News
Street Roots
Lessons from the Holocaust
Should we be comparing Trum p’s America to H itlers Germany?
BY EMILY GREEN
STAFF WRITER
resident Donald Trump exhibits the
characteristics of a demagogue.
B
His attacks on the media, fear
mongering, overt lying and the way he plays
on people’s prejudices and emotions all fit
the mold. As such, more than a few memes
and articles circulating on the internet
compare him to one of the most recognizable
demagogues in recent history: Adolf Hitler.
But to compare Trump to the leader of a
political party that murdered 11 million
people is an oversimplification, and could be
considered gauche. A better comparison
might be between the rise of the Nazi war
machine and the rise of the “alt-right” white
nationalist movement.
But is this a comparison that should even
be made?
Or is it more dangerous not to make the
connection?
Street Roots visited the Oregon Jewish
Museum and Center for Holocaust
Education, which is preparing for its grand
reopening this June at a new location in
downtown Portland, to pose these questions
to Holocaust history experts.
April Slabosheski, a Holocaust educator,
s a id w i p l a t h e r e , a r e r is k s in m a k in g
analogies, there are important uses for
Holocaust history in the United States at this
moment.
“I think it’s OK for those two things to be
very true,” she said.
Historically, authoritarian regimes thrive
alongside economic depression. The Great
Depression of 1929 hit Germany particularly
hard. One might argue the U.S. today is not
so different, as large swaths of rural America
still haven’t recovered from the 2008
recession. This is also where Trump found
his voter base.
Slabosheski said that when people ask her
if there are similarities between post
recession U.S. and post-depression Germany,
the first thing she does is explain what
Germany actually looked like in the years
leading up to Hitler’s reign.
Germany had recently lost World War I,
with more than 2 million Germans losing
their lives along with it. The peace treaty
Germany signed at the end of the war
assigned the country billions of dollars of war
debt. Germans weren’t just economically
depressed; they were starving - and there
was great instability of governance, with
regular assassinations of prominent political
leaders, Slabosheski said.
The United States’ government is more
established than Germany’s government was
in 1933, making it less vulnerable.
“We have low unemployment, the dollar is
as strong as ever, people have health
insurance - all sorts of things you could look
at as positive,” said Judith Margies, the
center’s director. “They lost World War I, and
they were suffering because of that loss.”
Slabosheski agreed.
“The situation in Germany was
unimaginably awful,” she said. “It was
emotional and economic and physical.”
P H O TO BY A R K A D Y BRO W N
A t the Oregon Holocaust Memorial in Portland, bronzed items such as this child's shoe represent belongings left behind by Jewish people who
were persecuted.
oes this mean Trump’s America
bears no resemblance to Hitler’s
Germany?
D
It’s “a risky comparison at best,”
Slabosheski said. However^ “this trend, if you
will, of economic struggles and
authoritarianism, populism, xenophobia -
those are so intimately connected.”
One striking difference, she noted, is that
today’s far-right and xenophobic movements
are not isolated to the United States; “it’s
happening everywhere.”
Slabosheski offers a workshop on anti-
Semitic legislation, and it begins with th e
question of how Hitler rose to power in the
first place. The Nazi party had already been
actively recruiting for 10 years prior to
Hitler’s appointment to the Cabinet of a
popularly elected German president, Paul
von Hindenburg, in 1932.
“There was enough representation in the
German parliament by the Nazi party at the
time that the Nazi party was able to pass
laws that put Hitler and the party, essentially,
in complete control of government
decisions,” Slabosheski said.
“These early laws, they really played on a
sense of panic and so-called threats to the
safety of the country and the people of
Germany to be able to pass whatever laws
were necessary, even if they were not
constitutional,” she said, “which saying out
loud makes me feel kind of sick right now.”
The first law was the Reichstag Fire
Decree, passed after an anarchist set a
government parliament building on fire.
The decree stated that “as a defensive
measure against Communist acts of violence
that endanger the state,” it was suspending
seven articles of the German Constitution.
Slabosheski said that while the arsonist
was not a communist, the Nazi parly claimed
that he was and used the fire as a reason to
pass the decree.
If this sounds familiar, it should. On Jan.
30, the White House used the terrorist
attack on Muslims in Quebec to justify
Trump’s controversial security measures
after false reports from Fox News indicated
that a Moroccan immigrant was suspected of
the attack. It was later revealed the
suspected attacker was a French Canadian
who was anti-immigrant.
The Reichstag Fire Decree, Slabosheski
said, “took a lot of rights away from people,
and the really critical ones were due process
of police investigations and being able to
have a fair trial.”
The decree also limited people’s ability to-
assemble freely. The same objective is
currently being pursued by Republican
lawmakers in at least eight states, The
Intercept reported in January.
Because the decree took away due
process, the Nazi party was able to arrest
and detain most of the communist and
socialist representatives in parliament. This
allowed them to pass the Enabling A ct
“It was called the Enabling Act because it
enabled Hitler to have all the power,”
Slabosheski said. “It transferred all the
power of the presidency and parliamentary
See HOLOCAUST, page 5
If you go
Speakers and tours
The Oregon Jewish Museum and Center
for Holocaust Education has moved to
724 NW Davis St. It’s closed until its
grand reopening in June, however the
public can request group tours of the
Holocaust Memorial in Washington Park
or invite Holocaust survivors, educators
or docents, who all have a personal
connection to the Holocaust, to give a
lesson or presentation on Holocaust
history. For more information or to
request a tour or speaker, visit ojmche.
org.
Speakers reflect a range of experiences;
some were hidden children, some were
refugees, and some survived
concentration camps.
There is no fee for memorial tours,
However a donation of $25, to cover
administrative costs, is recommended.
Workshop
In March, the center will host a free
public workshop on the gradual
implementation of anti-Semitic legislation.
The date and time have not yet been
determined. Check the center’s website,
ojmche.org, for updated information.