinned doesn’t negate the sins of others. It doesn’t make the people of the United States incapable of pointing out the evil actions of others.
Also, if one is going to toss about false equivalencies comparing Nazi Germany and the United States then you failed to mention the atrocities and genocide suffered by the native Americans.
The ‘what-aboutism’ our society is currently suffering from doesn’t help us learn how to deal with the evil currently among us; it just lulls us into complacency.
2
American citizens are duly ashamed of its treatment of Native Americans and does not see it as a speck of bird shit on our glorious history. Nor do we try to erase it from our memory. I have wonder why that is all that comes to your mind when reading Mr. Stephens column.
3
I still have my father and mother’s passports with the big red letter J in them together with their Nazi-added middle names of Israel and Sarah.
The passports are interesting in a menacing way: sturdy brown covers, thick, expensive paper, sharp well lighted photos, lots of swastikas, very modern typography, official looking stamps and elaborate handwriting; all obviously signifying the desire of German officialdom to put their best foot forward in representing Hitler and Nazi Germany to the world.
You could not beat the Nazis when it came down to typography, good penmanship and uniformed bureaucrats who coupled robbery with intimidation and ominous threats.
America is not yet lost as long as our alt-right is not issuing passports as threatening as these.
But give them two or six more years in the company of Donald Trump, and they will try.
https://www.ushmm.org/learn/timeline-of-events/1933-1938/law-on-alterati...
10
A fear of mine is that the ability to track any individual who uses any technology to communicate or do business - as they do not conduct everything in person and with cash - would mean that there truly, would be no way to hide for targeted people.Invasion of privacy is a term that some younger folk -so of my relatives - think the worry is quaint. It is not: it allows for the identification, location and control of finances and movement of anyone - should we descend to a dictatorship in need of scapegoats.
3
Thank you so much for this. As trump goes to the G6 (not 7) with no sense of history, shaming us, and suggests that another tyrant in Russia join their group, your column really hits home.
10
The Holocaust wasn't the world's last genocide, or even Europe's. Srebenica was a full 50 years later. Even today there are genocidal furies at large in parts of Africa and the Middle East.
But the lessons ARE sinking in: even measured against the 5,000 years of ALL human history the Holocaust was not a "speck." It can't be dismissed and it certainly won't be forgotten.
5
Mr. Gauland falsely insinuates that “Germany’s” 1,000 year history is different than the period of 1933 to 1945. Witch Hunting, pogroms, and religious violence are laced throughout those 1,000 years. And is it just coincidence that he used one thousand years as his frame of reference. My fears are that we’ve seen these kinds of movements before.
11
Guilt DOES carry over generations, unless the idea of committing atrocities is repugnant to the vast, vast majority of the population. I don't know about Germany, but I have NO doubt a Neo -Nazi Regime could thrive in the USA. Some are already goose stepping back to the future, mostly in Red States. Trump calls them HIS base. Do you think it's coincidental that he's of German ancestry ??? Don't be naive, or obtuse. It's unbecoming.
Seriously.
20
And it is worth remembering with what alacrity many in Eastern Europe and the Baltic and Balkan states helped with the German’s murder machine. I expect many Americans who understand the German guilt are wholly unaware of how citizens of the “conquered” countries helped slaughter their Jewish countrymen and women...and children.
16
Jews who survived the Shoah were murdered. Survivors were put in concentration camps by the British.
I run out of words and I run out of tears.
1
The tragedy redoubles. People no longer know what the Holocaust was.
This terrifies me.
My family knows - they fled pogroms in Russia. We won't forget. But this is a tiny number of people, still only a handful of Jews on the entire planet.
Seeing democratic ideals eroded, attacks on our allies, our so-called leader's obsession with demagogues, dictators and Putin -
We are tearing children away from their mothers now. We victimize the most harmless, the poorest, the defenseless.
I felt this on my neck, the hairs stood up - Mexicans are rapists. There are fine people on both sides.
10
Formerly Alexander Gauland was a member of the Christian Democratic Party. Already in earlier times at the helm of the office of the minister president of Hesse he showed his corrupt character.
Later, disappointed by Merkel's policies he left the CDU out of hate and joined the ranks of the new AfD party. He hates the current government and his wordings are "spilled hate". You better forget him because he is an outspoken despicable person.
6
Perhaps because I knew so many soldiers and civilians of that generation, both German and American, I feel the obligation to oppose demagogues and yes, fascists like Putin, no matter where they are found. Yes, Trump is at least a fellow traveler in those ranks.
10
It is the child in the lead photo, hiding her head, hunched and face unseen, against the background of what is to come that conveys the horror and breaks my heart and should galvanize all of us to oppose hatred and oppression wherever it comes from.
I agree with the author who has "no patience for the idea that guilt carries over from one generation to the next". However we cannot forget where hate and intolerance comes from. The new generation learns from the previous. Racism, fear, and loathing for others must be passed from one generation to the next in order to survive. Children are very good at learning these lessons from their parents even when they are not overtly taught.
13
This is truly heartbreaking. I just hope the tide of ignorance and complacency is weaker than the evil men and women who would ignore these crimes, or worse, try to reshape history into their vision.
1
I made myself read this piece despite the "emotional dread that keeps you from reading," as the author states. In doing so, I was bettered by the experience. The sobering reality here is that I cannot understand how so many in the mainstream of humankind in Germany allowed such a monster as Hitler to come to power in their country. A far more disturbing thing to me is that previously mainstream Republican human beings have now cowered to our own monster, Adolph Trump, and allow him to ascend, without standing up to him. His "rallies" are frightening, and he is our own Mussolini, with his own propaganda machine (Fox). This story from Mr. Stephens is a clarion call to America to recognize the potential consequences if we ignore evil in our own midst and allow it to ascend. God forbid that we ignore this clarion call. If we first build a wall, then when will we next find ourselves digging trenches?
20
Your reluctance to read Raya's book rang a bell for me. I grew up hearing stories of what my Armenian grandmother suffered in Syria (near the Turkish border) in 1914 and 1915. I have several books that deal with the Armenian Holocaust, and I just can't read them.
9
And what does it mean for the United States?
3
It means that those of us who are able should leave the country pronto, especially those of us who have young children. A small number made them out in time(Paul Tillich and his family, for example) but most did not (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, for example.)
1
Optimist that I am, this is what will become of “make America Great Again,” where American intelligence, virtue and passion are awakened to refute the nasty ignorant tribalism that threatens us.
Well done.
7
Powerful stuff. Can humanity choose good over evil? Some days I say yes and some days I say no.
4
It's all about money.
2
We need vigilance and total engagement to defeat this poisonous return to fascist ideas and racist demagoguery. Thank you for this remembrance. We must never forget how this happened little by little with the help of the propaganda organ of the day, the radio. Today, it's multifaceted assaults on truth and civility through more media.
We will not be the "good Germans" of these days. The avian foulness of the day is being led by the current occupant of the White House. We need to clean it out with our votes, as long as we still have them.
9
This column was one of the grimmest reads I have endured. What with all of the daily news about the American president and his horrible administration--aided and abetted by a Congress that would rather count money than legislate for the greater good--I thought I had steeled myself for more of the same. And then I read this column.
Mr. Stephens, if I say that I am sorry for what happened to all those women at the Liepaja beach, it would probably seem both trite and insincere. I am not Jewish but I am a human being. Human cruelty knows neither race nor sex nor border. Black sharecroppers in the American South have told similar tales and, unfortunately, to shrugs, much like you and your fellow Jewish citizens feel when their enemies declare that the Holocaust was a rumor or, worse, it never happened.
I wonder if Alexander Gauland has ever been afraid of anything in his life other than the burnishing of "die heiligen deutschland," the holy or sacred Germany. The parallels between Herr Gauland and Donald Trump are frighteningly similar: both extol the virtues of a nation's history while minimizing the inconvenient facts along the way. Herr Gauland's crude comparison of Hitler to nothing more than a bird's droppings find their American resonance in "Make America Great Again."
The thin ghost of your family's history on your bookshelf finally beckoned you into another place, to see and feel, if not to hear--and, perhaps that, too--the awfulness of what the human condition can be.
9
Alexander Gauland contrasts the Nazi era with over 1,000 years of successful German history. He might at least have said "respectable" or "decent" or "no more than commonly sinning" history.
Anyway, many countries have had 1,000 years or more of successful history and yet are expected to take their monstrous outbursts seriously. A thousand years ago, Japan had already produced a writer whose self-aware characters foreshadowed those of Shakespeare: the court lady Murasaki Shikibu, author of The Tale of Genji.
In the 20th century, both the admirable Japanese and the admirable Germans had monstrous outbursts. Japan's atrocities, which are sometimes collectively called the Asian Holocaust, were more diffuse than Germany's. German society has been obliged to confront its guilt more painfully than Japanese society, where the same era is commonly glossed even by centrists as a "mistake" most regrettable for having brought suffering on the Japanese themselves.
Politicians of both countries may blandly allude to "mistakes" or lapses of "successful history". However, the people of both countries -- and, yes, younger ones like the US -- have an obligation to learn, teach, and insist upon their true stories. It's not only a moral obligation to the victims, but also a political obligation to a world that's currently struggling to determine where its history will go from here.
7
Gauland later said his choice of word "Vogelschiss"was inappropriate and did not mean to downplay what happened during the holocaust. One should understand the real issue that is being played out in Germany today. Right now there is a political and social battle between the idealists who suggest everything "German" must be destroyed and replaced with European or other utopian idealistic identity. AFD is saying it's OK for Germans to be proud of the great historic achievements and not purely focus on the 12 years of Nazi atrocities - that era does not represent German, especially the post war generations. The refugee problem really brought this to a head as the German government is spending more than 30 billion Euro per year on the refugees while cutting spending on retirement and other social benefits of its own citizens. So people are angry and voted for the AFD, despite some of the crazy things the say sometimes. This trend will continue despite some nervousness that a "right wing" party will ultimately return to the 1930s. Modern Germans want to use the ballot box for change because the government isn't listening and wondering why it's a shame to be proud of the country for what it stands for today. That is another issue that will play out in this debate later on. By the way any recent anti Semitic acts are caused by the Muslim migrants who hate Jews and Israel.
3
Thank you for explaining these important nuances to the American readers.
4
"We must never forget." This is what my teacher told our class as she had us watch a film of the Jewish people as they were liberated from the concentration camps. I was in the 5th grade and was horrified by the skeleton people and didn't understand how anyone could do that to another person.
My grandfather who fought in WWII is still alive. He and others like him didn't defeat facism only to see it crop up again at the end of his life. We cannot and must not allow anyone, especially Germans minimize the horrors that led to the death of 6 million Jews and other outcasts who's lives were deemed unworthy by their neighbors.
It's not enough that the remains of Auschwitz still stands as a reminder. We must renounce hatred of minorities anytime it crops up.
We must also remember that economic insecurity post WWI allowed Hitler to gain power. This is why inequality is so dangerous. People want security and when a monster promises to make it all better they will follow him off a cliff even if it means their neighbors die as a result.
13
The opinion piece helps us to never forget but just as important is to raise your Jewish children (whose mom, I hope is Jewish as well) to understand that they carry greatness in their genes and the responsibility to never treat the stranger as these people treated us.
8
Such a moving piece. Inasmuch as history repeats itself it never does so in the same tone and tempo. The Trump administration will never make the trains run on time, to put it horribly, but they are using all the tools at their disposal to inflict mass casualties daily: destroy health care, allow opioid addiction, incite gun violence and racist hatred, license ICE and the police to kill at will, wage war at home and abroad, destroy the environment, devastate workplace safety. There probably won't be mass graves, but there will be many, many individual ones. We don't have to invoke slavery or the trail of tears to recognize how America is destroying its own.
8
Speaking of disgusting avian foulness, it would have been worth quoting Trump's new ambassador to Germany. He proclaimed in an interview with Breitbart that for him elevating Germany's rightist nationalist parties was a high goal.
Let us not forget that last time it did not turn out well.
43
Calls for the ambassador's removal back to the U.S. are growing. Sadly, another non-reader who refuses to to listen and learn.
5
How do you suppose Trump would react were the German Ambassador to the US to begin admiring the Democrats? Suggesting that the Democrats need to win in November?
3
I am very touched by this article.
16
There is no them and us. We are all members of the same human species, We share more similarities than differences. My father was born in Scotland and my mother’s parents in Russia. Living is Seattle for the past 41 years, I now have a Chinese dentist, an Indian gasterontologist, a female Nigerian rheumatologist, and had labroscopic surgery performed by a young Vietnamese refugee. My cardiologist and GP are both WASPs. I love all of them. I served In the Air Force in Vietnam and in the segregated south. Gender, race, eetnic bacgrond or religion do not define personal quality. Genocide is the most horrible crime. Never again for anyone.
16
For anyone who does not understand why Israel never flinches in maintaining the existence of a Jewish state, Raya's heart wrenching story of suffering, and refuge, could help them to understand.
5
Remember, lest you forget.
6
Unfortunately, it seems that even here the slogan of the day appears to be one country, one people, one leader.
12
My God, what a story.
Credit to you, Mr. Stephens. I have grown to admire you and your columns, to say nothing (!) of the opinions you offered when you were a panelist in Bill Maher's episode a couple of weeks ago. (Bravo!!!)
I truly admire your inferences in this essay too.
Not only that crazy german Gaulands, but also the thinly veiled description of the sorry excuse for a human being we now have residing in the WH.
Thank You.
20
When Trump started out his presidency by refusing to honor the millions of Jews on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, I remember how furious I was.
His cohorts made the ridiculous statement that others had died too, so why should we just talk about the Jews who died.
Right then I knew that this entire Trump family were some of the worst people on earth. How could his daughter, sweet complicit Ivanka who embraced Orthodoxy after marrying Jared Kushner not say something?
It was one of those times that the couple were skiing in Aspen or golfing in Connecticut...who can remember--who cares?
My dad’s side of the family escaped from Prague and Bavaria-once called Bohemia. My dad soldiered for the US in WWII. He never spoke about his experience..but once said: “It wasn’t enough what we did.” And would leave the room. There was a sadness in his parents and they just didn’t enjoy life. I finally figured out that they had left so much behind.
My Army officer spouse was stationed three times in Germany and my dad proudly took him around to the VFW and American Legion...but only to watch baseball on TV or go golfing. My husband said that dad NEVER talked about the Army with him.
No one in the Trump family ever served. Even Trump’s grandfather Friedrich found his fortune in the USA(restaurant and beverage guy in the Klondike). When he returned to Bavaria he was not allowed back in as he failed to serve.
Trumps lived in a different world than my family. He never grew up.
42
I am not a fan of the injustices that Israel commits today but I am certain that events like the holocaust should never be allowed to be committed again. And that means any small flame of racism should be immediately stamped out, wherever it is found. While I can understand the existential fear that the holocaust, and hundreds of years of similar pogroms, have stamped on the Jewish people, I cannot understand how that fear can lead people to hold the same kind of racism in their hearts. While racism exists and people act on it, Hitler is not just part of history; Hitler is winning.
26
Very muddled thinking in this post. The Israeli-Arab/Palestinian conflict is a war, not a civil rights issue. And it is a war that has been going on for almost 100 years, driven by the Arab refusal to accept the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in the historic Jewish homeland of the land of Israel.
It is NOT racism to defend your country against enemies whose goal is your destruction.
2
As a third generation Jew by birth, I remain very afraid.
GOP presidents from Nixon to Trump have taught me to remain wary, their vile hatred flowering with the slightest provocation i.e. towards anyone resisting their political aims.
Immigrants, women, blacks are ALL "Jews" now.
No, we will not forget or forgive. Fear does that.
7
"No, we will not forget or forgive. Fear does that."
Yes, but will you be ready to act? Or will you just walk courageously to the beach...
Because the brutes and the beasts are already out there in Trump's America. People so impotent they feel threatened, they feel cheated and deprived, primed to 'take back what's theirs', which means they feel entitled to take it away from someone else.
Will you be ready to act?
2
@David Henry------------------Profound disgust does that, too. I'm writing this with shaking hands (no, I'm not Jewish. But I remember my father--of Swedish decent--turning my uncle over to the FBI, having discovered that he was a Nazi spy.)
Sorry, but forgiving Germany is impossible. The crimes are too monstrous.
Same with American crimes against Indians, blacks, immigrants, and women.
Why? Because abuses still THRIVE today. When learning from history becomes an impossibility, then forgiveness remains a masochistic illusion.
Don't ever close your eyes----- even for a second.
12
Thank you for the truth, David Henry. Truth is the only thing that can clean us.
1
Thank you Mr. Stephens.
I am afraid of Trump’s election that was aided by Putin and of Brexit that was promoted by Putin, and of the Neo-Nazis in Germany, Poland, Hungary, Austria all promoted by Putin.
We hear the euphemisms: “culture” and “tribal” used as if that could hide the dictatorial designs of the “far right” in the West. The “far right” a sophisticated operation determined to destroy democracy and the West. All of those who deem to explain the “cultural/tribal” are empowering fascists and neo-Nazis. This is not a conspiracy theory. This is a plan.
2
The many Latvian guards and 'kickers' in the photographs of the mass murders at Skede remind us that the Holocaust never could have been carried out without the active cooperation of local populations in countries like Latvia, parts of Ukraine (then Poland), and local Facist movements like the Croatian Ustache and the Hungarian Arrow Cross. Poland has made it a crime to describe Poles as contributing to the Holocaust, and yet innumerable testimonies make it clear that individual Poles willingly hunted down Jews and handed them over to the Nazis. And unlike Germany, not one of these nations has done anything at all to confront their own participation in the Shoah. In Hungary, Miklós Horthy - Hitler's ally - has been rehabilitated as a hero.
25
thanks for sharing your family history read that you postponed for so many years.
the "fruits" of fascism are all around us here and abroad, and I find the air absolutely sinister.
I have grown to love your writing and this piece is simply unforgettable. I wish more Americans had a deep knowledge of history, their own if course but also that of the world.
maybe then they'd realize what they are flirting with and why its so dangerous.
Like the song, "you don't realize what you've got till it's gone" has never been truer.
12
We must all remember, share the stories of our relatives for centuries to come. Deniers are everywhere and they can easily obtain a foothold if we forget. Today there is one in my daughters 10th grade class - right here in NJ.
9
Wonderful! Thank you. I was reminded of Juri Weil's Life with a Star.
The Gaulands forget that there is no such thing as History much less "successful" history. People don't live in history but in their day to day lives. Until quite recently historians only recorded the big events. There was no room in the big events for ordinary people.
Now there are histories like Catherine Merridale's Ivan's War that looked at the war from the perspective of men and women living their day to day lives during a fearful war.....
What I fear is that the Gaulands and the Trumps see the world only as those big events. The scary part is that they are arguing that our little lives don't matter and that history will again become about monuments and symbols and abstractions like "successful history."
9
What a profound statement! “People dom’t live in
History, but in their day to day lives.” Thanks, John, for a great response to Mr. Stephens’ article. There can never be too many of these stories.
3
Thanks for the reminder. Never forget. And to those who still believe it cannot happen here: keep your eyes open. It can, and it will, if we are not vigilant. With Trump in the WH, and the GOP completely complicit, it has already started in a low-key, American way.
16
Thank you for reminding us that civility can vanish . Political extremism is alive and well in our country and must be condemned.
Voting is a responsibility and knowledge is required to vote properly.
Facts need to be believed and misinformation condemned.
Resist!
11
Powerful essay, and thank you for sharing it. I am liking your opinions more and more as you push back on the ''right'', (it is hard to get a grip on what constitutes radical anymore on the political spectrum)
Having said that, I fear we are at a moment in history (for the entire globe) where opposing forces on that political spectrum are clashing (yet again) and history may be repeating itself.
You have such upheaval in the world as the young are demanding their human rights (as they absolutely should) but are going about it in a way with an all or nothing strategy, That strategy is letting certain factions take power. (because they know how to grab it while no one is looking)
There is massive financial disparity coupled with ongoing wars that are displacing millions upon millions. Those refugees are inundating the 1st world like it has never seen before, further exacerbating the line between the haves and have nots.
We are forgetting the trials of history and are doomed to repeat such scourges (as you laid out in your story) if we do not rigorously work at our Democracies.
It takes a lot more than just a like or retweet.
15
Tell them "I am not afraid" is powerful, poignant and tender at the same time. It should be required reading for US Senators and Congressmen. On the one hand we have what is most noble about the human spirit; concern for others above self and courage in the face of atrocity and death. What a stark contrast with elected officials fearful of presidential criticism and not getting reelected.
18
Sadly, her memoir does not seem to be widely available, and I would like to read it. Thank you for this article. It's heartbreaking.
16
Right. We have a similar obligation to be sure that American slavery is a part of our historical conversation. It is too tempting to push the evils of our own histories away. Some believe we should move beyond all that; it is history; things have changed - or so they say. Still, just as the murder of 15 million including 6 million Jews is definitely just a drop of bird poop in a glorious history, so too the enslavement of thousands of human beings should just be dismissed as 'the past' as if it no longer matters.
22
Juxtaposed against this week's national embarrassment otherwise known as our President casually throwing to the wind everything members of my family died for, during War World II, this article made me weep.
Was the courage displayed by this woman's family and those who fought and died to liberate the world from the evil Axis for nothing?
Does anyone still care about truth, justice, and equality?
These are sad, sad times, and I feel grieved to say that I am afraid for our world.
33
This is heartbreaking. Raya's mother, Haya, met her end stating "I will not take it. My husband is already gone. My sister, Becka, is terrified, and we will go together. Just know that I am not afraid...If you meet any of my children, tell them I was not afraid." Haya could have survived yet chose to stay and die with what little remained of her family. It is a testament to love and decency. However, this is a fearful piece, and that is a very good thing since we are witnessing "the return of those demagogues today-in the Philippines, Italy, Hungary, Poland, France and the United States. Germany, too." I experienced fear the moment Trump began his campaign. I recognized how dangerous he was, was convinced he would win, and was appalled that so many others felt no fear, even in the face of his unbridled hate. All the Alexander Gauland's and their followers in far too many nations want the world to burn, while far too many pretend it either isn't happening, or it really isn't that bad. I only wish more people were fearful. The rise of hatred we are seeing now should make everyone fearful. There are many sayings about ignoring or conquering fear. However, there's a time for everything, and now is the time to be afraid. There is still time to stop the rise of despots who promise countless things, yet bring only death. If the day comes when the despots all triumph, far too many will be like Haya, moving beyond fear as they face horrible deaths, but today is not that day.
9
It is interesting, and horrifying, to me that this ugly populist wave has risen in Europe and the West just as the last of those who actually witnessed the horrors of the WWII era are passing away.
Soon it will be all hearsay, except, of course, for the abundant photographic and film evidence that remains.
But will it make a difference? I wonder..
17
We shall never forget what evil can do and never be afraid to talk about it, or it will happen again. We can see what hate and bigotry is doing in this country and how it is beginning to take shape in some European countries, and if we stay silent and allow it to continue, history will repeat again. What happened in Germany, started small also and the world stood by and let it grow into a malignant evil that almost destroyed a whole culture. Do not be afraid.
10
It is important to remember the 'speck' because without scrutiny it can become a stain and then much bigger, perhaps a holocaust.
As has been said by Santayana, 'those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it'.
What happened in Latvia happened all over eastern Europe and destroyed families and hope. It also destroyed elements of humanity. That people could recover and then thrive is a tribute to their bravery and capacity to heal.
Your family must be proud of a woman who chose to stay without fear and her daughter who chose to be brave in her memory.
For my family there was no holocaust but after Shindler's List the very sound of the German language was repulsive to me for a long time. It was traumatic just to view a film, never mind experience it.
I don't know how brave I might have been in those circumstances but I do know one thing: we must do everything to avoid this happening again. The warning signs are beginning to form. Groups like AfD and other demagogues are flirting once again with nationalism globally. To honor the people who were sacrificed we cannot allow them to flourish.
6
But remember that Schindler was German. You were wrong to generalize and isn't that the problem?
The wars in Yugoslavia are recent and instructive as to what occurs when civilization has a "breakdown". And as one comment observed, there are reasons for what is happening in Europe (and in the U.S.) and the interpretation should not be that the Nazis will take over tomorrow. Europeans (like Americans) should treat everyone with justice and respect, but they have a legitimate right to be concerned about overwhelming immigration numbers which threaten their economies and environment. That many of these immigrants are kMuslim should not matter as long as they respect (what has evolved to be) Western values concerning women's rights and the supremacy of secular authority.
"Never again" is a nice slogan and it even sounds progressive but there is a special obstacle: mankind. Mankind is the worst thing on this planet. Mankind never changes its deep rooted killer instinct.
As a lifetime skeptical, and with a special concern on religions, I doubt that any change for the better would be possible.
Just look at appearances like Bolton and you know everything. There is no better future, sorry to say that.
4
In, perhaps, one of the most relevant opinions in these early days of upheaval, Mr Stephens levels the playing field with Searing Truth! There is no substitute for the victorious Raya Mazin and the courage & strength of her family.
I say "perhaps" because I wholely believe the world's free press representing the world's free people must take this fight to this level ... again and again.
The far-right opportunists harnessing hate - masquerading as pride - must be EXPOSED.
"Reviled by their countrymen" must be THEIR FATE.
7
Often the gravity and meaning of the industrialized murder that was the Holocaust is lost in numbers such as The Six Million. What Stephens elucidates in this piece is the humanity behind the numbers which, in and of themselves, often come across as sterile abstractions, especially to younger generations.
An excellent project and book of the same name is "The Violins Of Hope." It is the story of violins that survived the Holocaust and the people who played them. Amnon Weinstein is the luthier who collects and repairs the instruments, while making their salvation and ongoing use a testament to his own murdered family, as well as others. This began after he opened an Auschwitz survivor's violin and discovered ashes that could have been his family. James Grymes wrote the excellent book, telling the stories behind six instruments.
One story is of a 12-year old boy, Motele Schlein who, after hearing his parents and sister shot, joined a partisan group in the forests. He was sent into a village held by the Germans to do intelligence work, playing his violin in the street for food as cover. After being "adopted" by the Germans (who did not know he was Jewish) to play in a restaurant they frequented, he would stash his violin in the basement each night, leaving with an empty case, returning the next day with it filled with explosives. Eventually he collected enough explosives, packed them into the foundation, and when a group of SS came through, blew the place up with them in it.
7
This moving column should ring alarm bells at home. Americans must be able to see the parallels between prewar Germany and the United States.
We now live in a one-party state owned and operated by the super-rich donors of the Republican Party who were enabled by the Citizens United Decision to pour dark money into electoral politics. The GOP has allowed the Oval Office to be filled with the unstable, ignorant, lying Trump and his appointees charged with deconstructing our government. Trump uses racial hatred to stir the emotions of his devout followers. Trump has offered support to White Supremacists from the White House. MAGA when translated means : We hate immigrants and people of color!" Trump, an open admirer of dictators, also has no respect for the rule of law or the US Constitution. He is aided and abetted in attempts to suppress democracy by the Republican leadership.
Only 24% of the electorate actually went to the polls and voted for Trump. If Americans want to restore decency and democracy to the United States, then we must all register and vote against tyranny in massive numbers. We face the same political crisis the Germans and Austrians faced in the 1930's. They failed to recognized the perils they faced until it was too late and allowed the rise of fascism to go unchallenged. We must learn from their example and remember: Never Again! We must get out the vote in every election going forward in order to save our nation
18
"I needed to learn anew just what that “speck” had meant for my extended family."
Better late than never, but still too indifferent in 2018.
3
Thank you for this. I am deeply moved and it stiffensmy courage.
7
Painful memories form a necessary part of the human experience. Most of us treasure our comfortable lifestyles, but if we lose sight of the horrors of which our species remains uniquely capable, we sacrifice part of our humanity and make ourselves more vulnerable to tolerating or even committing similar atrocities in the future. We like to think that Americans would not have behaved as so many Germans did in the Nazi era, but our own history should dispel the illusion that we somehow enjoy an exemption from the same potential for evil that infects the rest of the human race.
Mr. Stephens' sensitive essay highlights another kind of important memory. His ancestor, Haya, as well as other members of his extended family, exhibited the kind of unsung courage and commitment to others which partially redeems the human race. Of the some six million Jews murdered by the Nazis, most probably lived lives somewhat similar to that of Stephens' family, full of experiences that, on the surface, could not have prepared them for the horrors they faced at the end. Yet, somehow, large numbers of them (and we cannot know how many) summoned the will and determination to confront their fate with dignity and to resist the efforts of the Nazis to dehumanize them.
We are creatures capable of unspeakable evil, but we also retain the potential to act with courage and to sacrifice ourselves for others. We need to remember both sides of our character.
20
what is amazing to me that they never resisted physically. Millions of people chambered, and none attempting to revolt?! what gave?
Oh, how it would have been easy and perhaps even justifiable for Mr. Stephens to hate Germany. I read the article with almost a sense of dread. But at the end, I only wish to thank him for this poignant story, for his compassionate and well balanced view and for pointing out a clear distinction between AFD and the other Germany I am a part of. Indeed, re AFD “vote them out”.
23
As we have seen no place is free of hate. What is important is to remember that we, the other side, cannot be complacent and stand by in fear or lack of compassion for others when they come for them.
6
This is why I, a devoted believer in so many things that put me at odds with Bret Stephens, love reading his NYT essays. His compassion, humanity, and sense of community among us all permeate his superbly crafted sentences.
Here I see how he has come by his eloquence. With trepidation he opened his eyes, literally, to his own family’s fateful encounter with the greatest evil of which humans are capable and was enabled to detect new and ugly outcroppings of that evil on today’s body politic.
And warn us. He thus fulfills his duty as a journalist and as a member of the conscience driven.
45
A powerful and necessary piece, Mr. Stephens. With a qualifier I agree with you that guilt doesn’t carry from one generation to the next.
In an eloquent speech made following Ronald Reagan’s visit to the cemetery in Bitburg, German President Richard von Weizsäcker emphasized that guilt, like innocence, “is not collective but personal” but added the qualifier that there can be no reconciliation without remembrance.”
Remembrance. A trip my wife and I made to central Europe in 1985 included a visit to the museum in Prague housing artwork and poems created by children at the Terezin camp. Underneath their names were the years of their birth and death. None lived to be a teenager, and it is impossible to express the pain and horror evoked in visitors. We suddenly heard German being spoken. Turning, we saw a group of German children on a school trip, witnesses to their ancestors’ crimes against humanity.
Remembrance. In summer 2003 my wife and I were in a hotel outside of Florence. Joseph Wilson’s op-ed had just appeared in The Times. Waiting outside for a taxi on our last night I approached a young German couple who were also staying at the hotel and said, “I’d like to thank Chancellor Schroeder for trying to stop the madness.” The woman responded, “it’s the first time in my life that I haven’t been ashamed to be a German.” We spent the next few minutes ventilating as I shared my shame over my country's role in the needless slaughter in Vietnam, Central America, and Iraq.
45
Thank you for your very moving story. I cringe every time I see Gauland and his friends on television. Unfortunately his arguments ('we have done enough penance, look at the atrocities of others, the French, the British, the Americans, etc.') are finding echos in the general population. It is doubly unfortunate that the AfD is now the largest opposition party in parliament. This gives them a wonderful platform to disseminate their bile, which they are very adept at using. Because they are in opposition, they do need to show any competence at governing. Every crime committed by an asylum seeker (real or imagined) just provides more grist for their mills. I fully support your wish to see them eliminated from public life but that is a long way from becoming reality.
24
Bret, I struggle every day since Trump won, knowing what i researched before the election. I try in every way I can to speak out to others both Republican relatives and friends to think about what is going on. I support organizations that are fighting for our democracy. I call my representatives, sign petitions and find myself praying because I see the the danger we all are in.
As a child My German piano teacher one day took me to her small library to see the books they rescued that were burnt around the edges and told me what happened to her family. I was 10 and never forgot the message to fight evil.
You and I may not agree politically on many issues, but I support your right to speak. I am touched by this article and felt tears as I read, remembering my piano teacher who lost many of her family and suffered so.
Keep up the fight for humanity and continue using your talent with storytelling to wake those still in slumber.
49
You have written a powerful article - clear and simple in its style, deeply moving. Thank you for sharing this story. I hope to live my life with a fraction of the courage that your ancestors showed.
29
Your family showed such courage and grace, leaving all of us with a legacy but also a responsibility. This country is in no way immune from what you have described here. The answer? Be not afraid.
28
Every generation needs to remember, reflect and transmit to their communities the fact and potential for horror and depravity in us, especially if we allow free rein to nationalism, prejudice and the mob mentality. Thank you Mr Stephens for sharing these painful familial memories. They should propel us to reflect and oppose barbarity, populism and the false pull of past greatness and "civilisation".
22
Dont be afraid!
9
Bret,
I am Irena Adamowicz, Gino Bartali, Archbishop Damaskinos, Odoardo Focherini,Francis Foley, Feng-Shan Ho, Constantin Karadja, Jan Karski,Valdemar Langlet, Carl Lutz, Aristides de Sousa Mendes ,Tadeusz Pankiewicz, Giorgio Perlasca, Marion Pritchard, Ángel Sanz, Briz Ona Šimaitė, Oskar Schindler, Irena Sendler, Klymentiy Sheptytsky, Henryk Sławik, Chiune Sugihara, Corrie ten Boom, Johan van Hulst, Raoul Wallenberg, Johan Hendrik Weidner, Rudolf Weigl, Jan Zwartendijk.
I have not forgotten your people. They are bathed in my tears. They did not die for nothing.
Do not be afraid.
23
Thank you Brett, for such a great column that provides context for what is happening today. Yes, Raya would have recognized these people for what they are. Truly, if we have not learned from the past, we will be condemned to repeat it.
26
“Never again" becomes more than a slogan: It's a prayer, a promise, a vow. There will never again be hatred, people say. Never again jail and torture. Never again the suffering of innocent people, or the shooting of starving, frightened, terrified children. And never again the glorification of base, ugly, dark violence. It's a prayer.”
- Elie Wiesel
“We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
- Elie Wiesel
“For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.”
- Elie Wiesel
“Indifference to me, is the epitome of all evil.”
- Elie Wiesel
“Anything you want to say about God you better make sure you can say in front of a pit of burning babies.”
- Elie Wiesel
“Infants were tossed up in the air and used as the targets for machine guns”
- Elie Wiesel
“To forget a Holocaust is to kill twice”
- Elie Wiesel
“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.”
― Elie Wiesel
And on this side of the pond, we shan't forget that in fact there were NOT some 'very fine people' on both sides of white supremacists, white nationalists, neo-Confederates, Klansmen, neo-Nazis chanting racist and antisemitic slogans, carrying semi-automatic rifles, wearing swastikas, hoisting Confederate battle flags, and anti-Muslim and antisemitic banners.
Thank you, Bret Stephens, for helping us bear witness.
Never again.
527
Socrates has again said it all ! Vote and Resist!
51
Unfortunately, wisdom not learned.
12
When Mohammed Ali died, MSNBC devoted three days of broadcasting about him. When Eli Weisel died, there was a brief mention and a picture. I was sickened that this world regarded man was given such short shrift when broadcasting his life and his cause and his value to the world could have been lauded, educating all those who have forgotten or did not even know. We need him now more than ever to keep us from this "leader" that we are burdened with. The holocaust survivors, the witnesses of true evil are aging and dying and their stories are dying with them. We must remember them and their stories each time another evil leader kills his way to the top in any country. Not only actual killing but the killing off of democratic ideals as we are experiencing now.
59
Thank you for calling out racists and AfD and Trumpianism. Now, perhaps Israel can acknowledge that their victims are human as well as they continuously push Palestinians out of their homeland and exactly revent at the rate of 100 eyes per eye.
Yes, the violence and rhetoric has been ugly. But can you really say that Israel has treated Palestinians as fellow humans with equal rights? They have been persecuted. Surely they can recognize what it is to have everything taken away. Netanyahu and his buddies are just the Jewish version of the AfD, race uber alles
89
I was just waiting to read the comment that would try to somehow connect this column to the conflict between Israel and the Arabs/Palestinians.
Well, that is just complete and total nonsense. The Israeli-Arab/Palestinian conflict is a war, not a civil rights issue.
And any attempts to somehow draw analogies between the Israeli-Arab/Palestinian conflict and the treatment of Jews in Germany under the Nazis is just complete and total nonsense.
2
You comment is false, perhaps deliberately so -- with its own disturbing casual lefty anti-Jewish slant -- and the Israelis are not murdering million of Palestinians, nor exterminating the Muslim religion, nor GASSING millions and cremating their remains in giant ovens running 24/7. And for you to say this is obscene, hateful, pathetic and cheap.
1
I see some comments critical of Merkel. She acted the most courageous and humane among all Western leaders in accepting a million refugees from Syria. She is a historic figure. When other leaders were wringing hands, she alone acted.
318
Indeed. As if she recognized the chance to make up for the historical wrongs Germany committed. She was heroic in that moment.
28
She did act morally and compassionately. I have to wonder, did the fact she is a woman influence her choice? Women are, on the whole, more humane and less filled with their own self-regard than men.
Please vote in November and vote in as many women as possible. Things do actually change in a more humane direction once the number of women in a legislative body reaches a tipping point. Human beings become important.
27
She also created a lot of problems.
Crime.
And now a backlash to immigration has swept across Europe in the form of nationalism.
3
Please forgive my paraphrase, but as he would have said (King James version):
"My God, my God. Why hast thou forgotten *us*?)" How can we have come to this after all that horror and evil? I'm not a practicing Christian, but I know evil when I see it. That was then. It is also now.
23
I had just read the tone deaf editorial "The era of American complacency on trade is over" written by an assistant to the president, about how our trading allies shouldn't take offense to taking second place to Vladimir Putin. and I jump over to "Tell them I was not afraid" which beautifully captures a time when everything went from managable to horrible in a very short time, where one man changes everything about a nations character. I could have saved you some money by having them share the same title "The era of America is over".
22
Never forget the words of Tom Lehrer in his song about the Germans: "We taught them a lesson in 1918 and they have hardly bothered us since".
8
Thank you, Mr. Stephens. You write the truth that so many seek to dismiss.
12
To borrow very loosely from Ev Dirksen, 'a speck of guano here, a speck of guano there, pretty soon you're talking about real fascism.'
Those who say 'it can't happen here' aren't paying careful attention to the accumulation of guano in the Western Hemisphere over the past few years, from Germany, to Britain, to Italy, Turkey and yes, the supposed 'leader of the Free World,' the United States.
We've got trouble, right here in River City, with a capital 'T'...
23
Lest we forget...our freedom had, and continues to have, a high price. To repay our current and past generations for their sacrifice, we simply need to speak up and use our voices as you have done. Thank you for sharing your family's history, and for reminding us that the majority were silent--and their silence enabled the horror of the holocaust. For me, this is the most chilling thing about our current climate of runaway populism... how easy it is for apathy to pave the way for evil.
17
My heart breaks, again.
9
Well said! Thank you for this.
3
Those who deny their history, seek to relive it.
Chilling!
4
I am not a Jew. I'm a 57 year old lawyer, pretty intense and not all that emotional. I cried.
This kind of writing is why I read the NYT. Bret, although I am a bit to the left of you, I appreciate your columns immensely. Well done.
113
As a student in junior high school I read “Treblinka” and have never been the same.
19
Thank you, Bret. Thank you. Dear god. Dear god, how can these things be? Please, never let us forget. paul davis in bessemer
21
No man is an island, entire of itself; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.--John Donne
But how can you live there and feel love for those blood washed streets? You must come back here and speak out. Through your family, you are a survivor of demagoguery.
The police chasing down and catching ordinary people on the streets, imprisoning them, shipping them away, likely to certain death. Sounds familiar? Looks familiar? That pizza delivery guy, an ordinary man captured, doomed. Looks like a memory of long ago Europe yet lives on in what was once a democracy but for a terrible mistake, a quirky monstrosity called the Electoral College that captured and perhaps doomed an entire nation. You seem to know how terrible that is. You must speak out.
21
Thank you for this poignant piece, Mr. Stephens. I am almost speechless as how to respond; however, I feel I want to say something. The first words that come to mind are, I am so sorry. Yes, it was Hitler and his Nazis who were imminently responsible for the Holocaust. But did not most the free world exacerbate these unconscionable murders by its silence and inaction? I am Catholic, but to this day I am ashamed for my Church and Pius XII who abetted through silence and maneuvers the murdering of the innocent.
It is beyond belief that there are individuals living today who either deny these mass killings or, like Gauland, gloss over it like it was nothing, implying "no big deal." But it is a big deal because we are finding even here in America as well as in Europe a growing hate of the "other"....Jews, Muslims, refugees, the Brown and Black-skinned. We need to be reminded like Bret is doing today that there is absolutely no excuse for genocide in any form, that as this piece informs us the victims are human beings like us deserving of dignity and certainly life.
59
Thank you Brett for speaking out.
As Martin Niemoller wrote:
"First they came for the Socialists and I did not speak out, because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists and I did not speak out, because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me."
Scoffers do not like to be rebuked. But the wise of heart (of all ages) are persuaded by words of truth.
66
My family got out long before WWII, so perhaps my view is cold and analytical. But it seems to me that the Jewish slaughter is different not so much because of the numbers as because of the means. The systematic annihilation of the Jews sets them apart. They died according to plan with no regard for their humanity. But the fact remains that huge numbers of other civilians died either by military activity or crimes against humanity. That includes 8 million Chinese, 2 million Poles, countless Soviets, and many Germans. It surprises me that there is no affinity among those who trace their roots to civilian Russians in the Gulag, Japanese who died at Hiroshima, Poles who died at work camps, and Germans who died from carpet bombing. All were civilians who had no connection to the military and were simply trying to survive.
5
That someone writes about what happened to their family in particular, and Jewish people in general, is not a denial of the deaths of millions of others. No more so than caring about whether a gay person has rights or a black person is killed for a misdemeanor means you don't care about rights and lives of all.
7
Yes. But you seem to stop short of making a point. What IS your point?
2
Humankind cannot escape the nature of evil men. Each generation must be onguard to deal with them before History repeats itself. I need not point out examples of the past decades where we have have already failed due to the color and "national interests" NOT represented by certain groups in various genocides. This still goes on today (don't boycott Israel) for a form of it. We are setting ourselves up once again for disaster.
3
"...I have no patience for the idea that guilt carries over from one generation to the next." Nor should it extend backward to Beethoven and Goethe.
Please accept this nitpick and accept my gratitude for your essay, which has brought tears in memory of our shared culture and loss.
7
For us it is wiping out the loathsome enabling Republican Party and their demagogic faux President Trump.
They offer the public nothing but extreme right wing pablum, deregulation of environmental and financial rules, tax cuts for the wealthy, anti- immigrant scapegoating, decimation of health care and safety nets,
and blatant appeals to the Religious Right and their
agenda with a total disregard of the beliefs of the majority of Americans. They ignore Trump's lies, his collusion with Russians, and his scorn for venerated American institutions such as the FBI, the Department of Justice, and the free press. They seem only interested in the cynical use of power to benefit their donors. They are horrific like their President and seemed to have lost any true Patriotism and love for American ideals of freedom, equality, justice, truth, and the rule of law!
55
Thank you, Bret, for sharing Raya Mazin's story with us.
It goes without saying that this is why Mr. Trump's words and actions are so troubling. The good Americans who have gone along with Mr. Trump are blindly following a man who is too similar to the man who incited the murder of Raya and six million others.
21
There's a book floating around somewhere written by a relative. He was shot down multiple times fighting Nazis over Africa. He obviously lived long enough to write a memoir about the story. I can't tell you about my relatives serving in the Navy and Marines. First because they weren't alllowed to speak about it. Second because they wouldn't have written a book even if they could.
That said, there's a hard truth Stephens needs to recognize. No national identity is impervious to a perpetual guilt shaming. The AfD is reprehensible but you can't ignore the underlying impulse. People want to feel proud about their history. Stephens recounts the story of Raya Mazin. However, there is a certain sense of pride behind the tragedy. Almost to say "Can you believe what my ancestors suffered?"
That doesn't make the story any less tragic. However, you'll find many people in Germany who want to express the same pride in their ancestors. The countless sailors sent to their deaths in submarines had no practical involvement with any policy concerning genocide. The post-Nazi world, I think, has done an admirable job shaming Germany into cultural submission. The shame is irrevocably entrenched. At the same time though, the people who remember those years are dying off.
A new generation wishes to see the veneration without the atrocity. Much the same could be said about the American Civil War. You need to take this reality under consideration. Otherwise, the outrage is rendered pointless.
13
You're right that there are parallels between the revisionist history of Germans like Gauland and the "Noble Cause" fantasies of the American South. Neither of them should take pride in the actions of their ancestors. Your equation of the oppressors with the oppressed is appalling.
Of course the rank-and-file soldier and sailor was not creating policy. But many of them were proud of advancing the policy. And, even for those who were not, there is nothing to celebrate in their actions. Your veneration of them is frightening.
67
You are 100% correct. Stalin and Mao committed arguably greater crimes utilizing millions of Russian and Chinese people. Those crimes simply got less press in the west. Nothing can detract from the horror of the events described in this article, but what about all of the Russian and Chinese families stories of forgotten brutality?
1
The point of Bret Stephens's story was the appalling evil human beings are capable of, not just the unspeakable suffering of his ancestors. It is this evil in all of us that must be recognized and reckoned with. The demand to be proud of one's nation must not be allowed to obliterate the fact that we, human beings are capable of absolute evil, such as the Holocaust. Civilization is an attempt to keep it at bay, and the election of Trump here and the demagogs in Europe is a potent danger signal. This is why we must resist.
7
'Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it...'
11
Thank you for this column. I stared at the page for a long time and then cried. We, as humans, must never forget.
We must vote out this cancer that has invaded our collective conscience.
If we do not remember history, we are destined to repeat it.
35
Looking at the photograph, my heart breaks. Especially at how the brave women shield the little girl from seeing her murderers. To kill innocent people by those numbers is beyond all reason. It can never be glossed over or forgotten, never.
78
And yet posters here are CHEAPENING the horror and the unimaginable suffering and loss, by using this column as a way to get in (yet another) cheap shot against Trump.
1
My views and yours do not often coincide, but please accept my congratulations on a thoughtful and moving column that ends cleverly— and justly.
16
My mother's maternal side of the family were all Ukrainian, Western Ukrainians, from a small village not too far away from Przemyśl. My great-grandfather emigrated from that area as a young man, but his mother & some of his siblings stayed behind. The last time anyone in my Nana's family heard from the family was an Easter card in 1939. No one knows if it was the Soviets or the Nazis that overran the area, but after the war, when my great-grandparents tried to locate any family, there was no one left.
33
My maternal family's story is the same. They owned a farm in what was then Czechoslovakia. Most of the family ended up immigrating (LEGALLY) to the US, but an aunt, her husband and children stayed behind to run the farm. The last anyone heard of them was around 1939.
In the late 40s, one of my great uncles went to Europe to search for them. He found absolutely nothing. Some neighbors told him that his sister and her family had been taken by the Germans to a concentration camp.
The rest of my family survived because in his wisdom, my great-grandfather said "enough was enough" -- they already suffered anti-semtism and prejudice in the WWI era -- and decided to leave in 1919. But though not rich, they were middle class and had a little to do this with. What about the millions of poor, working class folks with no ability to get passports or buy tickets on an ocean liner?
I too have many dozens of postcards sent to my grandmother, from her sister and nieces/nephews ... until they stopped.
1
what a moving tribute to all jewish people..thank u for their history.
11
midnight arrests, deportations, targeting minorities, extol a great past, minimize historical crimes...happening now in the USA...lies are now standard...the corrupt destroy the agencies they head...a silent republican congress aligns authoritarian behavior with conservatism...where rights are chipped away...where those who disagree are maligned...Democracy is being driven from the USA...and we are afraid
152
Only the image in Gustav Klimt's painting "Scream" captures what is happening now in American. How can millions of us not see it?
17
Often the gravity and meaning of the industrialized murder that was the Holocaust is lost in numbers such as The Six Million. What Stephens elucidates in this piece is the humanity behind the numbers which, in and of themselves, often come across as sterile abstractions, especially to younger generations.
An excellent project and book of the same name is "The Violins Of Hope." It is the story of violins that survived the Holocaust and the people who played them. Amnon Weinstein is the luthier who collects and repairs the instruments, while making their salvation and ongoing use a testament to his own murdered family, as well as others. This began after he opened an Auschwitz survivor's violin and discovered ashes that could have been his family. James Grymes wrote the excellent book, telling the stories behind six instruments.
One story is of a 12-year old boy, Motele Schlein who, after hearing his parents and sister shot, joined a partisan group in the forests. He was sent into a village held by the Germans to do intelligence work, playing his violin in the street for food as cover. After being "adopted" by the Germans (who did not know he was Jewish) to play in a restaurant they frequented, he would stash his violin in the basement each night, leaving with an empty case, returning the next day with it filled with explosives. Eventually he collected enough explosives, packed them into the foundation, and when a group of SS came through, blew the place up with them in it.
16
Reading horrific accounts of the Holocaust raises a visceral question of how humans are capable of such evil. Yet that evil remains. We have seen it in the Balkans, in Rwanda, in the Congo. We see it in Syria and in Myanmar.
And there's little encouragement that we have seen the end of it. The forces of hate are again potent in Europe, particularly Germany and France. And in the United States, a sitting president, with a compliant congress, demeans the humanity of immigrants and refugees. Trump tries to make us afraid of individuals who are themselves afraid.
Whether we can say "Never again," hinges on how vigilant people everywhere will be to resisting the powers of hate. Those dark forces won't disappear on their own.
19
Nothing brings the Holocaust to life so much as the story of individuals--those who were murdered and those who survived. Ten, a thousand, a million, six million--just numbers. But each of them was an individual, with a hopes and dreams and fears, with parents, children, friends. People like Gauland would make us into numbers--into nothing. We must not let that happen.
19
Isn’t it amazing that their fathers and grandfathers fought exactly what this generation is embracing?
17
As much as I usually appreciate Bret Stephens, he omits the most critical detail about AFD, which is that AFD only gained any significant support in Germany after Chancellor Merkel decreed that Germany would open it's borders to an unlimited number of persons fleeing Syria.
Give Germans a viable alternative to Merkel and they won't need the AFD.
Merkel's decision was made without the legislature of Germany weighing in, or a German referendum, or the input of any other EU countries affected by her decision. In point of fact, Merkel's invitation, made in essentially autocratic fashion, is the chief reason not only for the rise of the AFD, but for Brexit, for Victor Orban, and for Trump.
6
In other words, immigrants are to be blamed for the rise of and support for the holocaust denier Alexander Gauland? I don't think so. (Germany did not open its borders to an unlimited number of refugees. And the critics of Mr. Trump have not advocated for open borders, either.)
Middleman MD wrote:
"As much as I usually appreciate Bret Stephens, he omits the most critical detail about AFD, which is that AFD only gained any significant support in Germany after Chancellor Merkel decreed that Germany would open it's borders to an unlimited number of persons fleeing Syria.
Give Germans a viable alternative to Merkel and they won't need the AFD.
Merkel's decision was made without the legislature of Germany weighing in, or a German referendum, or the input of any other EU countries affected by her decision. In point of fact, Merkel's invitation, made in essentially autocratic fashion, is the chief reason not only for the rise of the AFD, but for Brexit, for Victor Orban, and for Trump."
13
And what do you suggest Europe should do with the people fleeing violence and unlivable conditions (global warming!) in their countries? Put them in refugee camps perhaps? Deport them en masse the way we are attempting to do in this country? What?
6
"In other words, immigrants are to be blamed for the rise of and support for the holocaust denier Alexander Gauland? I don't think so."
Right, and I don't think so either, and did not argue this point.
Merkel made a decision with which many voters in the EU disagreed. None of those voters was given a voice in this decision, and they had a right to one. Stephens' argument is about the rise of autocrats. In point of fact, what we are seeing is a rise of populists in the face of leaders like Merkel who are governing as autocrats.
Of note, the Syrian civil war did not start with ISIS, and the majority of those who fled Syria are, like the majority of the Syrian population, Sunni Arabs. The 'west" did not create this problem. These unfortunate people are fleeing chaos and war, but are often (as the NYT Rukimini Callimachi has reported) fleeing Assad more than ISIS. Assad is NOT someone that the US or Germany or France propped up or created. The Assad regime goes back to the 1970s, when Hafez al Assad forged an alliance with the Soviets; that alliance continues today between the Russian Federation and Bashar al Assad.
Some only learn half of the lesson. Now, as in the 1930s, the rise of right-wing demagogues is a response to years of left-wing excess. People will follow anyone who promises them what they want, not those who tell them that they don’t know what’s good for them.
5
You need to actually examine the causes of fascism's rise in the post-WWI and depression years, the various causes, rather than engaging in simplistic partisan swipes, if truth should happen to matter to you. It doesn't appear to matter to a fair number of Americans these days, I know, a problem I'd suggest more dangerous than whatever left-wing "excesses" you may be imagining.
9
And soon enough, Trump will be followed by left-wing excess with their own conspiracy theories, demagoguery and antisemitic undertones couched in hate-Israel rhetoric. Doesn't sound too promising.
1
Left wing excess? In the United States? Please explain!
7
How often do we need to learn the same lesson?
"We are witnessing the return of those demagogues today — in the Philippines, Italy, Hungary, Poland, France and the United States. Germany"
Democracies that elect leaders who are unable to feel empathy and sympathy often do not remain democracies for very long.
That emotional shortcoming plus a conman's ability to read people is a common thread among these leaders.
Perhaps some of 63 million who voted for our very own authoritarian wannabe may want to consider that loyalty is always a one way street with demagogues.
237
I'm in the middle of watching (Netfkix) Robert Kernnedy for President.
If ever there was a a politician who really empathized with disenfranchised beings more than RFK, I've never heard of one. What could have been ...
25
World War II did not begin in Europe. The Japanese Empire invaded and occupied China years earlier leaving 30 million dead Chinese.
World War II did not begin for America until December 7, 1941 in Hawaii.
Nazi Germany killed 27.5 million Soviet Union human beings.
3
How often do we need to learn the same lesson?
Some lessons need to be relearned every day, and in every generation.
Lessons are cultural. They are there to stand up to our genes, our ancient tribal zero sum kill-or-be-killed instinct.
The problem is not that we have to re-learn some lessons. The problem returns when we stop re-learning and remembering some lessons.
7
Memory, vigilance, and a sense of responsibility must carry over. Responsibility suggests taking actions and to the extent possible atoning.
I wonder if Mr. Stephens, shares his fellow conservatives belief that America is done atoning for centuries of slavery and segregation. Does he believe in affirmative action? How about reparations? One could think of them as a kind of inheritance that should have been passed down, generation to generation, had African Americans been allowed to accumulate wealth.
Reparations would seem to be right in line with Republican belief that nothing should prevent a person from leaving as much money as he wants to his descendants.
28
Maybe you haven’t noticed but this article is not about slavery. It is about the Holocaust, which was worse. Slavery was racial exploitation on a massive scale. The Holocaust was a racial genocide the likes of which the world had never seen. Using it for scoring cheap political points against Republicans is contemptible.
4
The story of Mr. Stephen’s family is heartbreaking and tragic. And it is only one of millions of similar horrific stories.
Yet, Mr. Stephens misunderstands the situation. The AfD is likely going up, not away.
The AfD was originally an anti-Euro party that gained little traction. Then Chancellor Merkel made the unfortunate decision to allow a million immigrants into the country in 2015. This influx, and a series of high profile incidents involving these immigrants, are what fueled the AfD’s growth.
In fact, the growing anti-Semitism in Germany is now largely centered in these immigrant communities.
If the EU and Germany do not take strong action to secure their external borders and control immigration, the AfD will continue to grow, along with similar movements all across Europe. Merkel has belatedly called for greater border control, but there still seems to be a lack of vision, planning, and funding. Time is growing short.
27
The AfD is likely being supported and divisions further inflamed by Russian amplification of hate and fear messages through social media.
12
Nearly a million Hutu/Tutsi were slaughtered by Hutu
in Rwanda in a 100 days.
The Armenian and Bosnian genocides were preludes to the Rohinga and Houthi genocides.
4
Yes, John, the way to prevent such a rise in the AFD is to slam shut the gate on the innocent civilian war refugees. Yes, that is how to gain the moral high ground.
8
Mr. Stephens, it takes courage to write this testimony of What Happened. Earlier I was wondering how victims of The Holocaust must have wanted to take their life; some did, and a witness was to write later in his Man's Search for Meaning "the best of us did not return".
It has been awhile since the word Fear had come to mind, and while looking at the tall trees in the garden, I remembered that it is often accompanied by Hatred.
If an Austrian friend of decades is so strong; most of her family members died in concentration camps; bringing to mind a short story 'Speck's Idea', where Gallant raises the topic of Fascism, it is grief that came early to haunt her and should it ever be replaced by sorrow, despair may soon follow.
21
Unutterably moving. You refer to your "extended family" -- and over the years I've grown acquainted with them and with your in-laws thanks to your wonderful essays -- but this made me realize that, in the most fundamental sense, it is correct to think of the whole world as your (and everyone's) extended family. Let no one dare think that this is merely about some small corner of the world: No one is an island unto himself.
167
Absolutely! There is only one race: the human race. All the rest is just naturally occurring variations in size, shape, and color. We are all the same in our needs.
11
I can’t believe that a knowledgeable German (and most still are knowledgeable about the Holocaust), would have the crust to say what Gauland said. In fact, pogroms against Jews, some of them quite bloody, darkened the histories of many European nations for many centuries, regardless of their accomplishments otherwise.
One has to wonder what type of German home Gauland grew up in.
115
Richard, as a frequent rhetorical adversary of yours, I'm happy to agree with your comment 100%.
55
Perhaps Mr. Luettgen might profit from reading Martin Luther's notorious, anti-Semitic 1543 screed, "On the Jews and their lies." In it he promotes the burning of Jewish schools, homes, businesses , synagogues and so forth; that Jews should never be shown any kindness; that they be denied any lawful rights; that Jews are filthy vermin who deserve no more than forced labor and, in the last instance, expulsion if not extermination.
Perhaps then Mr. Luettgen might come to understand why that "knowledgeable German" he singles out brushed off the Holocaust.
48
ARSLAQ AL KABIR:
Now … that's useful. Let's seek enlightenment about hyper-right anti-Semitism in some modern venues by studying the near-500-year-old hate-ramblings of someone who took religion seriously enough to challenge the Roman Catholic Church -- not so much on tenets of basic faith but on Church organization, power and simony. Heck, we don't pay THAT much attention anymore to the pope!
Oh, and you DO know that the name you use as avatar sounds like something Indiana Jones might have heard as he was digging in the ruins of Tanis for the Ark of the Covenant ... don't you? Come clean, now: you're really Gus Schultz from Burlington, VT, "al wadin al Champlain" -- right?
Thank you so much, Bret, for this incredible article. It is really hard to confront horror, so I, like you, turn away and don't read. It is marvelous that you were moved to read this book and report on it. So important that we never forgot. "Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it." Never again.
117
So beautifully put. How we need voices raised these days, people willing to stand and be known, stand and be counted, people who are not afraid.
84
That could have been my dad's side of the family. They were in Lithuania and were never heard from again.
Thank you for reminding us.
168
We all have a responsibility to remember history and condemn those who do not. Thank you for writing such a gripping column and allowing your readers to participate in that remembrance.
346
The current challenge is to remember history, sometimes even recent history, as it actually was, and not allow others to rewrite it and reinterpret it to fit their whims and druthers; their own ignorance or stupidity; or their evil. I am so sorry every single day that we have come to this. I well remember 1998 (“only” 20 years ago): god, we were so hopeful and optimistic about the future. I know how we came to this pass, but I still can’t quite believe we’ve gotten here. But we all must remember it accurately.
20
You do not not condemn those who don’t remember history but rather you educate them.
Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it. Indeed it seems like so many people now who haven't so much 'forgotten the past' as are ignorant of the past. Willfully ignorant.
179
Mr. Stephens, thank you for such a moving and heartfelt column.
Any generation that lived through the era of the holocaust, or any other unspeakable horror, knows how unthinkingly cruel people can be when aroused by power-mad leaders. My earliest memories are of WW II England, and while my extended family survived the war intact, save for an uncle who died from friendly fire, I am acutely aware of the history of the era I grew up in. It seems that as one generation makes way for the next, the memories and their relevance fade, and it falls to a few people like Mr. Stephens to keep the flame alive.
Having entered my ninth decade, I am increasingly horrified by the stridently aggressive nationalism (which is not the same as patriotism) that is emerging, even in democracies, around the world - the US being no exception. The tragedy is that in none of these democracies do the aroused nationalists command a majority. But then, they didn't need a majority to elect the Nazis.
604
Mancurroc
Thank you for sharing this. As a 33 yo I will take your comments, remember them and continue to spread them. Hopefully for generations to come.
120
My black family came North to Illinois in two waves from South Carolina in 1915 and Georgia in 1930 fleeing Jim Crow American white supremacist terrorist intimidation including lynching.
63
The Nazis were a minority that seized power when the majority was disorganized and hapless. Kind of like a recent electoral college win, followed by authoritarian executive orders. Resist. Dig in. Speak Truth. Support Justice.
43
I also had relatives executed in Eastern Europe in 1941, my grandmother's family, under similar circumstances. And I agree with Mr. Stephens that demagogues are a problem and a serious concern. The problem is, every statement with which Bret Stephens disagrees, even if it is an unwise or insensitive statement, is not the equivalent of marching Jews, or any minority, into a shooting gallery. This is flagrantly obvious in his criticisms and attitude toward Donald Trump. If one-one hundredth of the accusations against Trump were true (and many of them come from Republican Never-Trumpers like Stephens), there would be some serious application of the words of this column "return of the demagogues." But people are allowed to opt-out of various schemes of globalism, political correctness, identity politics, 'free trade' that benefits a few at the expense of many, immigration policies which are openly lawless, or affirms traditional Christian values, without being subject to insulting names from their political allies (of course, political opponents are going to be insulting, but that's politics). Yes, lining up people to shoot them is a horrible atrocity, but that is not the same as using bad names on Twitter for violent gang members. The inability of Stephens to be able to discern the difference is itself a problem.
28
In Tom's denials are the seeds of the next horrors. From rationalization comes the incremental steps of normalization of
"It's not that bad. If it were people would do something (except that I am here putting a stop to people doing just that)."
But I have a question, how does one not suffer cognitive dissonance supporting Trump who IS the "few", has benefited from the immigration policies in his labor force, and has spent a lifetime living against every Christian value found in the Bible?
92
We're not in 1941, we're reliving 1933 and this is the beginning of what could make us relive that nightmare. The rhetoric and groups flocking to Trump are the beginning not the end. Neo confederates, white supremacists, business people who turn a blind eye for profit, ignorant, desperate people grasping at straws - the same people who flocked to Hitler at the beginning. Traditional Christians who ignore the teaching of Christ and live in the Old Testament - wrapping themselves in the hate that emanate from those books. If unchecked, the horrors will come and can't help but come. Trump's politics are a drug - and he's found a willing group of addicts to consume it, the same way Hitler did. There's a kind of irony here, a twisted nightmarish irony. One of the leading countries that went ashore on D-Day is beginning to embrace the values of the monster if fought and defeated. It's almost like we we ingested a slow acting poison back then that's just now showing it's symptoms.
61
“If one-one hundredth of the accusations against Trump were true (and many of them come from Republican Never-Trumpers like Stephens), there would be some serious application of the words of this column "return of the demagogues."
Tell us which “accusations” are not true. The relevant charge for this discussion is that he emboldens racists with comments like the ones he delivered after Charlottesville. He and his supporters dismiss this criticism by labeling it “political correctness.” If that phrase were around in the 1930s and 40s, no doubt it would be tossed around quite often.
A demagogue builds political support by appealing to popular desires and prejudices. It doesn’t take a #NeverTrumper to see that this president fits the description to a T.
40
While I want in no way to undermine the general gist of your article, or disrespect the severity of your family's experience, I do believe you are making a cognitive, or perhaps better said, dualistic error:
"... all the glories of Goethe or Beethoven crumble to nothingness next to what happened."
The beauty of the works of Goethe and Beethoven is that they do not crumble to nothingness in the face of human atrocities. It's not one or the other - we don't get to choose only beauty and no horror. Life just isn't like that, and beauty would mean nothing to us if that's all there was.
Should we say that the words of the Constitution are meaningless nothing in light of the atrocities we committed against Africans and Native Americans?
And while I agree that we should not feel guilt over the actions of past generations, neither can we ignore our responsibility in remembering them or attempting to right them. I may not have owned slaves or slaughtered indigenous people, but I've benefitted from the horrible actions of my ancestors. Never forget; but neither never disown our own relationship to the world collective. Every action by every person affects us all. A center cannot hold when one is railing against one side or another.
224
Beautifully put. And thank you for pointing out that Germany is not the only country that needs to reckon with its past.
20
I interpret Brett Stephen’s words to mean that if human life and the human spirit of the victimized means so little to the perpetrators of violence, their art and music capturing the human spirit crumbles to nothingness because of their acts of atrocity.
12
Beauty and horror, but the former does not absolve or balance out the other, which I take to be Mr. Stephen's point.
And it is an idealistic fantasy (and a categories error) to think (as the famous German historian Friedrich Meinicke wrote in his 'Die deutsche Katastrophe' (1946)) that what Germany needed to do was return to that glorious past to re-discover their way forward in the post war world.
What was needed was a different kind of not being afraid--recognizing and condemning participation, complicity and support of the Nazi atrocities by ordinary Germans, and teaching to keep the memories alive of how political societies can be destroyed by collective madness.
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Can we, as Americans, in the age of Trump have the courage to confront his daily assaults on our democracy, and say, “Tell them I was not afraid.” Where is our collective strength as a people to stand up to this colossal destroyer of decency? How can we allow children to be separated at our borders from their parents and brought like prisoners to be warehoused in windowless and soulless dens? How can we stand by silently while Trump mocks our allies while fulfilling Putin’s plot to destroy western democracies? His hate-filled rabid rallies portend violent divisions amongst us.
“Tell them I was not afraid” should remind us all of the innocent lives that are destroyed when we remain silent.
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Trump's rejecting our strongest allies in Quebec, while admonishing them to reinstall Russia to the G7.
Is he that ignorant of the past?
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Unfortunately I believe this cannot be corralled in by just any individual. If you have a party in power forgoing there check on another branch we are in trouble until something really bad happens and there is a huge collective resistance. We are not there yet
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The problem is when we are there, it will be too late. Now is the time for good and decent Americans to come to the aid of their country.
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73 years after the world first heard the words "Never Again", it appears that "Never" has a time limit. As a man raised in the Jewish religion, my heart aches every time I read about the Nazis atrocities. Yet here I sit less than a century later and already two countries I love, America and Israel, are headed down an authoritarian path.
Never again? The words are more hope than reality.
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The horrors of the holocaust are beyond conception, and it is important to recall and remember. Yet, sadly there are and have been many other instances of ethnic cleansing and huge injustices prior to and since that time. Armenians, Cambodians, Native Americans, and Syria come readily to mind, but the list is long and the veil of tears is almost endless. So while recalling one's own family and community's anguish, it's important to extend the reach to the others, and just as important to recognize that demagogues can arise in every community. They ironically or better yet cynically, use the sufferings of their tribe in the past to justify perpetrating injustices upon others. We need vigilance and responsibility, but also a huge dose of humility and compassion.
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Horsepower:
I have heard comments like yours many times, and it is a given that we should condemn all instances of ethnic cleansing/mass murder.
But the Holocaust deserves special attention, and most Germans recognize this . That horrific time was the first at a scale where an assimilated group were singled out, for political reasons, for who they were--not what they had done. They were not in longstanding rebellion or political conflict with the German state. An entire, mechanized, then modern state brought its full force to bear in an attempt to exterminate the Jews.
So yes, condemn all genocides. It is perhaps uncomfortable to point out degrees of genocide, but it is also important to recognize what happened so future generations understand the scope and malevolence of the event. The Germans have done a much better job with this education, relative to our own miserable US historical roots stemming from the Atlantic Slave Trade.
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The scale and the mechanics are what set it apart, but it was not the first time a group was singled out... not by a long shot. To believe this is to deny the darkness in every soul.
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....which Africa invented and the entire world used.
And, yes, those with an education know that, and they understand time machine thinking causes logical fallacies used to, well, make money.
I too have that book on the shelf that I periodically look at. It is a "Yizkor" (Remembrance) book for the small town in Poland that my father was from. It documents life in Przedecz for Jews before and during the war. And it documents the life of each Jewish resident murdered during the Holocaust. It is from this book that I learned about my father's first wife, their 8 children, and his father who were murdered, along with other family members. What have I learned? That the degradation of the rule of law by leaders is a path to chaos, dehumanization of the "other," and the loss of human decency. My parents met in a Displaced Persons camp in Austria after WWII and were fortunate enough to gain entry to the USA as refugees. Would the doors have been closed to them today by the leadership of this and other countries? As you point out, the disavowal and minimization of past crimes "paves the way for the crimes of the future."
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I wonder if such a book will now be “cleansed” from Poland under their new Holocaust laws.
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I remember a phone call into the Zagreb press office one day, that came from the Imam in the Bosnian town of Banja Luka: "Please come; they are loading people on to trains to ship them out to camps. There are dead in the streets. Please come - words cannot describe what's being done."
That was 1992, after watching Milosevic's rise to power. I had wondered how someone like him turned into a monster, but nationalism is a powerful drug. I see too many parallels today.
Thank you for a somber column. People said "Never again" after the Holocaust but I witnessed a different abomination and atrocity. It can happen again.
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I was in Sarajevo and after the failure of Europe to stop the killing of Muslims by christians, I was part of IFOR that stopped the geneocide that Europe would not stop.
Of course the pesky Russians were arming the Serbs and preventing the UN from stopping the Serbs. A prelude to the Ukraine.
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Good to hear from you. Your comments at the Washington Post were always excellent.
Beethoven was a well known antifascist, he notably rescinded in total disillusionment his Symphony no.3 dedication to Napoleon. Do American cultural giants (few though they be) such as Mark Twain "crumble to nothingness" because they were part of a society that cruelly enslaved 6 million blacks, that perpetrated the Native American slaughter, that expelled ethnics such as the Chinese after exploiting their labor?
This is a moving article, and particularly for portraying the courage of these Innocents. But the victims of the Holocaust are not honored by an illogical response to reckless rhetoric. Your argument is weak because you attack the strength instead of the fault in the premise of the German far right. German cultural achievements are as indisputable as their engineering. As Sarah Silverman famously points out, : " Jews drive German cars."
What needs to be addressed here is the attempt of the German right to minimalize the deaths of 6 million Jews, and 50 million lives in WWII as a speck in their history. Clearly it is not, but neither are our own historical atrocities specks, and I fear that by having minimalized them ourselves we have helped give rise to their rebirth today, right here in America.
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I don’t get your point. What political party in the U.S. that calls slavery a mere speck in our history receives even a fraction of the votes garnered by AfD? If you’re trying to draw some kind of moral equivalence here, there just isn’t any.
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They ARE honored by his article----and remembered.
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I think you're missing Stephens' point, David. The greatness of German culture (Goethe, Beethoven) will always be known and admired, but the minimizing of the human suffering Germany perpetrated is not the move to make to "save" these cultural wins. You don't compare the Holocaust to a "speck of birdshit" in order to shore up the better parts of the culture; the good bits do indeed crumble if this is the move. Americans have the same problem and duty--slavery, the genocide of Native Americans and camps for Japanese-Americans during WWII are not "specks" and must be accounted for alongside the greatness of the idea of democracy and "all men (should be all humans) are created equal." Only when you set the triumphs of culture next to a culture's cruel actions do the triumphs crumble.
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I have no patience for the idea that guilt carries over from one generation to the next.
But memory, vigilance, and a sense of responsibility must.
These are the most important sentences in this powerful and heartfelt column. For too long and for too many people here, an understanding of the the crimes of the Nazi era has been condensed into an obligatory sense of shame and collective guilt.
The magic elixir offered up by the AfD is to absolve people of these negative and inappropriate feelings while intoxicating them with the same old siren's song of tribalism, racism and xenophobia.
It's worse than ironic that of all the people on Earth, Germans should be the last to fall into the trap of extreme right wing nationalism (again)!
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Your lack of 'patience' - maybe ill-stated as a result of 'translation'...has me shaking my head. I hear your desire to speak out against the evils of Nationalism - yet you're stuck at the point where you might actually begin to be a force against it. You aren't able to 'be patient' with the deepest of pains. The children, grand-children and beyond very much carry the loss, fear -- terror inflicted on their parents, grand-parents and beyond. They carry it and it plays out in their lives.
In the United States it's a lesson we don't want to learn. We refuse to face the pain. We go so far as to deny the existence of our slave-owning family. We cut the threads- those ancestors who raised our great-great grandparents. Whether the lives of the children atoned for or defended the evil, we'll never know. We pretend it has nothing to do with us. Our privilege is simply innate.
The descendants of slaves - their threads were cut, too-by our ancestors who ripped their families apart. Those generations are the living voice of the immense crimes and the pain suffered. "Forget about it!!" Look around the world, why can't these crimes be forgotten?
Your rational, magnificent rhetoric - in the face of woman, long ago murdered, whose simple words to the children she wouldn't know, but innately loved and worried about, was "Just know that I am not afraid."
"I was not afraid." "If you meet any of my children, tell them I was not afraid."
She's speaking to you, too.
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The Germans and Latvians who participated in these awful events have much to answer for.
Those who were born afterwards, or who were not involved and did not know what was happening, have nothing to answer for.
We cannot blame all Germans, forever, for the crimes of a few. Just as we do not blame all Russians for the actions of Stalin. Or all Americans for the murders that occurred at Wounded Knee.
I hope all the victims of atrocity find peace. I hope all those who are guilty of committing atrocities face justice. And I hope we stop blaming entire people's for the actions of a few of their members.
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This is not about blaming all Germans for anything. It is about blaming the Untermensch who wrote about a "speck of birdshit" and the Germans who voted for him.
We have plenty to answer for in our own history, but anonymous apologists don't help much.
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Not facing up to the evils of previous generations, whether in Germany, Latvia, or Alabama, makes one complicit with those evils.
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Blaming them, and asking them as a people and a nation to be honest about their history--which means taking responsibility for speaking about it openly and honestly--are NOT the same thing.
Its not enough to hope that "victims of atrocity find peace". Their experiences have to be remembered and learned about by those who come afterwards--on both sides.
And I'm sorry if that offends anyone, but unless these actions are remembered and continuously acknowledged in the future, there will always be nationalists and demagogues who will try to pretend that "they were not such a big deal" and "its time to stop feeling guilty and forget".
All of us must resist and speak out against these tendencies. Because if someone can minimize the victimization of one group, then they can "minimize" the experiences of any of us--especially when we are no longer around to speak for ourselves.
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The AFD taps into the same mindset as Trump. The anxiety about jobs. About immigrants and so on. They speak about real problems . They do it in a hateful disgusting way. But the other parties ignore the problems too much. There are problems with immigration. Democrats have to address the problems in a decent way. We have to find a way to integrate people. Erdogan loving immigrants are a problem.
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I lived in Russia from 1951-58 and in Poland from 1959-60. I can tell you from personal experience that anti-Semitism [aka hatred] was alive and kicking. It is horrifying, but not surprising, that ugliness continues through every generation and in every part of the globe. Someone, somewhere, is always being destroyed for being a certain religion, or tribe, or color, or on the wrong side of town. It's all part and parcel of hatred and intolerance. And those countries whose history makes them complicit in crimes against humanity, such as Poland and Latvia and Ukraine, want to have laws that prohibit uttering the truth, as if by not allowing it to be said it vanishes. Shame on all of us who allow this, and hopefully, judgment day on all of us who perpetuate it.
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Irene in Brooklyn, I feel compelled to respond to your heartfelt plea: " And those countries whose history makes them complicit in crimes against humanity, such as Poland and Latvia and Ukraine, want to have laws that prohibit uttering the truth, as if by not allowing it to be said it vanishes. Shame on all of us who allow this, and hopefully, judgment day on all of us who perpetuate it."
Please ask the next Native American or First Nations Canadian you meet how the USA or Canada is doing with coming to terms with their complicity vis a vis "crimes against humanity."
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And one of those was Miriam Robinson Polanski, my great aunt. Her husband prominent Rabbi Menahem Manes Polanski, oldest brother of my grandfather, and my great uncle, had been killed at that same beach in July 1941 in an earlier Aktion.
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