Before the holocaust 250,000 Jews lived in France.
By the end of the war 75,000 of them, including men, women and children, had been rounded up in French cities and towns, put onto trains, and taken to Auschwitz and other Nazi death camps.
In 1938 the U.S. initiated a conference of 32 nations to discuss the situation European Jews were facing. All of them decided not to take Jews into their country in large numbers.
Chaim Weizmann, the first president of Israel, would say of what the Jews faced after the conference: “The world seemed to be divided into two parts — those places where the Jews could not live, and those where they could not enter.”
This is the story Ellen Kennedy, a law professor here in MN, told in an article printed in last week’s Star Tribune.
She went on to say, “Ordinary French men and women created the laws that made this happen, denounced their friends and neighbors, took belongings from the Jews’ vacated apartments, drove the trains to Auschwitz, and supported the Nazi effort to rid Europe of every single one of the continent’s Jews.”
That is a chilling indictment of “ordinary French men and women.”
Imagine such a legacy. Thousands of French men and women today had parents and grandparents who were willing and silent participants in the most horrific event in human history.
Is there not a lesson in that for us Americans? Consider this.
Last week Jerry Falwell, Jr., the Chancellor of Liberty University, described his take on the killings in San Bernardino to students this way: “I’ve always thought that if more good people had concealed-carry permits, then we could end those Muslims before they walked in. I just wanted to take this opportunity to encourage all of you to get your permit. We offer a free course. Let’s teach them a lesson if they ever show up here.”
Earlier in the week in Spotsylvania, VA, civil engineer Samer Shalaby was presenting the building plans to residents for a new mosque that is to be built in the county when a man stood up and yelled: “Every one of you are terrorists. I don’t care what you say. You can smile at me, you can say whatever you want, but every Muslim is a terrorist.”
These incidents came on the heels of Donald Troop suggesting Muslim Americans should be put on a watch list, and then making up a story about New Jersey Muslims cheering when the Trade City Twin towers came down.
Ted Cruz kept up with Trump by arguing that we should only admit Christian Syrians as refugees.
But here’s the kicker. After making these statements both Trump and Cruz went up in polls taken among likely Republican voters.
This is the America we now live in…
Where “ordinary men and women” support narcissistic demagogues for president.
Where students applaud and cheer a pseudo-Christian when he advocates they start packing guns and ordinary men and women cheer a racist bigot when he calls a Muslim American a terrorist in a community meeting.
Where mass killings are a daily occurrence while gun sales are soaring.
Where propaganda is keeping our government from doing anything to develop a reasonable and humane immigration policy.
Yet we Americans are sure that as ordinary men and women we would never allow what happened to Jews in France and Germany and other European countries ever to happen to anybody here.
Never mind that the U.S. and Britain led all the other countries in that 1938 conference in refusing to take in Jewish refugees.
Never mind that our own history includes mass extermination of native Americans, perpetuating a system of slavery and then replacing it with the evil of segregation, and putting Japanese Americans into internment camps during WW II.
How can anyone believe the demagoguery being spewed out every day that is dominating the news is not leading us down a bad path again?
It seems to me that those who refuse to believe a similar thing can happen here in regard to Muslims and anyone else deemed “the other” are incredibly and dangerously naive.
The simple fact is, the ordinary French men and women Ellen Kennedy wrote about who allowed and supported the extermination of French Jews did so because the Nazi’s exploited their fears.
So when when I hear political and religious leaders and media personalities exploiting the fears of our people I become more convinced than ever that it not only can happen here in America, it already is.
linnposts.com 
Jan, I couldn’t agree more. You have clearly stated a growing trend in our country. I made the same point a week or so ago in a post to our group here at Las Palmas, a kind of ad hoc group, not Wally’s Friday Town Square. I had the feeling that either I didn’t make the point well or people didn’t see the issue.
CheerzQ
Gene, there are a lot of people not ready to see what is happening. That is why the danger is so real.
The more I see and hear of Trump and Trumpery, the more I think of words attributed to the ill-fated Jan Masaryk, sometime Ambassador of Czechoslovakia to Britain, and Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia until his “suicide” in 1948:
“Dictators always look good – until the last ten minutes”.
That’s worth remembering, Nigel. My gratitude for sharing it.
As painful as it is to admit it, even more painful to face it, I agree completely with your reasoning on this. We do already live in such a country.
–Randall Mullins, Memphis, TN
Thanks, Randall, for saying so.
Thanks Jan. I’m much more frightened by extremists like Trump and Falwell than I am of Muslim neighbors and friends.
I believe it was Gordon Cosby that once told of doing something rather horrific to another individual during war time. The fact that Gordon did that has always been a strong reminder to me that good people will do awful things to other humans when manipulated by fear. I think the country will reject Trump but his popularity still frightens me.
It doesn’t take mean people to support a hate campaign against others. It only takes people living by fear. Thanks for adding your voice, Wilbur, especially after what Trump said today.
If we were younger, we’d move to Canada.
I had the same thought, Liza.
Me, too!
I just hope others will take this seriously, Kay.
In your piece, Jan, you rightly state that at the Evian Conference in 1938, the governments of that time were less than helpful in their attitude to Jews trying desperately to flee from Hitler’s clutches. That changed after the notorious “Kristallnacht” that November, when the British government belatedly made arrangements to take in 10,000 Jewish children, who were brought to the UK on the “Kindertransporte”. Of these 10,000 children, 669 of these were brought to Britain from Prague, after their passages had been arranged by a stockbroker resident in the city by the name of Nicholas Winton.
I came across a story concerning the children Winton saved, that has stood out in my mind. A train had just pulled into Liverpool Street station from Harwich, where the children had landed. On a street corner opposite the station, some people from the Britiah Union of Fascists had gathered with a placard, demanding to know why we were importing refugees, when Britain had more than 1½ million unemployed at that time. On another street corner stood some men from the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement, with their leader Wal Hannington (a card carrying member of the Communist Party since 1921 – and proud of it). These men, each one of whose net worth was reckoned in mere pennies and shillings, held aloft a banner, which read:
“The unemployed are not the enemies of refugees. Help them both”.
That such people who had next to nothing, could still make common cause with people from other lands who’d escaped with their lives makes me proud to be British. Sir Nicholas Winton died earlier this year aged 106, honoured by the descendants of the 669 children he did so much to help.
Nigel, Ellen Kennedy tells the story of the children in her article. Many were saved, but many were not, and the limited response to the children was not extended to Jewish adults. Many of the children were in fact already orphaned. Kristallnacht did not change the policies of Western government except for the children, leaving the stain of turning their heads away from the Holocaust rather than trying to stop it.
I guess I must be dangerously naive. We’re all free to fear what we want, but sorry, I just don’t buy it. The way I see it, just as the left would accuse the right of fear mongering, this is a version of the left committing it themselves. What is more sad to me is how quickly the commenters ate it all up, their own fears exploited when they would be so quick to demagogue those followers of Trump and the right who do the same, but at the same time, I’m not surprised.
Just as letting Muslim refugees into the country is not going to lead to those people committing another 9-11 style attack or be the cause of some rampant increase in domestic terrorism, the mass of American Muslims are in no danger of being rounded up, jailed or put in camps, and having their possessions seized, nor are they in danger of anything comparable to this happening. It is not even a danger that will happen to non-citizen Muslims in the US. Not even with a President Trump is it happening. It’s not happening, period.
It is true is that much of the Republican party does not want new immigrants, and they are speaking out about how to restrict certain groups from entering. Perhaps actions are put in place along that front, but that’s a far different issue than us thinking we are going to allow something to happen to anybody here. Our laws are different now and there isn’t even support from one party for laws that would allow fears like this to be made real, laws that would still have to make it through a gridlocked system if some party did come to support them, even then, we do not have a Supreme Court that would uphold such laws. This does not even take into account the influence that business and the international community would wield in keeping this from happening. It’s just not going to happen. We might have people take action into their own hands against Muslim Americans, but it won’t have government or public support and the perpetrators will be found and punished. The US is a far different place than during times of native American exterminations, slavery, etc. Trump being Trump, he could go further with his statements, but he has already reached a point of having near universal backlash on this issue, not just Democrat backlash, universal backlash: political front, business front, international front, on every news channel, every single hour, for comments that didn’t discuss one item to happen against a US citizen and explicitly denouncing internment camps of the past. This rebuke for comments that propose nothing close to the items I am apparently dangerously naive about should be enough to calm the fears of impending dangers for Muslim Americans soon meeting some ghastly fate. There are people with these views, but some mass agenda supporting it is not happening and thankfully you all won’t have to sell your homes and head north.
Perhaps in the future we will have a follow-up that says, “Okay, okay, the dire proclamation never came to fruition. We were a bit over the top.” And maybe some commenters won’t be so quick to drink the Kool-aid. But at least it was all with good intentions. I’ll certainly be happy to reply and apologize for my naivety when our government starts jailing American Muslims and seizing all their assets.
The rebuke you have written, Anthony, strains at the end of all thing and misses completely life before we get there. I am sure slave owners believed in the myth of American exceptionalism you espouse, especially having so recently fled Europe’s oppressive monarchies. I doubt the slaves felt the same way. I think what is most disturbing about what you wrote is the tone, minimizing as you do what American Muslims feel about this low point in presidential politics. I talked with one yesterday and he, too, is trusting our nation will not embrace this demagoguery, but that in no diminishes the demonization of him and his family he feels Trump engaged in. Moreover, all the Republican presidential candidates have come damn close to saying the same thing. You credit Republican rebukes of Trump, but apparently you didn’t actually read them. They said almost to the person, “I reject what he said, but I’ll back him if he is our guy come November.” Hardly encouraging. There have been bridges too far to cross in American politics and life, but Trump crossed one and you have belittled the alarm many of us feel about it. Fear mongering does lasting damage toward the individuals and groups it is directed, and in the long run does far more damage to the nation than you believe. Fascism is fascism, and calling it out early is much more than howling at the moon.
Oh, and one other thing. My blog was posted before Trump made his proposal. Guess things got worse than I even thought they would and quicker than I could have imagined. But things don’t get worse than we ever imagined they would here in America, do they?
Sharing! This is awesome. Thank you for speaking this! “A voice cries out on WordPress!” 😉
Glad to be in your company, Luke.