Episode 7: "The Hollow Cost"
This past Monday marked the start of the second week of the new presidential administration. But it also marked another, more significant passing: it was the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkinau. I know what you are thinking, and I didn't want to do yet another in a long line of shows specifically talking about the Holocaust. Once again, it is recognizably antithetical to delve into the shared memories of one of the most atrocious events in human history.
But that's just it, isn't it? The holocaust was not a singular event in which millions of people were murdered. It wasn't as though Hitler swung a giant scythe through the necks of all those people. So I want to take advantage of the swath of easy to find notes on the process by which the whole world came to a consensus that the horrors they'd witnessed needed a unique name, a designation by which global society could collectively recognize, "NEVER AGAIN"
How is that going again?
So in my own education, I remember visiting the Holocaust Museum in Houston on a field trip, and I remember getting a physical sensation around the sheer scale of 6 million, as a concept. I think people have gotten into the difference in scale between a million and a billion, but there is something real in standing a cavernous room entirely filled with peoples shoes. It didn't have to be shoes, maybe, there are plenty of things that stack up pretty well, and are commonly held by most people… but it was shoes, and it was immense. I remember being allowed to take that in, then being told that the staggering pile was not actually 6 million pairs of shoes, the total pile having been split between several similar museums. I don't remember what share of the total it was, I just remember the shock. But I didn't learn much about the word, as I did its representation.
Now, I am older, and I can "do my own research" interestingly enough, the national Holocaust museum and other sources simply define the word by its relation to the time period it describes.
Fun story, the National Holocaust museum has a banner on their page that definitely doesn't refer to current events, but does say that the lessons of the Holocaust are more relevant now than ever. It goes on to invite a donation, of course. Why do I care? Because in my curiosity, I discovered another term for the event, that is more dominant in Europe, a hebrew term that I am likely mis-pronouncing as Sho'ah, and get this, the English translation of the term also translates for a slightly newer term, nak'ba.
For reference, the encyclopedia Britannica did give me the story of the word:
The word Holocaust is derived from the Greek holokauston, a translation of the Hebrew word ʿolah, meaning a burnt sacrifice offered whole to God. This word was chosen because in the ultimate manifestation of the Nazi killing program—the extermination camps—the bodies of the victims were consumed whole in crematoria and open fires.
From <https://www.britannica.com/event/Holocaust>
A sacrifice.
See, what seems to have led to the holocaust, as far as my limited understanding of history has shown me, was a need to rally people around a common enemy, to other-ize a minority of folks by captivating a preexisting racial stereotypes that dated back to the middle ages, a time when Jews were being held to account by early Christians who blamed them for the death of Jesus.
So post world war I Germany had a host of problems, economically and politically, as having lost the war, being saddled with the debt of the war, the elected officials were in a position of asking hard things of the people of that country. People were angry and outraged, and the Wiemar republic had nothing to offer but empty promises and higher costs… the German people were not inherently antisemitic, but filled with rage about the price of eggs.
Sound familiar?
Along came the 15th chancellor of that ill-fated republic, and in one month, three weeks, two days, 8 hours and 40 minutes, that chancellor systematically disabled and dismantled his country's democratic processes.
Adolf Hitler had previously attempted to overthrow the Weimar government, in a failed coup in 1923, and many might have considered him unqualified to lead the government, but Hitler stood for a so called "legality oath" in 1930, in which he was not exactly apologetic about the coup attempt. He did renounce the use of violence, but stated plainly that he intended to usurp the government by legal means and mold it as he saw fit. The presiding judge asked famously, "so, through constitutional means?"
“Jawohl!” Hitler replied.
3 years later, Hitler had a decade of assimilating or eradicating right wing competitors behind him, and had played obstructionist for much of that time, building support while forcing out 3 chancellors and twice forcing the president to dissolve the government and call for new elections. When he ascended to the highest role himself, his nazi party only represented 37 percent of a larger right wing coalition that itself only controlled 51 percent of the Reichstag.. Sound familiar?
This new chancellor figured holding a majority of a majority in the government should constitute the "mandate of the people" and wanted an empowering law to guarantee his unilateral power,
He talked about purging the government of any non-loyal civil servants, filling their positions with his own folks, then swiftly move on reviving the economy, reducing unemployment, withdrawing from international treaties, and … if you are starting to recognize this, yes, the agenda also involved purging the nation of foreigners he alleged were 'poisoning the blood of the nation' while he executed vicious revenge against anyone who had stood in his way previously.
This is all documented in several books, but the one referenced by historian Timothy W. Ryback in a recent and lengthy article in the Atlantic, outlines a specific process by which a man whose whole goal was to destroy the government being somehow put in a position to do exactly that.
While I don't want to spend a whole lot of time discussing the commonalities between a historic dictator and a current one, I will acknowledge the latter has boasted about having read the former's book, and physical gestures by advisors aside, I guess you could say I am getting real interested in reading the stories that led to the old dictator's defeat, and hope to use the history to be part of a movement to shorten the reign of the copycat.
Anyway, the story of Jewish persecution is one that connects to a situation of vivid hyperinflation in Weimar Germany, which struggled to pay reparations to the Allies in the wake of the war, and printed more reichsmarks to disastrous effect, such that in 1923, a loaf of bread cost 200,000,000,000 marks, and workers on hourly wages found prices rose enough during a shift to make the time spent working a worthless endeavor.
Under these circumstances, it's easy to imagine a people looking for someone to blame, and wouldn't you know it, there was a man ready to dive them just a scapegoat. Michael Berenbaum wrote for Britannica that as early as 1919, Hitler had written about what he called, "rational anti-Semitism" and in the early 1920's the growing Nazi movement began to characterize the idea of Jews as more than just a religious affiliation, but a racial one. As the movement grew, the ideology characterized the Jews as Untermensch, or subhuman.
Among the things cited about the worldview that attempted to classify a whole group of free people as less than human was a notion that Social Justice and compassionate assistance to the weak were existential threats to the goals of aggressively expanding territory to provide lebensraum for the master race.
This seems like an important time to remind listeners that 102.3 FM, WHIV-LP remains committed to human right and social justice, regardless of the occupant of any office.
Anyway, the story goes on to include that the official power didn't begin til January 30, 1933, and the new head of a coalition government spent its first 53 days eliminating political opposition.
Interestingly, I'll note that 53 days from January 20th of this year will be March 14, the eve of the Ides of March. I am not making any predictions, just noting a detail.
The assault on Jews began in earnest on April 1 of that year, with the boycott of Jewish owned businesses, immediately followed by the dismissal of civil servants, and then by the end of the month, Jewish students were barred from classrooms. 10 days after that were the book-burnings in 30 cities all over Germany. The book burnings went beyond things that mentioned Jews, and the focus seemed to be about ridding the country of "Un-Germanic" writings.
Heinrich Heine had written a century earlier that "where one burns books, one will, in the end, burn people" and those words seemed to speak a prophecy that took 8 years for Nazis to fulfill. Interestingly, neither the German-Jewish of the 19th century nor the fascist regime who carried out those words could have imagined the digital age, and I have begun to wonder what book-burning in the modern age will look like. Do you suppose a google search on the term "woke" delivers the same written works it did a year ago?
In 1935, the Nurnburg laws officially codified what it meant to be aryan, and by contrast, what it meant to be Jewish. The jews were now well on their way to becoming an "illegal" people, and I don't think I need to invest much time into every agonizing detail of that story.
Where its relevant is the path to the crematoria was paved by people who said, it won't happen to me. Much of the rhetoric from survivors talked about the shock of the discovery of who could and would be included in what started as a series of mass deportations.
of course, it was Jews as the scapegoat class, which also included LGBT folks, activists, political dissidents, and anyone else who seemed not to be on board with the regime. When other european nations became inundated with the refugees, they started putting up barriers, and the ethnic cleansing would not be stopped, leading to the ghettos, the camps, and ultimate oblivion for so so many.
In looking around, I can't help but see things that look like they are heading down a frighteningly similar path. There were Jewish folks who were onboard with supporting the Nazis into power, people who undoubtledly either had no idea what was coming, or hoped to shield themselves by siding with power.
I want to believe that the camps aren't already being built for way more then the current population of supposedly illegal immigrants.
I want to believe that there aren't really over 1000 people being disappeared from their homes, jobs, churches and schools every single day over the last two weeks, as the Immigration and Customs authorities start to become even more militarized, conducting 1400 raids so far? I cite their own website with that figure but they arent actually specific about how long of a time that includes. I suspect it goes back before the inauguration, but what does it matter?
I want to believe that the new administration hasn't been working feverishly to disarm or depose any checks on the power of a leader who has repeatedly and consistently espoused rhetoric that is in line with every ethnic cleansing event.
I want to believe that his administration ISN'T being aided by state governments beholden to their residents, and that they aren't passing laws empowering common citizens as immigration bounty hunters, or making it a felony to vote in favor of refuge for asylum-seekers, or that dozens of municipal organization aren't passing laws and ordinances against the concept of Diversity, Equity, and inclusion, as if those were policies that poisoned the institutions upon which rest the stability of our nation.