History Lesson Unlearned

Today I was moved to deliver the following history lesson, since it is a pretty significant day in the history of Europe as well as America.  We faught so long and hard to defeat fascist oppression in Europe and helped to liberate so many souls. I have concluded the lesson with what some might call a “rant” with my own opinions and concerns about the significance of tomorrow’s historical remembrance and just what lessons I think we can learn....or better said....SHOULD HAVE LEARNED...from it.

This past Monday, January 27, marked the 75th Anniversary of the liberation of the notorious Nazi death camp, Auschwitz. Over 1.1 million men, women and children lost their lives there. Auschwitz was one of a network of concentration and death camps operated in Poland by the Nazis during World War II. The first of these was established in 1933 at Dachau shortly after Hitler’s appointment as Germany’s Chancellor. It originally housed political prisoners, those who had opposed the fascist Nazi movement. As time went on more camps were set up for the primary purpose of housing those who were deemed undesirables by the Nazi party, including Jews, homosexuals, foreigners, people of other than German ethnicity, and various types of political prisoners.

The main purpose, originally, for these camps were to incarcerate people whom the Nazi regime perceived to be a security threat. Eventually the camps came to be used to eliminate individuals and small, targeted groups of individuals by murder, away from the public and judicial review, and to exploit forced labor of the prisoner population.

Eventually the Auschwitz complex was built and became part of Hitler’s “Final Solution “. The term “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” was a euphemism used by Nazi Germany’s leaders. It referred to the mass murder of Europe’s Jews. It brought an end to policies aimed at encouraging or forcing Jews to leave the German Reich and other parts of Europe. Those policies were replaced by systematic annihilation which resulted in the death of over one million human beings at that camp alone. It should be duly noted that Auschwitz only played a part in this “final solution”. The Holocaust museum puts the total number of murdered during the Holocaust at 17 million: 6 million Jews and 11 million others, including foreigners, political opponents or dissidents, homosexuals, and people with disabilities.

During the time that these concentration and death camps were being built and, then in full operation,  the vast majority of German citizens continued to go about their daily lives seemingly oblivious to the atrocities being carried out around them. A large majority of them were fully taken in by the lies being told to them about the danger to their way of life that the Jews and other “undesirables” presented.  Hitler’s support among the German citizenry was massive and as it grew no one who opposed it was safe to express their opposition. Hitler would hold rallies regularly to preach his evil agenda to the willing ears of his faithful followers who, because of the fears and resentments that he had stoked within them, began to worship him almost as if he was God. They came to view him as the Savior of the German people.

When I see how the Trump supporters in America today react to the lies that Trump tells them through his tweets and at his rallies, it is easy to be reminded of the lessons I’ve learned from studying the history of the rise of fascism in 1930s Germany. Trump stokes the same fears, resentments and hatred in the hearts and minds of his followers today as Hitler did to the German masses 80 some years ago. Trumps followers, including the most fervently, self proclaimed “Christian” people in the land have bought what he is selling 100%. Some believe he was sent by God to save America’s soul. The blasphemy is astounding to me. The one thing that we have working in our favor is that the percentage of the citizenry in America today who support their tyrannical, demagogic leader, seems to be around 40%, which pales to the 90% of Hitler’s cultish followers.

Still, whether it be 40% or 90%, isn’t it just as evil to support evil in either case? When those first individuals were packed off to Dachau in 1933 the German people seemed either unaware or uncaring, for the most part, and some, I’m sure were in full support. How is that any different than today’s America where we now have, on any given day, over 2,000 children, of all ages, infant on up, separated from their families and housed in concentration camps? Our government is careful to call them detention centers, but history tells us what they really are. Only 40% of our people claim to support Trump, but by my best estimate, based on the blatantly abhorrent lack of outrage and protest against it, over 90% of Americans just... don’t ....care...that this is happening in America, and far too many are in full support of it.

How is that different from Germany 80 plus years ago? The answer is, it is not, it is the same. Shame on us! Are we not better than this? Evidently not! Are we not America, the home of the free and the brave were liberty and justice prevails? The shining city on the hill, and a refuge for those yearning to be free?  Evidently not anymore! If this is what we have become today, what are we to become tomorrow.  I must tell you, it scares the hell out of me and it should you too.

~ Dane Knutson, Progressive, Christian, Patriot.