Auschwitz and Lessons For Today

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"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

George Santayana (1863–1952)

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This week, we observed the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz at the end of World War II. The day of the liberation by Russian troops — Jan. 27, 1945 — is commemorated annually as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

It is an appropriate time and Auschwitz an appropriate place to mark this anniversary. It has a unique significance, being the site of the first executions in what was to have been the Nazis' "final solution."

It was before my time so I have no firsthand knowledge, but I guess this was the first time that most people in the Allied countries realized what had been happening in the camps. If so, it probably came as quite a shock to some folks. Must have been hard to imagine how one group of people could be so hostile — so savage — in its treatment of another group. Sadly, it really isn't hard to imagine. Man has always been capable of great cruelty. Read your history.

I guess no one will ever know the actual figures, but the widely accepted casualty number is 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. It is further estimated that one in six Jews who died in the Holocaust died at Auschwitz. Could there be a more appropriate day or place to remember what happened?

Well, remembering is the problem for some Auschwitz survivors. If you happen to meet an Auschwitz survivor today, he or she likely was a teenager — or younger — when the camp was liberated. You can still find a few who were in their 20s when the camp was liberated, and there may be a few who were 30 or so, but they would have to be 100 or older by now.

Before long, they will all be gone. No one who lived through it will be alive to tell the tale, making it all the easier for those who deny the Holocaust to press their case.

Those Auschwitz survivors fear that the past will be forgotten, opening the door for it to happen again. It is only natural, I suppose, for them to fear renewed persecution of the Jews — it's been going on for centuries — but those who love freedom should be concerned as well.

For if one group is persecuted, none are safe. If rights are denied to some, they can be denied to all.

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That is why America must remain vigilant.

The modern enemies of freedom do not wear the uniform of a country and are therefore harder to see when they are in our midst "hiding in plain sight." But they are there. Of that, you may be sure.

And they will not be defeated until we face facts and call them what they are. This isn't a religious war. But every extremist group has at least one characteristic that its members have in common with each other. In this case, it happens to be devotion to an extreme religious doctrine. For America to preserve its way of life, it will have to confront the enemies of freedom

There is always an extreme characteristic. No more searching for euphemisms that hide the truth.

Seventy-Five Years After Kristallnacht

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Seventy–five years ago, Nazis in Germany and Austria launched Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, which was designed to intimidate German Jews.

Actually, it did a lot more than intimidate the Jews, I suppose, and I don't mean to belittle the significance of the event by using that word.

One can reach many conclusions about Kristallnacht's role in the Holocaust — whether it was truly the starting point for the Holocaust or merely another step in a process that had been under way for years (the persecution of the Jews, observes TIME magazine, was "already intense by the mid–1930s").

If it was the latter, it was a massively violent step and signaled more clearly than anything that had come before — to those who did not turn away and ignore what was happening, which was still a sizable number in 1938 — the Nazis' intention to eliminate the Jews from Europe. Synagogues were burned, Jewish schools, homes and businesses were vandalized, and nearly 100 Jews (men, women and children) were killed.

Some context is necessary here.

A few days earlier, a 17–year–old German Jewish refugee shot and killed the third secretary of the German embassy in Paris. "The youth's father had been among 10,000 deported to Poland in boxcars shortly before," wrote historian William Shirer, "and it was to revenge this and the general persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany that he went to the German embassy intending to kill the ambassador."

Instead, the third secretary was sent out to see what the young man wanted and paid with his life.

As Shirer observed, there was irony in the death of the third secretary — "[H]e had been shadowed by the Gestapo as a result of his anti–Nazi attitude," Shirer wrote. "[H]e had never shared the anti–Semitic aberrations of the rulers of his country."

But it was used as the pretext for the Night of Broken Glass.

All through the night of Nov. 9–10, 1938, the sound of shattering glass could be heard throughout Germany and Austria as the Nazis carried out their search–and–destroy mission.

"According to Dr. (Joseph) Goebbels and the German press, which he controlled, it was a 'spontaneous' demonstration ... in reaction to the news of the murder in Paris," Shirer wrote. "But after the war, documents came to light which show how 'spontaneous' it was. They are among the most illuminating — and gruesome — secret papers of the prewar Nazi era."

Those papers revealed that it was Reinhard Heydrich — perhaps the main architect of the Holocaust and "the man with the iron heart," in Hitler's words — who was the "real organizer" of Kristallnacht, Shirer asserted.

On Nov. 9, Goebbels ordered that the "spontaneous demonstrations" were to be "organized and executed" during the night.

But Heydrich issued more specific instructions on how the demonstrations were to be organized:

• "Only such measures should be taken which do not involve danger to German life or property. (For instance, synagogues are to be burned down only when there is no danger of fire to the surroundings.)"
• "Business and private apartments of Jews may be destroyed but not looted ..."
• "The demonstrations which are going to take place should not be hindered by the police."
• "As many Jews, especially rich ones, are to be arrested as can be accommodated in the existing prisons ... Upon their arrest, the appropriate concentration camps should be contacted immediately, in order to confine them in these camps as soon as possible."

The thing I found telling was that the numerous rapes on Kristallnacht were of greater concern to Nazi leaders than the killings — because it was a violation of the Nuremberg racial laws for Gentiles to have sex with Jews. That says a lot about the priorities of the Third Reich. The day after Kristallnacht, Heydrich made a preliminary confidential report:

"The extent of the destruction of Jewish shops and houses cannot yet be verified by figures ... 815 shops destroyed, 171 dwelling houses set on fire or destroyed only indicate a fraction of the actual damage so far as arson is concerned ... 119 synagogues were set on fire, and another 76 completely destroyed ... 20,000 Jews were arrested. 36 deaths were reported and those seriously injured were also numbered at 36. Those killed and injured are Jews."

In the story and timeline of the Third Reich, what was the significance of Kristallnacht? Was it a perpetuation of a policy that was already in place, or was it the introduction of a new and more sinister phase of the Third Reich's rule? The Los Angeles Times favors the latter, writing that Kristallnacht "marked the Nazis' transition from discrimination to genocide." Given the historical record, it was reasonable for BBC News to wonder recently "how strong is anti–Semitism in Germany?" The answer to that question is unclear, but Stephen Evans of BBC News writes that "[w]hat does seem to be clear is that anti–Semitism is rising in Germany."

Evans cited figures from the Amadeu Antonio Foundation, an anti–racism organization, that reported more than 800 attacks on Jews in Germany in 2011. The number was more than 850 last year. The trend has continued this year; figures show 409 attacks in the first half of 2013. Not all the attacks have been physical; some have been verbal.

Makes me wonder if civilization has learned anything in the last 75 years.