Undone

I recently toured our local Jewish History Museum and Holocaust History Center with several of my coworkers. Our organization had provided some of the funding to make the center possible and the center wanted to share the results with us. I went, not expecting to find it particularly powerful or moving. After all, I have visited Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau and the Palace of Justice in Nürnberg (where the famous Nuremberg trials were held following the war). I have read extensively about the Third Reich and while not an expert on it, I consider myself pretty well-versed. I didn’t expect a small history center in Southern Arizona to add much to my perspective.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

I had only been in the center a few minutes when I felt the tears begin to well as I looked at the pictures. As I walked through the exhibits, looking at pictures not unlike many I had seen before, my emotions overwhelmed me and I could barely keep from audibly sobbing. A couple of my wonderful colleagues wrapped me in comforting embraces and helped me make it through. After we returned to our office I spent the rest of my day working through waves of tears and emotions that would not quickly release me. Even now, when I reflect on it, my emotions begin to well up inside me.

Why such a powerful reaction? Two things stand out.

First of all, as I looked at the exhibits, particularly those related to the propaganda used by the Nazis and their allies, I saw so clearly the parallels to the language and rhetoric used by political leaders in my own country today, in 2016. Hitler came to power with the support of a minority of very vocal supporters who manipulated Germany’s constitution to their own ends. He promised to make Germany great again. He promised employment. He promised to restore “traditional” German values. He discredited, then eliminated his political opponents. He scapegoated Jews and other “anti-social elements,” as well as “nefarious” international agents as the source of Germany’s problems. He made it acceptable, even fashionable, to hate certain groups. He didn’t lock up the Jews on his first day in power, but the propaganda that laid the foundation began even before he came to power. Sounds frightfully familiar to me. The parallels terrify me.

Secondly, I viewed the exhibits in this center from a radically new perspective. During all my previous interactions with the Holocaust, I had not identified myself as a member of a marginalized minority group. Now I have, and it significantly changes my perception. Had I lived in Nazi Germany, my picture might well now hang on the wall of some Holocaust museum as one of Hitler’s victims. That’s a very sobering thought and makes the pictures I looked at frightfully personal. When I connect that to current events, I see a group of people salivating at the prospect of taking power and in their zeal to restore “traditional” values wanting to restrict and eliminate my civil rights. It’s not such a far step from there to the gas chambers.

I sincerely, deeply hope that the people of my country will stand strong against the propaganda, the lies and the hateful actions of the minority that now want to run this country. Even as the tears flowed freely down my face I was encouraged by the fact that I was with a group of people who stand for equality, for the rights of all people and who will not stand silently as a minority tries to push their hateful agenda. I hope that we will not let history repeat itself in our country. But still I am afraid…

I’m glad we visited the Holocaust History Center. I’m glad that it exists, because we need to be reminded of the evil humans are capable of. We need to be reminded how easily and quietly genocide can begin, how the seeds of hatred and discrimination are planted and grow in a society (or more accurately, how they are actively watered and nourished when those in power choose to manipulate them for their own purposes – the seeds already being present.) We need, as a memorial wall at the center reminds us, to keep throwing the stone of the historical record – the facts of the Holocaust and other genocides – under the wheel of current events to keep more people from being crushed. We cannot let another Holocaust occur in a false desire to “Make America Great Again.”