To read the first post in this series, please click here.
To see an index of posts in this series, please click here.
I have finished with The Holocaust Explained's section on how the Nazis rose to power.
Now I'm going to move over to their section titled "Life Before the Holocaust".
I will read a portion of that section for this post; then do my other post tradition of looking at another Holocaust website.
* * *
The first section is about pre-war Jewish life.
The Holocaust Explained says that before the Holocaust, the largest population of Jews was in Eastern Europe.
There were 3 million in Poland.
2.5 million in Russia.
980,000 in Romania.
I didn't realize there were so many in Romania.
I never really associated Romania with Jews.
Western Europe had 300,000 Jews in the UK and 565,000 in Germany.
The Western European Jews were more assimilated.
Here's something that matches what still happens today in terms of assimilation.
In the big cities, in eastern, Europe such as Warsaw, Poland...the younger folks were more assimilated.
Yeah. I think that kind of assimilation happens here with immigrants—younger people do more assimilating into the dominant culture. Though I imagine it happens in both big cities and smaller towns.
* * *
In rural areas of Poland and Russia, Jews tended to live in small communities called Shtetls.
I wonder if that's where my great-grand parents lived.
They came from Kyiv which we used to see as being Russian. But then later, it became Ukrainian.
Reading through the family history document....
It says my (paternal) great-grandmother and great grand-father made their first home in Sabara. My great-grandfather was the village blacksmith.
I'm guessing the village was a shtetl.
* * *
I'm plugging various place names, from the family history document, into Google Maps and coming up empty.
Then I realized....once the Jews were gone, the Gentiles probably renamed the villages.
The one place that I was able to get on Google Maps is Volhynian. It's a province? My great-grandmother was sent to live in a village/shtetl there with her siblings after her parents died. And according to the document, this is where she met my great-grandfather.
Anyway, though....
My paternal ancestors were long gone from Eastern Europe when the Holocaust began. They immigrated to Nova Scotia, Canada in 1913 and onto Chicago in 2020.
* * *
I plugged in the city my great-grandfather is said to be from (Berdychiv)...
Wait and I missed something before—Olevsk. This is where my great-grandmother lived. I think maybe it's in the Volhynian area?
My great-grandfather was from Berdichev. Although the document says Berdicher. I'm not sure if the name has been changed or something was lost in translation.
Neither of these places, though, are that close to Kyiv.
Berdychiv is a 2-3 hour car drive away.
Oles'k is about 3 hours away.
I'm wondering if my family says Kyiv, because it's a more well-known city. Kind of like...I think someone once told me they were from Sydney but then let me know it was actually Wollongong.
Although, looking at Google Maps...Wollongong is only an hour from Sydney.
The other possibility is that it's my mother's side of the family that's from Kyiv.
* * *
I'm going to let it go.
I want to look more into where Jews were living back in the 1930's.
Lord Wiki has a nifty chart of Jewish population throughout the decades.
In terms of Jews making up a population. The largest in 2020 was Israel. They make up 74% of Israel.
In 1980, Jews made up a much larger percentage of Israel—87%.
There were 8.9 million Jews in Europe in 1900.
Now there are 1.3 million.
That's quite a reduction.
Seeing that reduction, in a way, makes me feel like Hitler and other antisemitic Europeans won. Or sort of won.
Did Hitler want to erase Jews from the planet? Or just from Europe?
* * *
Well...I played around with the chart and wrote a bunch of stuff; then deleted it.
The chart was less nifty than I originally thought, because there are various missing pieces of data.
Well, at first I was looking at the 1900's and comparing that to 2020.
Then I decided that I should really be comparing 1942 to 2020.
And then for a lot of countries, either 2020 or 1942 is missing.
Then I started comparing 1942 to 2010.
By that time, I was feeling bored and overwhelmed.
Now I'm looking at Lord Wiki's list of expulsions and exoduses of Jews.
That might be interesting.
Lord Wiki says that Jews were expelled from Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky in 1862 by Ulysses S. Grant. I had no idea!
I'm just going to look at the modern ones....
I mean post civil war.
There's a ton prior to that.
It's overwhelming.
From 1880's to 1910, 2.5 million Jews emigrated from eastern Europe. Many of them came to the United States. Lord Wiki says this was mostly due to the pogroms (riots against Jews). In our family history document, it doesn't mention pogroms. Instead, it says my great-grandfather was trying to avoid military service.
My great grandparents left in 1913...a few years outside the main exodus.
I wonder if pogroms, though, were still happening then.
From 1947 to 1972, the Jewish population of Arab/Muslim countries was greatly reduced from the then count of 900,000. Lord Wiki talks about how that has been politicized in the Palestinian/Israel debate. Those very much on the Jewish/Israeli side push the narrative that Jews faced violence and forced expulsions. Those on the Palestinian side push the narrative that Israel was actively seeking to bring in Jews to increase the Jewish population.
Personally, I bet there are truths to both narratives.
* * *
Lord Wiki goes into more details...has examples of when Jew were expelled from Arab/Muslim countries.
I'm thinking I should avoid going deeper into that rabbit hole. For now. I might come back to it in the future—look at antisemitism post-Holocaust.
* * *
I feel I've done especially bad at staying on subject with this post.
I think I just got kind of enchanted by population numbers.
NOT by the reductions in numbers. Just the numbers.
I think statistics can sometimes be very alluring to autistic brains.
Maybe?
I'm not sure.
I remember there was something on one of the autism tests. I hadn't been sure if it applied to me; then I thought about my obsession with going over various local Covid statistics every day.
I don't think there's a question on the autism test about statistics exactly. Maybe numbers in general?
Shit.
I'm totally going off track again.
The problem is...I don't even know where the track is, what the track is, and how to get back on.
I'm trying to decide if I should read another section on the pre-war Jewish page of The Holocaust Explained. Or should I start looking at another Holocaust website.
I kind of like doing little bits at a time from The Holocaust Explained website. So maybe I'll go to the other Holocaust site.
* * *
I'm feeling a bit out of sorts right now, because of the sell-the-lake-house drama.
Not only is it stressful and sad. But it's happening smack in the middle of all the kids returning to school.
It's also happening very fast.
So while I think some of the family would have appreciated more time to say good-bye; look through stuff and decide what they want to take home with them...there's only a few days to make those decisions and there's not much time, because of the whole back-to-school thing.
Oh! And along with all of this stress and sadness, we're given a message of: Well, the deal might fall through, anyway!
Last night I started panicking a bit, because some of my old Cabbage Patch Dolls are somewhere in the playroom. I had this feeling of not wanting to lose them and then guilt, because why are they there anyway? And did I ever give them any love and attention all those times I went to visit the lake house?
Nope.
I don't like minimizing and comparing. But I did think of refugees forced to leave all their stuff behind. It really wasn't minimizing, though. Just kind of thinking...for various reasons, these things happen in our lives.
We lose places.
We lose things.
And no matter what the cause....it can be sad.
But yeah. Of course, I'm quite glad that our post-lake house life isn't going to take place in a concentration camp or death march.
Actually, instead my parents are offering big family vacations in lieu of the lake house.
* * *
I want to add that the lake house for me in the past 6-7 years have been much more negative than positive. I have a lot of emotional baggage tied up in the lake house. SO....
Maybe my emotions are much more complicated because of that.
* * *
Now that I'm thinking more about it...we've had huge dramas throughout both decades of our lake house days.
I don't know....
There's such a mix of good and bad. But in the past few years, the bad and sad have outweighed the good.
I think I won't know how I feel about the lake house until much later in the future. Will the happy memories outweigh the bad? Or will the bad outweigh the good?
Right now, I'm being flooded with the bad memories.
And then I feel guilty and like a black sheep. Because for most other members of my family...I think the lake house has more happy memories.
* * *
I do have happy memories of the lake house. But most of them are from before 2015.
After that, things went downhill...especially after 2017.
At least for me.
* * *
Went to feed the cats and then to pee.
Cried lots of tears on the toilet.
I had more and more thoughts I could add here, making any possible reader wonder why I would dare say this is a post about Nazi history in Germany.
So...I'm just going to leave this subject with this: To all of us who spent many nights of our life at the lake house: I hope we go through life with some happy memories of our time there, and I hope we create many future happy memories elsewhere.
* * *
Back to the Holocaust stuff.
The website I'm looking at for this post is The Florida Holocaust Museum.
My original purpose of looking at other Holocaust sites is to see if other sites agree with Conservapedia and Dinesh D'Souza about the Nazis being left-wing rather than right-wing.
And that quest is still important to me.
But I like looking at other stuff as well.
* * *
The Florida Holocaust Museum is in St. Petersburg.
I'm not sure where that is?
Is it south?
Looking at Google Maps.
It's near Tampa...like on a little tiny peninsula. It's like a peninsula within a peninsula.
Here's the Street View of the museum on Google Maps.
The entranceway is a triangle.
Maybe that represents the yellow, pink, etc triangles that people wore.
Or maybe it has a totally different meaning....
* * *
The museum has a virtual tour.
I think I'm going to see what that's all about.
* * *
I'm glad to see that the museum has a section called Lessons for Today. It raises awareness about genocides and other hateful acts that are occurring in modern times.
I think learning about the Holocaust is extremely important, because history is important and to recognize antisemitism is important. But I think it's very unhelpful to learn about the Holocaust as if it's a complete historical anomaly.
* * *
The museum talks about Jewish life prior to the Holocaust.
They say: Beginning with the French Revolution, Jews looked more upon themselves as members of their host nations, and began to adopt the culture and traditions of modern society. It is said that their watchwords became "adaptation and compromise" as they were thrust into the mainstream.
And later: The Nazis exploited the weaknesses of Weimar Germany and blamed the Jews for Germany's loss of World War I, for galloping inflation that wiped out the wings of the middle class in the early 1920s, and for the communist revolution in Russia.
These days, MAGA doesn't often blame Jews for communism and other woes of the world. Instead they just blame ONE particular Jew—George Soros.
I do wonder how many of the MAGAs, who often throwing around the name Soros or the word Globalism, know that these are antisemitic dog whistles?
How many MAGA are being intentionally antisemitic and how many have no idea?
I will say that a video was shared by a MAGA family member that talked about globalism and the real enemy...I think it also mentioned bankers and Hollywood.
I don't think my MAGA family members recognized the antisemitism. And they're Jewish!
I might search through family texts later to see if I can find the video.
* * *
The museum tour says that 2/3 European Jews ended up dead.
That's a lot of death.
* * *
The virtual tour says that many pre-Holocaust German Jews saw themselves as German first and Jewish second.
I think in the United States it varies. I imagine most Jews feel they are American first and then Jewish. But for some people, Judaism plays a huge role in their lives. They might feel their Jewish identity is more important.
* * *
In 1933 Germany, the career fields that had a large proportion of Jews were law, medicine, trade, banking, and commerce.
Eleven percent of doctors were Jewish.
Fifty percent of clothing stores were owned by Jews.
Again, I find statistics interesting.
The more important thing of the story, though, is that Jews were an included and a respected part of the community.
That's not to say that the included and respected deserve less genocide than those who are ostracized and alienated.
It's more like a cautionary tale. No matter how safe you feel in your community, if you're a historically maligned group, it's not too far-fetched to expect things to turn to shit again.
* * *
This quote from the virtual tour reminds me very much of what has happened in the United States.
While anti-Semitism had been and still was rife throughout Europe, now the government echoed the virulent, bigoted and hateful sympathies.
It's more like this with racism, misogyny, and homophobia now.
We expect there to always be outright bigotry but from the fringes of society.
We expect our president to condemn the racist people and not see the beauty in BOTH sides.
We expect our president to easily denounce white supremacist groups without persistent prodding.
* * *
Oh...some of this stuff is very interesting.
This museum is actually very helpful in terms of learning about the rise of Nazism.
They say that the Germans were actually not very eager and cooperative when it came to Jew-hating.
The Nazis called for a boycott of Jewish businesses on April 1, 1933.
It sounds like it was more suggestive than law.
And many Gentiles ignored the suggestions.
The boycott ended after only one day.
The Germans didn't give up on their antisemitism quest.
A few days later, on April 7...Jews were purged from civil service jobs.
Who often replaced the Jews in those jobs?
Nazis or Nazi-supporters.
* * *
Now the virtual tour looks at other communities, besides Jews, who were targeted by the Nazis.
The Roma and Sinti originally came from India. I don't think I knew that.
It's estimated that 220-500 thousand European Roma and Sinti were murdered by the Nazis.
Lord Wiki says there are now around a million Romani people living in the United States.
I'm looking at his list of famous Romani people. Names I've heard of: Bob Hoskins, Charlie Chaplin, Yul Brynner, Adam Ant, Robert Plant.
There's a lot of other names I'm ignorant about.
* * *
The virtual museum says that before the Nazis/Third Reich, Berlin might have been considered the homosexual capitol of the world.
I wonder what they mean by "might".
I'm guessing they are guessing...but basing their guess on facts and evidence.
In Germany, homosexuality was against the law. But it wasn't a law that was actively enforced.
When Hitler came into power, he made things less lenient.
The Nazis changed a law in 1935 that made it possible to arrest and convict men for any sexual advances.
50,000 men were arrested for homosexuality. Some went to regular prisons, but 5-15,000 were sent to concentration camps.
I'm not sure why they refer to only men.
Was it lawful to be lesbian?
I'm thinking about what... I think it was Conservapedia? It was part of the argument that Nazis were left-wing. They said Nazis were pro-homosexual.
* * *
I searched my blog for it.
I wrote about it in Part 4
Conservapedia says: On a similar note, thanks largely to the Frankfurt School (in particular Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse) redefining fascism and Nazism as being right wing and manipulating the American Jewish Committee into assuming that the Nazis were such, the Nazis were also falsely assumed to be sexually rigid and puritanical relating to sexual relationships, when in reality, they were bohemians and sexual deviants/perverts.
And in case you want to argue that sexual deviant/pervert doesn't refer to homosexuality, there's a link in parentheses. See: Nazi Germany and Homosexuality.
I really wonder how they twist all this.
But not sure I want to go down that rabbit hole at this time.
* * *
Now...it's a couple of days later. I didn't do any writing or researching yesterday, because we were dealing with lake house stuff.
As for rabbit holes, though.....
I probably don't ever want to ever go down a Conservapedia-view-on-homosexuality-and-Nazis rabbit hole. But I do someday want to go down a Nazis-and-homosexuality rabbit hole. Or maybe I'm more interested in German and European attitudes towards the LGBTQ+ community before Nazis took over.
* * *
The next section of the virtual exhibit is about Jehovah Witnesses.
In terms of numbers, around 11,3000 were imprisoned and 2,500-5000 died.
They were targeted for their apolitical beliefs and behaviors—refusing to join the military, not joining Hitler youth groups, not doing the Heil Hitler salute.
Like the white Australians, white Canadians, and white Americans...Nazis also broke up families for the purpose of reforming children.
And it also makes me think of Greg Abbott trying to break up families with transgender children and woke parents.
I've heard that Abbott is investigating families—harassing them.
I don't know if there have been any removals.
* * *
Googled and read this article from PBS.
The bad news is families are being traumatized with accusations and investigations...plus the very rational fear of things getting worse.
The good news is, so far, judges have been able to block Greg Abbott and his partner in crime, Ken Paxton, from committing severe anti-family atrocities.
* * *
Next section is about the invasion of Poland, and the Polish people who were targeted by the Nazis.
It wasn't just Jews, LGTQ+ people, and Jehovah Witnesses.
The Nazis went after those who resisted or those who seemed likely to resist.
They went after "political, religious, and intellectual" leaders. Could another word for those types of leaders be The ELITE?
It wasn't just intellectual people the Nazis targeted but also intellectual buildings.
Schools
Museums
Libraries
Universities.
When it comes to red America and blue America, which group is more likely to adore and celebrate schools, museums, and libraries? And which group is more likely to have disdain?
Well...to be honest, I'm a little bit anti-school.
And though I love museums, in theory....they overwhelm me.
But I LOVE libraries.
Also, I'm only one person.
Most blue Americans are pro-school.
And of course, not all red Americans are anti-any-of-the-above.
My parents are very much red American, and they are VERY pro-schools, museums, universities, etc....and not at all anti-library.
* * *
And now I'm on the virtual exhibition's section about disability.
The Nazi response to disability was a mix of forced sterilization and murder.
Around 300-400 thousand people were sterilized, because they were epileptic, schizophrenic, or had other types of mental disabilities.
The murder of the disabled started in 1939. It had the name of Operation T-4. People in nursing homes and medical facilities were killed with lethal injections; then later they were murdered in gas chambers. The website says they were experimental. So maybe the Nazis used the disabled as guinea pigs before using the gas chambers on others.
All this was kept secret from society...I guess, because Nazis understood that relatives of the disabled might not be on board with their loved ones being murdered.
The secrecy failed a couple of years later. The Nazis stopped the program. Sort of. They encouraged individual physicians to keep on with the killings.
Note: Originally I was using the term "Euthanasia" instead of murder. But I don't want to contribute to maligning the word or concept. There's a big difference between a person deciding life is way too painful vs government/society deciding someone is too much of a burden and/or inferior.
* * *
Now the virtual exhibit is going over the stuff I've already learned—stock market crash, Hitler in prison, Hindenburg.
I read it, because it's a good review for me.
But I'm not going to write about it.
* * *
They have a very cool timeline.
I'm going to play with that.
I wish I could link to individual pages of the virtual exhibit.
I will, however, re-link to the main page...so if you're interested, you don't have to scroll up to find the link.
If you go to the virtual exhibit, you can just click through to find the timeline.
* * *
The timeline starts in 1889.
Hitler was born.
Then there's nothing until 1914 when World War I began.
Note: I'm not going to sit here and list everything.
I was just interested in what they'd start with.
In September 1919, Hitler joined the German Workers Party which would later morph into the Nazi Party. A few months before that, Germany signed the Treaty of Versailles.
This is important, because there was right-wing opposition to the Treaty.
From what I learned from other Holocaust sites, right-wing Germans were more antagonistic towards taking accountability for World War I and paying reparations.
* * *
On April 1, 1920 the Swastika officially became the symbol for the Nazi party.
The symbol is much older than the Nazis.
It has a connection to Hindus, Buddhists, and also Germans from long-ago.
On July 1, 1921, Hitler became the Chairman of the Nazi party. So it took close to two years for Hitler go to from a member of the party to the leader of it.
On November 9, 1923, Hitler tried to overthrow the government with violence and failed. A few months after that, on April 1, Hitler received a five year sentence. It was in a minimum security prison.
Fast forward, five years...Hitler gets out of prison.
Just kidding.
He didn't serve the full sentence.
He got out that same year on December 20. The pressure from Nazis led to a much earlier release.
If Trump is convicted of something like espionage or insurrection, will Republicans manage to use partisan pressure to prevent law and order from applying to Trump?
* * *
I'm going to fast forward five years.
The Nazi Party gained their first seat in the Reichstag in September 1929.
There's a long space between Hitler becoming the leader of the party and the party gaining a seat in government.
I don't think the United States is going to have a very similar trajectory. Third parties and independents rarely get a space in our congress.
Our fringe to mainstream storylines work within the context of the two main parties.
* * *
I might go down a rabbit hole.
The website says the first town to get a Nazi in the seat was Thuringia.
Things I'm wondering.
What is this town like now? Do they own up to being the first to put a Nazi in the Reichstag?
What is the demographics of the town?
What was the town like back then?
I also probably want to play on Google Maps...just for fun. Because I like it.
* * *
I'm probably going to stop reading through the virtual exhibit, because reading it all plus going through a rabbit hole is going to give me another super overly long post.
But I do want to fulfill my mission to see if this museum is in the category of Nazis or left-wing or Nazis were right-wing. OR...whether they don't explicitly say.
So I'm going to speed through. Then I will circle back and look at Thuringia.
* * *
I have sped through the timeline.
In case anyone is curious, it ends with the Nuremberg trials in 1945.
* * *
I'm having technical difficulties.
First I got stuck on the timeline.
So I started back at the beginning of the virtual exhibit. There I found an antisemitism timeline. I glanced quickly through that. And then I got stuck again.
* * *
I'm back....moving through the exhibit.
But I have stopped at a section explaining who was labeled a Jew in those days.
If you recall, a few months ago, Whoopi Goldberg ignorantly made the statement about the Holocaust not being about racism. It was just white people against white people.
In the middle reader novel, I'm currently reading (Three Keys by Kelly Yang) there's a line about race being a social construct...invented. But RACISM is real.
Just because most of our modern society sees Jews as being white...that hasn't always been the case.
I think these days, light-skinned Jews have all the same white privilege as Gentiles. But that hasn't always been the case.
So....
In Nazi Germany, it was not about religion or life choices. Jewishness wasn't a trait that one could turn off to avoid persecution.
Jewish was defined as having three full Jewish grandparents, two Jewish parents...
Oh.
Some of this is new to me.
Being married to a Jew made someone Jewish. I'm not sure how that works heredity-wise.
A person is also considered Jewish if they have one fully Jewish parent.
I guess with the two-parent thing, this could be one or two parents who are not fully (heredity) Jews.
I wonder about the children and grandchildren of people who converted to Judaism? Would they be seen as Jewish by the Nazis?
In terms of their lives being spared, I don't have much hope for them. Seeing that the Nazis murdered people for reasons outside of being seen as racially-Jewish.
BUT...maybe the Nazis would give the descendants of converts a reprieve if they turned away from Judaism...and also weren't Romani, Jehovah Witnesses, gay, lesbian, disabled, a socialist, a traitor to the Nazi party, etc.
* * *
I'm giving up on the virtual tour.
I got stuck again.
Anyway....besides the technical difficulties, I think it's a great website, and I imagine the physical museum in Florida is great too.
I'm going to give up on trying to find mention of left-wing or right-wing. I looked through enough to conclude that they probably don't explicitly say either.
So...on to Thuringia.
I'm a tiny bit worried that I'm singling Thuringia out for no good reason.
I don't really remember, in earlier posts, learning that there was an election where one Nazi gained a seat.
It could be that like ten Nazis gained a seat...and Thuringia was just the first to release their election info.
* * *
I either read things wrong on the timeline or there was a mistake on the timeline.
This Australian history site Alpha History gives totally different information.
I wouldn't be so eager to conclude that the Aussie site is right and the Florida one is wrong if I didn't vaguely remember NOT learning that there was an election with one Nazi gaining that first seat.
I feel obliged to go back to the Florida site to see where things went wrong.
I have a feeling it's going to be more my fault than theirs.
I probably misread something.
* * *
I'm back on the timeline.
The Florida Holocaust Museum's exact wording is: NAZIS WIN FIRST SEAT IN REICHSTAG (GERMAN GOVERNING BODY) IN STATE OF THURINGIA.
It kind of sounds like they could be saying that this is the first time Thuringia had a Nazi in their legislature house. Like it was the first Nazi in that particular local government.
But that would be very random...seeing that they didn't list the first Nazi in other local governments.
The date for this occasion is December 1929.
Now I'm going to look at the Aussie site.
They don't have anything for December 1929.
And on May 4, 1924, they have the Nazis winning 24 seats in the Reichstag.
I'm so confused.
Maybe there IS something special about Thuringia.
* * *
I just Googled December 1929 along with Thuringia.
Lord Wiki says there was an election then.
Thuringia added six Nazi seats...and they were not the first. There were 2 previous seats. Four were added.
What am I missing?
And now I'm thinking there's no need to go down a whole Thuringia rabbit hole.
Or maybe there is.
Maybe the rabbit hole is about trying to clear up my confusion.
* * *
Learned from Lord Wiki that the current leader of Thuringia is Bodo Ramelow who is from The Left Party.
I started to think things were all topsy-turvy, because Lord Wiki says that Ramelow was anti-lockdown.
But Lord Wiki says it's the furthest left party of the Bundestag... which is the new name of the German legislative house.
I don't think I knew they changed it from the Reichstag.
Anyway....
So yeah. The Left is left as in anti-capitalism, anti-military, and anti-fascism.
They're seen as far-left...which makes the anti-lockdown not overly surprising.
I can picture far-left people in the US (and elsewhere) also being anti-vaccine and anti-lockdown.
I think right-wing people kind of....
I can't think of the word
But it became such a trademark of the right-wing to be anti-lockdown and anti-vaccine that I think some far-left people veered from that mindset.
This is anecdotal. But I had a left-wing cousin who was anti-vax. She got the covid vaccine.
All that being said, Ramelow ended up changing his tune. He was anti-lockdown. But when Thuringia ended up with the worst Covid cases in Germany, he said he regretted his decision and changed course.
* * *
I Googled Thuringia and Nazis and came to an intriguing article in the German publication DW. I think I've been on this site before...for a previous post.
The article's title is: "Why is everyone in Germany talking about Thuringia and AfD".
That's a bit hyperbolic.
Wouldn't it be funny if suddenly every hyperbolic thing became reality?
Or what if every time something hyperbolic was said, a new universe would be formed where that statement was a reality.
Like there'd be a universe where every single German was talking about Thuringia.
Yeah. Okay.
I'll get on with reading the article.....
The AfD is a far-right party.
Right-wing and populist. So probably similar to MAGA.
This paragraph in the article, I think, answers my question about Thuringia: It's the first time since World War Two that a German politician has been elected to the highest role in state politics, akin to that of a governor in the US, on the back of support from a far-right party. And it took place in the very same state where the first Nazi politicians assumed government roles in the 1930s, shortly before Adolf Hitler became German chancellor.
The problem is I don't really understand it.
Well, I kind of understand it...based on what I read in the paragraphs prior to that one.
The highest role didn't go to an actual AfD politician but the AfD was part of a coalition that got Thomas Kemmerich from the Free Democrats Party to win.
But then there was outcry and Kemmerich offered up his resignation and new elections.
* * *
I'm still lost.
I think I'm just going to give up.
* * *
I'm not ready to give up.
I'm going to read an article in The New York Times about the situation.
I'm going to try to focus mostly on the Nazi/past and not that the recent political drama.
* * *
The current situation is too interesting to ignore.
I can understand The New York Times a bit better.
So what happened is mainstream political parties in Thuringia upset Germans, because, for the first time since Nazi time, they worked with a far-right party.
In Germany, this was seen as taboo.
I think it was once taboo here as well...a mainstream political party openly working with the far-right.
This political happening in Germany sparked protests. The protestors said anti-fascist things. How Antifa of them!
Did George Soros plan all these protests then?
The New York Times says: For many Germans, allowing the far right to be kingmakers conjures up dark memories. It is a red line that many do not want to see crossed.
I wish Americans felt the same way.
Well...MANY of us do.
But too many are okay with the far-right.
Slightly-related story: A left-wing member of our family tree posted pictures of Jan 6 insurrectionists wearing Auschwitz t-shirts and said something angry about Trump supporters.
Some Trump-supporting leaves on our trees were more offended by the anti-Trump statement than they were about the extreme antisemitism!
And these are people who are very passionate about being against antisemitism.
This is mind-boggling to me.
* * *
Hallelujah! I think I found it.
The New York Times article says, It did not help that Thuringia is precisely where, in the dying days of the Weimar Republic more than 90 years ago, the Nazis first won power locally, before going on to win nationally — with the help of conservative parties.
Thuringia IS unique. It didn't provide the first Nazi seat in the country-wide legislature. But it was the first to have a Nazi in state government. And the state Nazi seat came before the whole-country seat.
* * *
I'm going to take a break—feed the cats, take a shower, start the laundry...blah, blah, blah.
And then I'm going to...
Well, I guess I HAVE gone down a Thuringia rabbit hole.
I'm going to probably go further down and/or go down a rabbit hole regarding far-right politicians in local American governments.
* * *
I'm back.
Well...this is interesting. Kind of disappointing and maybe worrisome.
The New York Times has a link to a Tweet from Bodo Ramelow. It was a quote from Hitler boasting about the Nazi win in Thuringia. It was anti-Hitler not pro...I think like a warning.
But now the Tweet is gone.
Why would he have deleted it?
Or maybe the link is just bad.
* * *
I Googled Bodo Ramelow along with Nazi and Twitter.
I didn't find the one mentioned in The New York Times but did find one from 2019.
I don't quite understand it.
I mean I definitely don't understand the German. But I'm also confused about the English translation.
He Tweeted:
May 8, 1945 was a real day of liberation for the victims of Nazi barbarism and for the occupied countries too - only for Nazis can this day be a "defeat" and the concentration camps were "disgraceful"!
An AfD city council says such a sentence and the AfD is silent!
Oh!!!
Duh.
There is another statement below in an image.
I thought the AfD had said the thing about the Nazis and concentration camps. I read it like three times trying to figure out why that was offensive.
I was thinking maybe it's that "disgraceful" was too much of an understatement.
I can't copy and paste the words in the image-thing, so I'm going to have to write it out myself into Google translate.
It's good practice for my German-language learning. I suppose....
So we have Es war...
It was...
Schandhafe
shameful.
It was shameful
Niederlage
Defeat.
All together so far: It was a shameful defeat.
I'm feeling like the kid in The Christmas Story with the Little Orphan Annie decoder ring.
It was a shameful defeat...because they didn't drink their Ovaltine.
Continuing...
und kein tag
I actually know und. That means "and".
I'm getting: and not a tag.
What???
I Googled and am getting that Tag means day.
Oh!
Yeah.
I was also reminded by Googling that Guten Tag means good day.
Sometimes my brain is so slow.
And now we have: der Befreiung
Oh...shit.
der Befreiung means of liberation.
So far we have: It was shameful defeat and not a day of liberation
If they're talking about the defeat of the Nazis, that is pretty scary.
The last part is Es war ein Tag der neuen Besetzung.
It was a day of new occupation.
I just noticed that on top of the message is the date: May 8, 1945. I'm not sure if the AfD person put the date there or if someone else did when making the infographic.
I'm just wondering if it's one of those things where a right-wing politician says something super bigoted but then later tries to walk back the comment.
Why didn't Trump lose all mainstream supporters when he talked about there being fine people on both sides?
Why didn't he lose all mainstream supporters when he told the Proud Boys to stand back and stand by?
* * *
There's also a BBC article about the Thuringia drama.
They too have a link to the Hitler-quote Tweet, and that link also is a dead end.
I'm still confused about Thuringia and the rise of Nazism.
The BBC says In 1930 a Nazi entered the Thuringia government, the party's first big breakthrough in the Weimar Republic, culminating in Adolf Hitler's appointment as chancellor in 1933.
But the Nazis were entering the Reichstag before that. Right?
I'm so confused!!
I know state government vs federal government. But isn't federal usually a bigger deal?
* * *
I've been Googling and Googling.
I finally went back to the BBC article. I think the answer to my confusion is in the no-longer-there Tweet.
Though the link to the Tweet is gone, I'm now paying enough attention to see the Hitler quote is there.
It's: We achieved the greatest success in Thuringia. Today we really are the crucial party there... The parties in Thuringia, which up until now formed the government, cannot get a majority without our assistance.
So the reason the AfD fiasco is being compared to the Nazi situation is that the Nazis were needed/used in a political coalition.
It's kind of like making a deal with the devil...
If a politician or political party needs power, who or what are they willing to align with to achieve that.
I'm thinking....
It's always bad to align with evil things like white supremacists and other Nazi-supporting types of people.
It's bad to be that power hungry.
But I think it's even worse to align with evil things, because you like and agree with the evil.
It's one thing to reluctantly sign a deal with the devil, because you desperately want something. It's a bit worse if you sign a deal with the devil, because you like the devil.
I feel this is a bad analogy, because I'm sitting here picturing Tom Ellis.
So let's turn to Trump
It would be bad enough for him to reluctantly cater to the Proud Boys and Oath keepers, because he wants votes from those groups.
It's much worse if he is eagerly seeking the support of the Proud Boys and Oath keepers, because he loves them and thinks they're special.
* * *
I just realized a better comparison is probably OTHER Republicans and the way they align with Trump. I am angry and disgusted with all Republican politicians who support Trump.
But I guess with the ones who dislike Trump and still kiss his ass...I feel a mixture of anger, disgust, and pity.
The ones who kiss Trump's ass because they actually like him. I think instead of pity, I have fear.
Though...both types are enabling Trump and endangering the United States and democracy.
What would our world be like if we
knew for sure there
was life after death, and
we could easily talk to our
dearly-departed on the Internet?
The Dead are Online a novel by Dina Roberts
No comments:
Post a Comment