Holocaust education is the parallel to Trumpziim

Echo From L.A. Times Studios: World War II survivor Josie Levy Martin recently visited a local high school class and was shocked when none of the students had heard of Adolf Hitler. ❗

Anti-Semitism history must be told: An echo opinion published in the Los Angeles Times:

Josie Levy Martin as a child in Montbron, France, during World War II.  (Josie Levy Martin)

Yet, at the same time, millions of Americans believe in election fraud lies. She fears if Americans don’t learn the lessons of the past, history can repeat itself. Levy Martin warns, “If you look away, it will be all the worse.”

When I was a teenager, I asked my father what it was like to live in Germany after Hitler came to power.

“Das kanst du dir nicht vorshtellen” — you cannot imagine it. “At first we thought it wouldn’t be so bad, but some things changed almost overnight. My boss said I shouldn’t visit certain clients because they might not want to do business.”

“But you hadn’t changed!” I interrupted.

“My child, you can’t understand, and God willing, you won’t have to. The boss said he personally didn’t go along with Hitler’s Nazi rantings, but by 1934 we were no longer invited to their Sunday kaffeeklatsch."

I remembered this when a pro-Trump neighbor stopped inviting us to her annual holiday cocktail party.

Prior to 2016, we respected each other’s differing political views, even joked about it. This changed dramatically after I said to her, “But Trump lies.” That was the end of the conversation, and she and her partner retreated to their capsules of collusion, for it is a form of collusion when normal, ordinary people look away from facts.

It was the same collusion as when teachers, lawyers and ministers went along with the Nazi lie that in a pure Germany, Aryan supremacy must be returned to “das Volk.”

My parents left Germany for France in 1935; I was born there in 1938. Too many of our relatives were less fortunate, and they were gassed in the camps.

For a time I wanted to believe that the Nazi era was a “never-again” episode orchestrated by some twisted fascist monsters. I wanted to believe that America had saved Europe from the worst evil in modern times.

Alas, “never again” is now.

I fear not enough good people remember history. Why are so many Republicans on board with Trump, even a year after the January 6, 2021, coup attempt? 

I worry about political things, such as the large number of judges Trump has appointed, but there are also other changes that deeply concern me.

I wonder about doctors who refuse to call COVID-19 the killer that it is, especially of poor Americans and people of color. My grandmother was a victim of the Nazification of medicine. She had leukemia. It was treatable with transfusions that she received regularly at a blood bank in Frankfurt. After the Nuremberg Laws*, she was denied pure Aryan blood. (OMG!) Her oldest son stayed in Germany to donate blood to her even though he had received an exit visa to America. She feared he wouldn’t get out in time.

My grandmother stopped eating so her son would leave. She died.

Where were the good doctors, journalists or judges who could have demanded this cruelty stop? Where were the ruling bodies then?

And where will ours be in 2022, and 2024, if so many election officials have been ousted or quit because they failed to cheat for a would-be fascist dictator? I pray for our democracy, which seems irrevocably on life support.

Josie Levy Martin, Santa Barbara, California

*On September 15, 1935, at a party rally in Nuremberg, the Nazis announced two new laws that changed who could be a German citizen. The Reich Citizenship Law required that all citizens have German “blood.” As a result, Jews and others lost their rights to citizenship, which not only stripped them of the right to vote but also made them stateless. This meant that they could not get a valid passport for travel between countries or acquire a visa to leave Germany.