RSS Feed MenuJust the other day I asked my 15-year-old son if he’d like to visit the National Holocaust Museum. He had a few days between the end of school and the launch of his summer plans. Our last visit to the museum has become something of a family “joke”: A decade ago I took him (age 5) and his older sister (then 7) to visit the children’s section of the museum. Although that exhibit is geared to a more youthful audience, it was still nightmarish and chilling to such young imaginations.
Called “Remember the Children: Daniel’s Story,” the exhibit tracks the fate of an ordinary German schoolboy who is eventually deported with his family to Auschwitz. You begin in a replica of the boy’s bedroom — just like any other, comfortably furnished, with toys, books, mementos — and then proceed through a series of rooms that re-create the rise of German anti-semitism, from the cracked shop windows of Kristalnaacht, to the typical quarters of a family now living in the ghetto, and eventually to the concentration camp itself. The journey is narrated by poignant, and often harrowing, excerpts from the boy’s diary, a la Anne Frank.
My children could not sleep properly for weeks afterwards. My husband (born Jewish) — who’d not received an advance warning of our little excursion — was flabbergasted that I would think that this had been a good idea. Still imbued with the zeal of a convert, I insisted it was important for our children to understand this aspect of their religious heritage. It being 1998, anti-semitism — especially in North America — seemed as much a thing of the past as the grainy black-and-white photographs depicting trainloads of passengers in old-fashioned dress, being loaded to their doom.
My husband shook his head. ”Yes, it’s never too early to let them know how loathed Jews have been.” He suggested a corrective field trip to the Israeli embassy, where they might glimpse more positive images of Jews defending themselves. I bristled — but guiltily (isn’t that emotion also integral to the Jewish identity?). It was stupid of me. For years I regretted the ghastly pictures I’d imported into my children’s minds.
Now fast forward: The little boy who once asked, plaintively, grasping my hand, “Mommy, why do people want to kill the Jews?” is now taller than I. He recently (as in, during the most recent conflict in January) accompanied our Rabbi on a tour of Gaza and visited with Israeli victims of suicide bombings and other acts of terror. Post 9/11, he’s witnessed the rise of worldwide, and often officially sanctioned, anti-semitism in cities where we once thought it had been eradicated — London, Paris, Berlin. Closer to our home in D.C., he’s watched cement barricades go up around the Jewish schools he attended in pre-K and elementary. The playgrounds are now screened from the street. The front classroom windows are darkened so as to impede visibility from the outside. We no longer remark on the police cruiser that sits outside our shul on major Jewish holidays: Private security is now as central to the celebration of Rosh Hashanah as apples and honey.
So when free time arose this week, I proposed he and I go back to the museum so he could see it through more mature, less vulnerable, eyes. He was keen to visit this time — and ribbed me again about inflicting it upon him when he was so young.
We were thinking of going today or tomorrow. It’s a good thing that we procrastinated. Who would have imagined that the sentiments we’d once thought were so safely encased as historical exhibits would blast forth and shatter through the museum itself?
And what would I answer now to my son’s haunting question: ”Mommy, why do people want to kill the Jews?”
Dr. Tesla // Jun 14, 2009 at 10:32 am
–Hitler to Rauschning “The party is all-embracing. It rules our lives in all their breadth and depth. We must therefore develop branches of the party in which the whole of individual life will be reflected. Each activity and each need of the individual will thereby be regulated by the party as the representative of the general good. There will be no license, no free space, in which the individual belongs to himself. This is Socialism–not such trifles as the private possession of the means of production.” “Of what importance is that if I range men firmly within a discipline they cannot escape? Let them then own land or factories as much as they please. The decisive factor is that the State, through the party, is supreme over them, regardless whether they are owners or workers. All that, you see, is unessential. Our Socialism goes far deeper….” “Private property” as conceived under the liberalistic economic order was a reversal of the true concept of property. This “private property” represented the right of the individual to manage and to speculate with inherited or acquired property as he pleased, without regard for the nation.” “I have learned a great deal from Marxism, as I do not hesitate to admit. The difference between them and myself is that I have really put into practice what these peddlers and pen-pushers have timidly begun…. I had only to develop logically what Social Democracy repeatedly failed in because of its attempt to realize its evolution within the framework of democracy. National Socialism is what Marxism might have been if it could have broken its absurd and artificial ties with a democratic order.”
balconesfault // Jun 14, 2009 at 2:33 pm
Hadn’t heard of Rauschning before. Here’s the first paragraph of his Wikipedia entry:Hermann Rauschning (7 August 1887 February 8, 1982) was a German conservative and reactionary who became a Nazi leader in the Free City of Danzig, and later fled to the United States and denounced Nazism. Rauschning is chiefly known for his book Hitler Speaks, in which he claimed to have many meetings and conversations with Hitler. Many historians now regard this book with suspicion…..Rather than listening to a monarchist who – like some today – wanted to detach Nazism from Conservatism, I’d personally pay more attention to the many leftists of the time who were actually willing to take up arms in the Spanish Civil War to prevent the spread of Fascism in Europe.Hitler was an extreme right winger, certainly far to the right of the current Republican Party.
ireign // Jun 14, 2009 at 2:51 pm
Fascism in many ways is a political ideology of the left. Bigger government that interferes in your daily life, doesn’t respect private property, or any social liberties. Hitler, was the first “leader” to go after tobacco and was a vegetarian. Balconesfault, your comments are both offensive and inaccurate.
ottovbvs // Jun 14, 2009 at 3:23 pm
While Tesla harps on about the thirties I have a little parable from 2009 which demonstrates more than a million of his fantasies the deep deep doo doo he and all he stands for are in. One of my gardening buddies down the street is a lady in her mid seventies. Tough old bird, former prison warden, then something in the state prison admin, deceased husband was executive in defense industries, drinks like a fish, smokes like a chimney, drops the odd expletive, a great women and they don’t come more Republican believe me, she defines dyed in the wool. She knows I’m an apostate so we have the odd friendly argument. Last evening we were having a G&T in her yard watching the storm clouds over the sound and talking about Iran and then she says “Every time I switch my tv on yesterday and today all I hear is some stupid argument between Palin and Letterman. The Republicans today are f#$@%@ nuts.” When you’re losing Betty Tesla you’re screwed. As for Tesla’s bizarre notion that the Reich’s Chancellor appealed to leftists I suggest instead of re-inventing history he reads an account of the vote in the Reichstag on the Enabling Act following the Reichstag fire. The only people to vote against it were the brave Social Democrats better known as the liberals even though storm troopers both in the chamber and surrounding the chamber yelled for blood. The communists, they are also the left aren’t they?, were all safely under lock and key. The conservatives led by people like Schleicher and Von Papen and the conservative Catholic parties voted YA to a man. Of course once the Enabling Act was past all those left wing sympathizers from the Social Democrats that exist in Tesla’s imagination were on the next train to Dachau.
Dr. Tesla // Jun 14, 2009 at 5:52 pm
It’s funny how liberals are so pissed off that the Letterman rape insult is beinng discussed in the news.Are we to believe that if Rush had make a joke about one of Obama’s daughters being raped and said Michelle Obama looks like a “slutty flight attendant”, that it would not be on the news 24-7 for about a month? Frum would have it up as his cover story.My point is that moderates are not turned off by Letterman’s rape joke…they think it’s funny stuff to joke about little girls getting raped, so this notion that Rush is so polarizing that he drives moderates, who we are told are decent people, to vote Democrat doesn’t hold up.
Hitler was a leftist, he had the support of big labor and his whole platform was anti-captalism, anti-rich people, anti-corporations. He played the same class warfare that modern leftists play.
Dr. Tesla // Jun 14, 2009 at 6:09 pm
Here are some excerpts from an American Thinker piece about Hitler and the Nazis. The rest can be found here:”The first and only platform of the National Socialist German Workers Party called for very Leftist economic policies. Among other things, this platform called for the death penalty for war profiteering, the confiscation of all income unearned by work, the acquisition of a controlling interest by the people in all big business organizations and so on. Otto Strasser, the brother and fellow Nazi of Gregor Strasser, who was the second leading Nazi for much of the Nazi Party’s existence, in his 1940 book, Hitler and I revealed his ideology before he found a home in the Nazi Party. In his own words Otto Strasser wrote: “I was a young student of law and economics, a Left Wing student leader.”Consider the following text from that platform adopted in Munich on February 20, 1920 and ask yourself whether it sounds like the notional Right or the very real Left: “We ask that the government undertake the obligation above all of providing citizens with adequate opportunity for employment and earning a living. The activities of the individual must not be allowed to clash with the interests of the community, but must take place within its confines and be for the good of all. Therefore, we demand an end to the power of the financial interests. We demand profit sharing in big business. We demand a broad extension of care for the aged. The government must undertake the improvement of public health.”
Dr. Tesla // Jun 14, 2009 at 6:13 pm
Oops, forgot the link to the column.Here it is: http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/11/the_nazis_were_maxists.htmlHere is some more juicy excepts from the column:As the Nazis began to become a serious political party, in the 1930s, the Nazi deputies introduced a flurry of proposals: (1) to ban trading in stocks and bonds; (2) to nationalize all large banks; (3) to require registration of stock ownership with a state agency; (4) to limit interest by law to five percent; (5) to confiscate all profits acquired by inflation. These measures were not hidden; they were trumpeted on the front pages of Nazi periodicals to ensure that party members knew what the Nazi Party in the Reichstag was doing. Some Nazi proposals sound eerily modern. The Nazis, for example, proposed that old age and disability benefits (Social Security) be paid out of general revenue, rather than from the contributions of the individual recipient, and that the benefits be indexed to the cost of living.In 1932, months before the Nazis actually took power, a leading opponent of Nazism writing under the pseudonym Nordicus, in his the book, Hitlerism: The Iron Fist in Germany, notes what Josef Goebbels, leading propagandist for the Nazis, was writing: “War against profiteers, peace with workers! Destruction of all capitalistic influences on the political system of the country.” The same author notes the economic principles of Nazism included support for the general welfare, and that this included old age pensions, the confiscation of war profits, and opposition to capitalism.The Nazis simply did not ride to power on the backs of wealthy industrialists. In fact, after the Nazis had acquired power and when it would have been very advantageous to have “backed the right horse,” Ernst von Borsig, the prominent Berlin industrialist, said that he and his colleagues provided very little support to the Nazis. As early as 1921, Paul Reush, the leading industrialist in the Ruhr, actively insisted that his company officers not support the Nazis. The Krupp family, famous for producing arms for Germany, opposed Hitler in the 1932 presidential election. Nazis received very little support even from industrialists who would benefit from rearmament until 1930.
balconesfault // Jun 15, 2009 at 3:20 am
otto: ” One of my gardening buddies down the street is a lady in her mid seventies. Tough old bird, former prison warden, then something in the state prison admin, deceased husband was executive in defense industries, drinks like a fish, smokes like a chimney, drops the odd expletive, a great women and they don’t come more Republican believe me, she defines dyed in the wool…she says “Every time I switch my tv on yesterday and today all I hear is some stupid argument between Palin and Letterman. The Republicans today are f#$@%@ nuts.”Tesla: “It’s funny how liberals are so pissed off that the Letterman rape insult is beinng discussed in the news.”In the words of another prison warden … “what we have here is a failure to communicate”
Dr. Tesla // Jun 15, 2009 at 6:15 am
Um,How did I misread that comment. Your boy Otto clearly is unhappy that the Letterman rape insult is being discussed in the news. He tries to pass his own belief on to this Betty person, who doesn’t particularly sound like a conservative if she’s soooooooooo offended that talk show host making rape “jokes” about teenagers is being discussed in the news….I would consider that newsworthy. Moreover, most of the media isn’t discussing it much as they would if Rush or some other conservative had said it. They would be outraged, and you know this.
Dr. Tesla // Jun 15, 2009 at 6:24 am
Let me use an Otto debate trick, if I may be so bold, and I may.I know this Democrat named Betty…she has had 10 abortions and could not be more pro-choice. She hates Christians, sees them as a bunch of theocrats that want to force their religion and values on her. She is a member of a union. She’s voted Democrat all her life. She thinks Obama has done a good job as president despite 10% unemployment…she logically explains that he inherited the bad economy from Bush-Hitler.Yet she is outraged that David Letterman is making rape jokes and that much of the traditional media is making excuses for Letterman. As a feminist she can’t quite understand how liberals can defend Letterman for making rape jokes and for saying a woman looks like a slut. She sees all this on tv and she says “Democrats today are #%##*$%&*$(%* nuts”. If you are losing Betty the Democrat, liberals, it looks like you are screwed for both the 2010 congressional elections and the 2012 presidential elections.Anybody can play this game. Otto is a leftwing hack and he’s going to tell little white lies to advance his agenda. Even if this was true, to extrapolate “Betty the conservative” as typical of all conservaties is laughable. This is how Democrats operate, and it’s transparent.
If you are losing Betty the Democrat, liberals
ottovbvs // Jun 15, 2009 at 6:39 am
Dr. Tesla wrote 10 minutes agoLet me use an Otto debate trick, if I may be so bold, and I may.”…..It’s not a debate trick, it actually happened, and it’s a symptom of the extent to which the antics of people like Palin and you are destroying the traditional Republican base……Frum, who is after all a professional in that he makes his living from politics, has the savvy to see this while you on the other hand…..
Dr. Tesla // Jun 15, 2009 at 7:43 am
otto,You are a leftwing political hack and you do like to tell little white lies.As I said, even if your fictional Betty does exist, you did extrapolate this one individual’s beliefs onto all conservatives, when I don’t think most conservatives are outraged that the David Letterman rape “joke” is being discussed in the news. Conservattives are tired of this damn double standard that the old liberal media gives to liberals like Letterman.
balconesfault // Jun 15, 2009 at 9:06 am
“As I said, even if your fictional Betty does exist, you did extrapolate this one individual’s beliefs onto all conservatives, “Doesn’t need to extrapolate it onto all conservatives. It doesn’t take *all* conservatives regarding the driving force behind the Republican Party to be unserious for the party to end up in the wilderness.Tesla – your problem here is that you, and some subset, really believe that Letterman’s joke was about “rape” of Palin’s middle daughter. Most people heard it, thought “a poor taste joke about Palin’s oldest daughter getting pregnant out of wedlock”, and moved on.You can keep banging this particular drum all you want, but all it does is make you seem even more unserious.