I am one of a few people who I know of who has spoken with both a Hitler Youth member and a Holocaust survivor. Admittedly, I don’t speak fluent enough German to have readily understood either, but, fortunately I had German translators in both instance.
I’m going to call the two people Harry and Maria. That’s not their names, but I’m not going to name them because they both have children who are alive and neither of them are alive.
I spoke with Harry in 1980. My translator, Friedlinde, was very embarrassed, because Harry was still fervently that young man, praising Hitler and the great good he had done for Germany. He wouldn’t hear of anything about the Holocaust. For him, his childhood memories were a great leader who had removed the ‘stains’ from Germany. He didn’t mention Jews. For him, the homosexuals were the worst.
In those formative years, Harry’s collapsing world meant that he needed something to believe in – an identity. It never went away. The thorough radicalisation of his youth was powerful even into his eighties. That’s how radicalisation works. If you are not convinced, read the chapter on the adolescent brain in Robert Sapolsky’s Behaviour – The Best and Worst of Us.
Maria’s story is fascinating. In a kibbutz (which, again I will not name, as it will be too easy to identify her) where I spent 6 months, Maria, with a tattooed forearm, spoke little Hebrew, much to the chagrin of the sabra Israelis around her. Instead, she sought out the Germans who were there, like me, as ‘volunteers’. She would speak German and she would look happy.
It was hard to get an exact account of how Maria’s experience of the holocaust had been, but, as much as I could ascertain from speaking to the Germans she befriended, Maria had grown up as a secular Jew, as German as any ‘aryan’. Speaking German with the German volunteers felt like her childhood, blissfully unaware of the nightmare about to descend. All her schoolfriends were German. She did not live in a Jewish ghetto. She was a normal German girl.
The experiences of these two people have moved me greatly in my life. As did the hours I spent in Yad Vashem, Jerusalem. Although I did not live through it, I believe I have a deeper sense than most about how it was. In my early years as a history teacher I built a Yad Vashem museum in my classroom. One of the experiences I gave my students was walking through a weaving corridor of horror – about 50 metres of graphic material.
Deutch has the shrink-wrapped version of history, a pocket narrative that is brought out when she wants to prove her Jewishness.
Deutch starts with
“1936 Summer Games, the final runner in the torch relay arrived in Berlin with the Olympic flame. The man, wearing an all-white running ensemble, stood next to dozens of Nazi soldiers in dark uniforms and leather boots. They stood among hundreds of athletes, surrounded by massive Nazi flags adorned with swastikas.”
Really? Is she so ignorant of history that she thinks flag waving and smart uniforms were an indicator of genocide? How sad for her.
When did the brown shirts form? Well, that was 16 years earlier in 1920. They were visible in the streets in the 1920s. In the 1930s, racist slogans were appearing. By 1937, “Juden sind heir nicht unerwunscht” signs were common place. By 1940, “Ewige Jude” was a documentary shown in cinemas.
Are we to imagine that the ‘take away’ from the Holocaust is that we see the signs in the ceremonies and that’s a good indication of a coming holocaust. Is that how shallow Deutch’s understanding is of the 3rd Reich, the democratic election of Hitler, the gamble by the conservatives with unrest between left and right?
Yes, that’s how modern ‘journalism’ works. You take the obvious and you make a story, you create a narrative. You make a false equivalence on the most superficial of elements. And you dishonor those who have suffered, since you have suffered none of it.
“After the Tokyo 2020 Summer Games came to an end last week, a number of Jewish organizations in the U.S. and abroad are again seeking to call attention to another Olympic Games hosted by a country widely known for human rights violations.”
OK. Since you are set on dishonoring the victims of the Holocaust, let me ask you a few questions, Deutch.
Have you met a Holocaust survivor?
Have you visited Yad Vashem?
What are 3 things you would say clearly indicate genocide?
Do you know any of the history of the 3rd Reich?
Where are the points of comparison?
Nazis were not the dominant political power when racist attacks began, so where’s the equivalence?
Where are the brown shirts in Xinjiang?
Krystalnacht? Can you give me an example of this occurring in China?
Ewige Juden. Please link to the Chinese government video portraying Uyghurs as savages.
Where were the Jewish terrorists? What was the equivalent of the ETIM? What separate state were they forming in Germany?
Did Jews in Germany go to a foreign country to fight for Judaism?
What was the name of the Jewish separatist movement in Germany?
Where are the mass graves in Xinjiang?
Where is the anti-Uyghur slogans / signs?
Where are the gas chambers?
Where are the camps that people go into and never come out?
Where are the emaciated people?
In the 3rd Reich – where are the street signs in Hebrew?
Deutch. Don’t imagine yourself Jewish. Don’t imagine yourself to have any understanding of genocide. You are a loathsome creature using the world’s greatest crime to make a political point about China.