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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 24, 2017)
Street Roots • Feb. 24-March 2, 2017 HOLOCAUST, from page 4 News Day was apparently no accident, given that the State Department’s statement, which included a reference to Jewish people, was reportedly scrapped by the Trump administration. Following our interview, Margies was meeting with a Holocaust survivor who had been liberated from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. “She weighed 59 pounds at age 16 when she was liberated. Imagine having that statement released and what she would think,” Margies said. She said her center released a statement in response, calling the omission of Jewish people from the blurb posted by the White House “a grotesque insult to the memory of those who perished and to the survivors amongst us.” Having a propagandist such as Bannon in the White House has raised concerns. He’s been credited with turning Breitbart News into an echo chamber for the “alt-right.” According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, under Bannon’s direction, Breitbart “aggressively pushed I stories against immigrants, and supported linking minorities to terrorism and crime.” Inciting fear of the other is a popular tactic of demagogues and authoritarian regimes. \ legislation to Hitler and the Nazi party in the Cabinet” From there, the Nazis began slowly to pass discriminatory laws. “In 1933, Jews and other unwanted people were expelled from chess clubs, for example,” she said. “It didn’t start with murder.” One of the most common questions they get at the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education is: Why didn’t the Jews leave? It was in part because they were assimilated into German society, Margies said. They were doctors, lawyers and business owners. “They couldn’t believe it could happen to them, because they were German. So it was utter disbelief. It was, ‘Oh, it’s bad now, but it’s only going to get better,’” she said. “I think another really important lesson that goes right along with that is there were quotas in most countries where people could have emigrated, but they really couldn’t - there wasn’t anywhere to go,” Slabosheski said. In June 1939, the U.S. turned away a ship carrying 937 Jewish asylum seekers because President Franklin VD. Roosevelt and State Department officials argued that “The Nazis used PHOTO BY AR KA D Y BROW N the refugees posed a propaganda to play The Oregon Holocaust Memorial is inscribed threat to national with text about the history o f the Holocaust. „ on,em otions - which, security. w as huge - to unite he United States has seen a recent rise in reported hate crimes. Was this present in Germany leading up to Hitler’s reign? T “You could have the perspective that right now could be the beginning of that, but a lot of other analysis suggests that these groups have been recruiting for 40 years, Slabosheski said. “I think for me personally, we are so in the moment that I don t have the historical distance to say what the comparison is.” Margies pointed out that hate groups have remained present in Oregon since the 1800s. “I think they’ve just either been louder or quieter, depending on how loud they think they can be,” she said. “If you think back to the ’20s, when the Kian was here - the Kian in 1923 was the largest Kian in thecountry west of the Mississippi, in Oregon.” She said the Neo-Nazi movement quieted down until the 1980s, then got loud again, then retreated back underground and found its home on the web. “And now, I don’t know whether it s more, but it’s just a license to use their voices out loud because we have people in high places who are speaking the same rhetoric,” she said, referencing a story The New York Times posted earlier that day revealing Trump’s earpiece Steve Bannon’s affinity for Julius Evola. Evola is popular among fascists. He was neo-Nazi-associated and a leading proponent of Traditionalism, “a worldview popular in far-right and alternative religious circles that believes progress and equality are poisonous Ulusions,” The Times reported. Additionally, the omission of Jews from the statement released by the White House on International Holocaust Remembrance Judith Margies (left) is the executive director of the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education. April Slabosheski is a Holocaust educator for the organization. incarceration and immigrant detention centers? “You are absolutely right,” she replied, “and that’s humiliating.” Suddenly, people are concerned about issues they were aware of but did nothing about in the past, she said. “If he is impeached, are people going to say, ‘Phew!’? Are we going to climb back under our tables and do the things we’ve always done and just let the other indignities, which aren’t quite as bad as what we’re seeing now, continue?” Margies asked. “Then I think we’ve done a really terrible disservice.” Slabosheski said she’s noticed a difference am ong stu d en ts sh e educates w hen visiting lo c a l s c h o o ls . S h e ty p ic a lly e n d s h e r le s s o n s by asking the class what kind of a country they are living in, in comparison to what they people against a had just learned. Now, she said, she doesn’t common enemy, to build up a sense of have to bring it up because students are national pride that people had lost, and to already chiming in with comparisons to mass sort of mythologize a historical Germany that incarceration and other issues they see on didn’t really exist,” Slabosheski said. the news. They explained the Nazis glorified ' “To say that this is about to be the Germany of the past through imagery, old Holocaust, kind of inevitable-izes What’s German songs and clothing and parades that happening now,” Slabosheski said. She said promoted nationalist pride. she worries thinking that way could result in “Make Germany great again,” Margies people feeling helpless, which could lead to ' lamented. less civic engagement. “That’s not why one should study ut Trump’s America has an X factor. Holocaust history. Because there are all “One of the most important things these moments when people could have about teaching Holocaust history, especially stepped in, and a lot of people did step in, in this time, is the idea that the Holocaust but not enough,” she said. wasn’t inevitable,” Slabosheski said. “It “This is not a fascist country,” Margies required the participation from millions of said, “but things are odd right now.” people who didn’t stand up and didn t say no Margies said the Oregon Jewish Museum to all of these measures that were being and Center for Holocaust Education has been enacted.” fielding more calls than usual since the Both women agreed: In the years leading election. up to the Holocaust, Germany didn’t see In some cases, primary schools reach out anything that came close to the protests and to the center when a swastika shows up on a outcry that Trump’s exclusionary measures bathroom wall. When that happens, the have wrought from U.S. citizens. center sends a local Holocaust survivor, “That thing that happened in Arizona a educator or docent to speak to students. couple nights ago - they were deporting this Usually the center would get about three woman and people were just - it s just calls like that a year, but at the time of our incredible - people came out and just interview Feb. 10, the center had received blocked this (Customs) car,” Margies said. that many calls - all directly in response to a “People are really protesting right now, and hate-related incident at a school - during the they’re not going to be stopped.” past week alone. She warns, however, that citizens must That doesn’t necessarily mean incidences never normalize Trump’s policies. are increasing, Margies said. It could just “The moment we wake up and we say, ‘It’s mean the response to such incidents is starting to feel kind of normal; I guess this is changing. what it is,’ we are in big trouble,” she said. “What we’re doing matters now more than , She was asked, isn’t that what Americans ever,” she said. “If we can help people to have been doing for decades with other better understand, I feel really proud of forms of oppression, such as mass th a t” B Page 5 The White Rose While most Germans remained silent during the Holocaust, many for fear of death, a professor and a small group of students at the University of Munich formed a resistance group called The White Rose. From June 1942 to February 1943, they anonymously distributed leaflets in the hopes of inciting action a n d resistance among their fellow Germans. Members of the group’s core were all discovered and executed. This is an excerpt from the second leaflet The White Rose, distributed in 1942: ; I t is im p o s s ib le to e n g a g e in in te lle c tu a l d is c o u rs e w ith N a tio n a l S o c ia lis m b e c a u s e it is not a n in te lle c tu a lly d e fe n s ib le program. It is false to speak o f a National Socialist philosophy, for if there were such an entity, one would have to try b y means o f analysis and discussion either to prove its validity or to combat it. In actuality, however, we face a totally different situation. A t its very inception this movement depended on the deception and betrayal o f one’s fellow man; even a t that time it was inwardly corrupt and could support itself only with constant lies. After all, Hitler states in an early edition o f “his” book (a book written in the worst German I have ever read, in spite o f the fact it has been elevated to the position o f the Bible in this nation o f poets and thinkers): “It is unbelievable, to what extent one must betray a people in order to rule it. ” If at the start of this cancerous growth in the nation was not particularly noticeable, it was only because there were still enough forces at work that operated for the good, so that it was kept under control. As it grew larger, however, and finally in an ultimate spurt o f growth broke open, as it were, and infected the whole body. . . . I f the German does not at last start up out o f his stupor, if he does not protest wherever and wherever he can against this clique o f criminals, if he shows no sympathy for these hundreds o f thousands o f victims. He must evidence not only sympathy; no, much more: a sense o f complicity in guilt. For through his apathetic behavior he gives these evil men the opportunity to ask as they do; he tolerates this “government” which has taken upon itself such an infinitely great burden of guilt; indeed he himself is to blame for the fact that it came about at all!
