While I don’t have a bucket list I do have a long term “things I really want to do” list. So several weekends ago, when I was in our nation’s capital with an open afternoon, I finally had a chance to cross one of those things off my list.
I went to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
I cannot find the words to describe the emotional impact of my four hours in the museum. Knowing about the Holocaust intellectually is one thing; being taken down into its history via 70 video monitors, 900 artifacts and four theaters showing historic film footage and eyewitness testimonies got me in the gut.
I have toured the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam and that was a sobering experience. Walking through the memorial’s permanent exhibit drowns the visitor in the madness of the tyrannical Nazi genocide machine.
Back home two weeks later, I was stunned by seeing the crowds of people on my television screen — crowds of people waving signs and fervently cheering and waving their arms in salutation to a loud, charismatic figure … while off to the side of the screen, some people were being rounded up and dragged out of the arena.
I was stunned and sickened because the crowds of Americans I was seeing on my television set were like an re-enactment of the wall-size photos I viewed in the Holocaust Museum. Photos of fresh faced German youth eagerly saluting Hitler. Photos and videos of 100,000 German citizens jammed into an arena roaring “Heil (Hail) Hitler.” And of people who were not German, not of the Aryan race, being rounded up and worse.
Germany was rising from the ashes of World War I (“The War to End All Wars”) as both a democracy and a country that was heavily in debt. Inflation was rampant in the 1930s. Social problems were also rampant. The parliamentary Weimar Republic had replaced the federal monarchy that ruled over the German empire. However, the rise of the national socialist dictatorship in 1933 provided fertile ground for Adolf Hitler to rise to power.
Hitler promised to restore “respect” to the Germany that many of its citizens thought was so unjustly taken from them by the Armistice marking the end of World War I.
Whatever the source of his malevolent charisma, for more than a decade in the middle of the 20th century, men, women and children were drawn in droves to Hitler and his message. The message was that he would make Germany “great” again.
Donald Trump, running for president of the United States, is quoted as saying: “The line of ‘make America great again,’ the phrase, that was mine; I came up with it about a year ago, and I kept using it, and everybody’s using it, they are all loving it. I don’t know, I guess I should copyright it, maybe I have copyrighted it.”
Trump claims that he coined the phrase in March 2015. Besides ignoring the similarities to what Hitler was saying, Trump’s malleable grasp of facts ignores that Ronald Reagan used the same slogan 35 years ago during his campaign.
In one of the Holocaust Memorial Museum exhibits, we see Hitler’s statement that “The Party is the Fuhrer; The Fuhrer is the Party.” Trump has stated that he is bringing thousands of new people into the Republican party.
Media columnists, pundits and politicians have alluded to parallels between Hitler and Trump. It’s easy to disregard what many think is an unfair comparison. But a little research reveals these parallel comparisons:
Hitler: Anti-Jew.
Trump: Anti-Muslim/Mexican.
Hitler: Blamed Jews for Germany’s problems.
Trump: Blames Muslims and immigrants for America’s problems.
Hitler: Ordered Jews to wear special IDs (Yellow Star of David).
Trump: Thinks Muslims should wear special IDs.
Hitler: Proposed mass deportations.
Trump: Proposes mass deportations.
Hitler: Used racism to rise to power.
Trump: Using racism to rise to power.
Hitler: Promised to make Germany great again.
Trump: Promises to make American great again.
Trump’s blatant xenophobia rises from the Republican Party’s race baiting that was one result of Richard Nixon’s Southern strategy to attract new supporters from Southern whites who were angry about the advances made by the civil rights movement. Trump has exploited the conservative’s “message” that President Obama was born in Kenya and is a Muslim.
Trump has become the “voice” for the people in this country who are silently racist. A recent YouGov poll revealed that 20 percent of Trump’s supporters disapprove of Abraham Lincoln’s executive order that freed all the slaves in the Confederacy while another 17 percent said they “weren’t sure.”
As it was in Germany in 1933, our country today is in debt and we have rampant social problems.
Author and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi said about the Holocaust: “It happened. Therefore it can happen again. And it can happen everywhere.”
One need only to look at the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere in the world for validation of Levi’s statement. Is America heading in the same direction? Surely the party of Lincoln can do better than Donald Trump.
John Bos lives in Shelburne Falls and invites comments and dialogue at john01370@gmail.com.