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We Can (and Must) Do Better During This Year's Holocaust Remembrance Day

Updated: Feb 20, 2022


Wednesday was International Holocaust Remembrance Day. A somber tradition and an important reminder of the cruelty and devastating power of hate.


It is vital that we never forget that Nazism did not come into power through the barrel of a gun but through a democratic process. Fascism was not forced upon the people of Germany but embraced. And the antisemitism of the Nazis was culmination and symptom of a culture which had grown comfortable with silent moderates and platformed extremists.


1930s Germany proved that the "that could never happen to me" or "that could never happen here" narrative is simply a comforting fantasy. Because while Nazism was spreading in Europe, it was also spreading across the Atlantic to the United States.


New York's Long Island was infamously home to Camp Siegfried. The Suffolk County camp on the northern shore of Upper Yaphank Lake was ran by the German-American Bund (German for alliance) and became a the Nazi-sympathizer dream vacation. The settlement included streets named for Adolf Hitler, its own version of Hitler's Youth, smuggled in brownshirts and jackboots direct from the Nazi government in Europe, fascist paraphernalia, and the community was policed by its own version of the Ordnungsdienst (the Nazi stormtroopers tasked with policing Jewish ghettos).


The camp hosted speeches, festivals, bars, and rallies attended by fascists, gun enthusiasts (the Bund was an affiliate of the NRA), and political activists. In August of 1938 the camp hosted its annual German Day which was attended by 40,000 people.


Germany Day served as precursor to the Madison Square Garden Nazi Rally hosted in New York City in February 1939 where 20,000 attendees "Hailed Hitler" toward a thirty-foot portrait of George Washington flanked by swastikas. At the German-American Bund's "Pro America Rally" organized around antisemitic rhetoric. In the closing speech by Fritz Kuhn, he "demanded" the government of the United States "be returned to the American People who founded it," he of course only meant the white and Christian ones.


These camps and rallies did face some opposition though. The "Pro America Rally" at the Madison Square Garden was interrupted by a Jewish-American man named Isadore Greenbaum. He charged the stage to protest the event was quickly tackled and beat by the Bund's stormtroopers alongside officers from the New York City Police Department. The NYPD would end up fining Greenbaum almost 500 dollars in today's money for the incident.


Outside the rally over 100,000 people gathered to protest. These protestors were met with brutality by New York City Police Officers who had been called in to protected the Nazis. Still, some protests broke through the police line and began punching the Nazis in the face, literally bashing the fascists.


Then when America entered World War II after the Pear Harbor Attacks in 1941, Camp Siegfried was shut down (though not before local townspeople were given the chance to tear up the swatiska gardens, tip over outhouses, and vandalize camp property). The Bund's leadership were monitored closely thereafter by the FBI, with a few being detained at Camp Upton (the WWI military based turned Japanese Internment Camp for NYC based Japanese-Americans).


And yet, America once again faced a spike in Nazi activities in the 70s.


In 1977 Nazis began to organize a march through the town of Skokie, Illinois. The Chicago suburb was targeted because out of its almost 70,000 residents more than 40,000 were Jewish and because the town was home to "the largest number of Holocaust survivors outside of Israel" (estimates vary but the most consistently reported number was about 7,000 survivors living in the town at the time of the incident).


The town went to court to prevent the march but after a lengthy fight the Supreme Court ruled that the Nazi Party had a First Amendment right to free speech and therefore could not be stopped from peacefully marching. Still, out of concern for their safety, the Nazis moved their event to Chicago.


It was in front of the Chicago Federal Building that 20 Nazis gathered to march and were met with 2,000 counter-protestors. The whole event is said to have disbanded within about ten minutes of starting.


But that still wasn't the end of Nazism in the United States. In 2017 Charlottesville, Virginia became the home of the deadly "Unite the Right" Rally that organized in opposition to the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue. It became the go-to destination for neo-Confederates, Nazis, fascists, and Klansmen.


These are just a few examples of far-right extremism in the United States, the extent to which the Klan, Nazis, and Confederates have organized and impact the politics of this country is disturbingly deep. It was Rage Against the Machine that reminded us that, "some of those that work forces are the same that burn crosses."


Far-right extremism has reemerged as a global phenomena. In the social-democracy of Sweden, the supposed cornerstone of progressive politics, nativism and populism have served as avenues for a rise of far-right demonstrations and politics. In Germany, far-right parties have gained traction as Islamophobic attitudes and internet propagated fake news radicalizes communities. Brazil has elected a neo-fascist populist, as has Hungry.


Terrorist attacks in New Zealand, France, and Belgium have reflected anti-multicultural sentiments and been celebrated online by Nazis, white supremacists, and fascists.


And of course Trump. Though he is is not Vladimir Putin of Russia, Viktor Orban of Hungary, or Marinne Le Pen of France, he has complemented many of these leaders and has the support of their fascist fan club.


Putin and his oligarchy are the most blatant in their efforts to actively encourage Trump's election, but neo-fascists leaders and dictators like Orban, Bosonaro, and Kim Jong Un have been friendlier with his administration than any of Trump's predecessors (or successor).


A global rise in far-right terrorism and ideologues has had terrifying recourse for all peoples of all walks of life, but it has caused a particularly troubling increase in antisemitism. From the vandalization of the Congregation Mikveh Israel Synagogue in Philadelphia to the use of Jewish leaders as scapegoats by far-right leaders to explain opposition or misfortune.


Notably, President Trump and Prime Minister Orban, have both blamed Jewish billionaire George Soros for political failures and for protestors/opposition to their administrations. Antisemitic conspiracy theories about Soros and a "Jewish financier collective" have become so pervasive they have infiltrated mainstream Republican politics. While these antisemitic canards have been festering in the shadows of the internet for years, and have a history even more insidious, recently they have entered broad daylight of social media.


So as we took time this week to remember the tragedy of the Holocaust, we should also have taken time to consider how we are honoring the legacies of the survivors. We owe it to them, and to ourselves, to create a world where such violence is unfathomable. So, it is far past time to hold our web-platforms, governments, leaders, and neighbors to a higher standard.


It took a deadly attack on the nation's capitol for social media platforms to start taking responsibility for the hate and lies spawning on their websites. And even still, there are Republicans that continuing to spread the lies and bigoted narratives.


There is something fundamentally wrong with the soul of a country and world that equates facts and conspiracy. That sees the rise of Nazism and then calls left divisive. That perpetuates a narrative of "liberty and justice for all" while admonishing the "identify politics" aiming to achieve such a promise.


There is something fundamentally wrong today and while I don't have a silver-bullet solution; for the boys who stormed Normandy, for the memory of the children subjected Mengele's experimentations, for the Parisian women who gave their lives in resistance Nazi occupation, and for a global Jewish community that even today can't comfortably take a deep breath and relax, can and must do better.

Tonight's selection pairs well with sweet but still earthy Labrusca.

Photo: By Ian West









 
 
 

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