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!