Today is the 83d anniversary of the horrors of Kristalnacht, when the racist Nazi leader of Germany and his party incited violence and murder against those they considered disloyal and “the other.” The Nazis of course denied responsibility, claiming it was a spontaneous outburst by decent German citizens enraged that their country was being taken from them by these outsiders, these “others.” The assassination of a Nazi official by a teenage Polish Jew in Paris was offered as justification. Hundreds of synagogues and Jewish institutions were destroyed, 7,500 Jewish business looted and forced to close, scores of Jews killed and thousands injured. During the three days of pogrom, 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and imprisoned in concentration camps. The Nazis even levied a fine upon the German Jewish community as punishment for causing Germans to commit these acts and the cleanup it entailed. (“Kristalnacht is best translated as “the night of the broken glass,” referring to the mountains of glass filling the streets of Germany after the pogrom ended.)
Yet today, knowing this history, there are people in America who don swastikas and glorify Hitler and his monstrous regime. It is beyond shocking to see any American wear a shirt stating “Camp Auschwitz” or the acronym for ” 6 million wasn’t enough,” especially when trying to overthrow the government and retain in power a man who regularly expresses his solidarity with neo-Nazis and white supremacists. Equally unsettling and disturbing are false claims we “control the Congress,” the banks, “control foreign policy” own all the media, veiled antisemitic references to the “Israel Lobby,” or “Zionists.” Most astonishing are delusional claims by Republican lawmakers like Taylor-Green, Gosart, and Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, alleging dangerous, crazy lies that we are starting fires with lasers or smuggling in immigrants to replace white people.
As partisans, many of us like to believe the hatred and bigotry comes from one side or one narrow viewpoint. While law enforcement reports the greatest threat comes from neo-Nazis, white supremacists and the far right, antisemitism runs through various ideologies, and Nazism is not its only form. Ilhan Omar is as much an antisemite as Marjorie Taylor Green or Paul Gosart; the political labels may be different, but the hatred is the same. But we can’t overlook reality: the massacres of Jews at prayer in synagogues in Pittsburgh and San Diego by neo-Nazis shouting Trump’s comments on Soros and immigrants as their assault rifles murdered people. We can’t overlook the Charlottesville chants of “Jews will not replace us” greeted with Trump’s “good people on both sides” and his joyous embrace of an outright Nazi group like the Proud Boys.
Yes, there is antisemitism in other quarters as well, but the last three annual reports by the FBI and DHS say, the violence is almost all from the neo-Nazis, white supremacists and far right. The Republican Party is becoming a toxic blend of those three strands of hate, egged on by Donald Trump and racists. They purge anyone who speaks out or resists. Some may call these statements political, but I say it’s just reciting the facts. We can’t hold back the truth when combatting hatred and racism.
Sadly, the Holocaust is being forgotten and distorted. Cheap tinhorn politicians who call mask or vaccine mandates “Nazism” are trivializing racism and genocide. Every American ought to be able to see that on Kristalnacht, the Nazis were not requiring masks or COVID vaccines; they were launching the Holocaust. Do we really want a generation to grow up thinking “if all Hitler did was make people wear masks and get vaccines during a pandemic, maybe he wasn’t such a bad guy at all”?
Jews have been victims of genocide for at least two millennia, and once again we see citizens of a country adopting Nazi racism against the fellow citizens who are Jewish, and this time, it is in our country. It’s tolerated and accepted by one of our two political parties, which makes no attempt to even acknowledge the problem.
Rest assured, the hatred is not limited to us; we know that African-Americans, Latinos, Muslims, Asians LBGTQ and select “others” are equally despised. That’s why we Jews must unite with and stand up for those people just as we stand up for ourselves. In the words of the great Sage Hillel the Elder (110BCE- 10CE):
If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
If I am only for myself, what am I?
And if not now, when?
Once again, I can also use one of my favorite philosophical quotations, by the Spaniard George Santayana:
“Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.”
Well said. Thank you for your passion and witness. And thank you for succinctly articulating what has guided me through the twists and turns of my life:
Q: If I am only for myself, what am I?
A: Nothing.