I’m unnerved by nazi when used in such a casual blasé bumptabump. To millions of dead people the word nazi isn’t a joke, wasn’t a joke, not even a bad joke. Having someone operate without anesthesia as an experiment, isn’t a joke. Being slowly starved and driven mad over time over years, isn’t a joke. Being gang raped over and over and over until death is a kindness, isn’t a joke.
Statistics from the nazi and fascist era are appalling (or ought to be). The minimum stats are: 15 million soldiers slaughtered each other, 18 million civilians were collateral damage in “the war to end all wars” (WWII). Death totals go as high as 72 millions from battle, war related disease, famine, extermination. 11.5 million people including gays, the disabled, gypsies, catholics were pushed into ghettoes until sent to concentration camps to be starved, experimented on and gassed, beaten, tortured to death in horrific conditions.
Six million were European Jews whose total presence in Europe then numbered nine million. The task of exterminating the 11.5 million people took four years; in another year the Nazis probably would’ve killed all remaining Jews trapped in Europe. Even though they knew what was happening, many countries including the United States didn’t allow Jews to immigrate. (Yes, they knew: i.e., US corporations provided technology to Nazi Germany for identification systems, for gas chambers.)
The phrase most associated with the Holocaust survivors is “never forget”. Never forget so that we’ll be ever vigilant against recurring rises of such horrible barbarity even though the truth is the Holocaust hasn’t ended. Nazism didn’t begin or end with Germans. Hitler based his concept of concentration camps on US government reservations of American Indians. Not long after US entrance into WWII the feds created camps for Japanese, Italians, Germans.
That American tendency didn’t stop with WWII. Ghettoes, barrios, the projects have been humming along for decades. I often refer to these as concentration camps without electrified fences, barbed-wire topped walls. Today we’ve become entrenched in our fear of terrorists to justify the decimation of the Constitution and the establishment of Guantanamo. The methodology of corralling is now far more insidious. Instead of brownshirts mercilessly beating groups of people and forcibly removing them (pogrom) to a ghetto, we send them back to country of origin without reading them their rights.
American society is in danger of another flare up of genocidal government attitudes about the Mexicanos in our country. Not long ago (near the time of Fortuna roundups), I was sweeping the gas station yard. I noticed a van because it had “Homeland Security” painted on the side. Outside it were two uniformed homeland security blueshirts with really nasty demeanors. They reminded me of Nazis. I wasn’t laughing.
As far as we know these “illegal immigrants” (Germany’s designation for undesirables was “refugees”) are being transported to Mexico. It’s comforting to dwell in our complacency; to cozy up to that comfort. Yet there are many who harbor bigotry with a certainty of legal authority just as the Nazis did. For now maybe they’re being sent to Mexico; I’m not so sure that’ll last.
There’s the belief that the fence being built on the Mexican border is to keep “them” out. Sometimes I wonder if it could be used to keep “us” in. Pastor Martin Niemoller wrote of the Nazi sweeps: “First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out -- because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the communists and I did not speak out -- because I was not a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out -- because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for me -- and there was no one left to speak out for me.”
A joke, it’s not.
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