There’s a saying that goes, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”
As Donald Trump tries to revoke birthright citizenship, lead a mass deportation of undocumented immigrants and clamp down on basic rights for the LGBTQIA community, 80 years ago, the Soviet Union liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau, one of the most horrific places of human savagery, torture and cruelty. The horrors of World War II will never fully be understood as people on both sides did unspeakable acts to people just because of what clothng they wore or where they were from.
In Shutter Island, it’s fictionally portrayed how the American troops massacred Nazi German soldiers at Dachau almost out of an angry reaction that started with one soldier firing his rifle leading to the others to open fire. But it was actually a lot more cold-blooded as allied troops just couldn’t handle what they saw and didn’t care about the rules of engagement. They did kill Nazis but it wasn’t all at once as shown in the movie.
There are still people alive today who remember and survived the horrors. Sadly, we live in a world where people don’t want to believe what happened maybe because we don’t want to believe someone could be that horrible to another person. And for those who ask “Why did the Nazis do it?”, the answer is easy – they were told to. Also, they were afraid to disobey orders and how they would be seen by others.
I find it a great move in Schindler’s List when Oskar Schindler tells the Nazis they can kill the Jews because the war is over or they can put down their weapons and return to their homes decent people, the first soldier to leave looks like a teenager. But it’s also shows that when there is no immediate threat from a higher power, people won’t obey orders. Yet, sometimes it’s not best to follow orders. Kings and dictators have been overthrown a lot throughout history. All it takes is for people to band together and say, “No more.”
We live in a society that believes that as long as we keep our heads down and don’t make waves, we’ll coast by. But that’s not always the case. A domestic abuser will push what they are capable of doing, but they will stop if their victims push back earlier on. Bullies only get by when they others will allow them to pick on their victims.
Sadly, since most of the people who lived in that era are no longer around so people just want to think that it’s all in the past and we don’t need to worry about it. Emmet Till was killed 70 years ago and he was killed with the help of other black people in Mississippi.
Ask yourself, what side of history do you want to be on? A lot of people probably thought if they didn’t make much of a fuss, they’d get by until it just magically ended one day. But it doesn’t just magically end. It takes people willing to stand up and say this isn’t right.
We’ve only been in the Trump presidency one week now and he’s trying to undermine everything that’s happened not just over the past four years but since the 1940s. People who always feel inferior to others and can’t make any accomplishments themselves will point to others as the problem and never themselves.
I wish I didn’t have to see him or talk about him ever again. But he’s just a representation of a bigger problem. I keep hoping younger generations will be more tolerant. It’s no surprise most of the people who supported Trump did so because they wanted a return to a more white-male dominant society which is remnant of the time in which they were born. But it’s the horrors of what people witnessed in WWII, the Jim Crow/Segregation era that led to radical changes in the 1960s and 1970s. Just because you were young and white didn’t mean it didn’t happen around you.
I hate to have to go through this at this point in my life but I’m not going to keep my head down and my mouth shut. And I advise all of you to do the same. A video online showed a Trump supporter trying to be ugly to a man of Southeast Asian ancestry at a gas station in the Midwest. Well the man who was told “To go back to China” didn’t back down and the racist just got back in his van.
Don’t back down.
In closing, please remember those who died at not just Auschwitz-Birkenau but also Dachau, Krakow, Landsberg and others. Krakow was featured in Schindler’s List and it’s hard to watch even now more than 30 years later. The liberation of Landsberg is in the ninth episode “Why We Fight” of Band of Brothers. It’s also a hard episode to watch. History isn’t always pretty. Both the movie and series are streaming on Netflix.
Our duties as younger generations is to never allow the same horrors to repeat themselves. I don’t believe in American exceptionalism because there isn’t always a good lesson to be learned from everything bad that happens. There’s an old saying that “The only second chances you get are to make the same mistakes again.”
Peace and love be with all the people who died and survived the horrors of the Holocaust and those who are still having to fight anti-Semitic resentment.
Zane Says 