In the photo, Generals Eisenhower, Bradley, and Patton inspect corpses at Ohrdruf Concentration Camp, a sub-camp of Buchenwald, after its liberation in 1945. Eisenhower wisely predicted that soon, people would deny that the Holocaust occurred, so he ordered voluminous documentation. This included a U.S. Army film by famous director George Stevens (“Giant”). If you want to see real Nazis and a real concentration camp, watch it.
https://archive.org/details/gov.archives.arc.43452
Then tell me what you think of the leftists who compare Trump to Hitler and our immigration facilities to Auschwitz. Hitler committed suicide at 60, after being responsible for 40 to 50 million deaths. About 2 million civilians, mainly Jews, were gassed and cremated at Auschwitz.
Trump is 75 and has killed no one. If Trump is Hitler, Hitler killed no one. No one has been gassed and cremated at the immigration facilities. If the immigration facilities are like Auschwitz, there were no gas chambers or ovens. When leftists call Trump Hitler and compare immigration facilities to Auschwitz, they are not merely trivializing the Holocaust ‒ they are denying it. How inexpressibly sad it is to see people who consider themselves liberals and Democrats commit such despicable acts.
But wait, you object: The Democrats who make these monstrously exaggerated accusations are merely trying to make a point. Perhaps. But I couldn’t care less what their intentions may be. I care about the effect of their lies on others. Some people will come to doubt the Holocaust, believing that it, too, is a gross exaggeration to make a point. Others will be driven to hate Republicans ‒ witness the attacks on Sarah Sanders, Kirstjen Nielsen, Pam Bondi, and others. Revealingly, the attacks are mainly against women. (Feminism? We don’t need no stinkin’ feminism ‒ we’re progressives!)
Think about the nauseating proposal to kidnap 12-year-old son Barron Trump and put him in a “cage with pedophiles.” Think about the infuriating proposal to kidnap 4-year-old granddaughter Chloe. Are these merely outliers? No, they are the inevitable progression of negativity:
Disagreement→contempt→hatred.
Opposition→“resistance”→violence.
The current climate of hate has been building for years. This much vitriol could not have been generated in a short time. It began long before Trump’s appearance on the political scene. It began when moderate conservatives like me began to be called “Nazis.”
I’m a Jew. My maternal grandfather was a rabbi, as was my wife’s maternal grandfather. I spent most of my career in medical oncology, working on a salary in a large public hospital, and caring for many minority patients. To top things off, my father’s eldest brother was murdered in the Holocaust. So who could possibly mistake me for a Nazi?
The colleague.
During the Bill Clinton impeachment scandal, I was discussing the problem with colleagues at the hospital lunch table. The subject of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr came up. Starr had been appointed to investigate the Clinton scandals, including the Monica Lewinsky affair.
An older colleague condemned Starr for subpoenaing the records of Monica Lewinsky’s book purchases. My colleague believed that this opened the door to government control of books. I explained that Monica claimed that she had bought specific books as gifts for Bill, and Starr was trying to verify her story. If she lied about this, she might be lying about other things as well. But she wasn’t lying.
I added that this didn’t mean Starr was trying to control our reading material. After all, he also subpoenaed the infamous blue dress, and this didn’t mean he wanted to control women’s fashions.
At this my colleague flew into a rage, declaring, “You’re a Nazi, and people like you put Hitler into power.” This accusation was so out of line that I hardly knew what to say. I suspected that the man was in an early stage of dementia, which restrained me from giving him a stiff left jab to the nose.
I never spoke to him again. I could never forgive him for trivializing Nazism and the Holocaust. If a moderate conservative was a Nazi, how bad could Nazis be?
The “friend.”
My wife and I had been friendly with another couple for years. We had eaten dinner together. They were progressive, but we spent most of our time discussing nonpolitical subjects.
Then I had a health scare. Things came out alright, but at the time my wife was quite worried. My wife’s birthday was near, and her friend took her out for lunch, both to celebrate the birthday and to give her a respite from her concerns. The conversation went well, dealing with personal matters.
Suddenly, the woman blurted out that she could continue to meet my wife for lunch, but she and her husband could no longer have dinner with us, because I was a “Nazi.” My wife sat dumbfounded. She is rarely at a loss for words, but this attack came so unexpectedly that she didn’t know what to reply .
Later my wife assumed her former friend was referring to my website. But at the time, all she could do was to get up, walk out, and never speak to the woman again. The woman was shorter than my wife, which quite possibly saved her from having a lunch dumped on her head. The woman made no attempt to repair the situation. The self-righteous see no reason for them to extend a hand.
The historic meeting.
At a small meeting of conservatives, I talked to a black man. I asked him how other African Americans reacted to his conservatism. He replied that more than once, he had been called a “Klansman.”
I told him about how I had been called a “Nazi.” Then I held out my hand, saying “This is a historic event. The black Klansman meets the Jewish Nazi. All we need now is a gay homophobe and a xenophobic immigrant, and we’ll have a poker game.”
The man burst out laughing and shook my hand enthusiastically. We both left smiling, but the whole thing was really sad. The harsh intolerance of leftists, who claim to be so “tolerant,” is truly hypocritical. The rigid conformity of leftists, who claim to support “diversity,” is truly abhorrent. The offensive language of leftists, who claim to exemplify “sensitivity,” is truly painful. People like that, and not Trump supporters, are the ones who belong in Hillary’s “basket of deplorables.”
Judenhass.
Obviously, Hitler did not have a Jewish son-in-law, a daughter who converted to Judaism, three Jewish grandchildren, and another daughter who is going with a Jew. Nor did Hitler move his embassy to Jerusalem, or open Palm Beach hotels to blacks and Jews. To call Trump “Hitler” is to deny Hitler’s genocidal Judenhass, his eliminationist Jew hatred that he expressed as early as 1919. This is to deny the very motivation for the Holocaust.
So far, the abusive language and assaults have been almost exclusively from the Left. But this cannot go on indefinitely. Sooner or later, conservatives will begin responding. They take a dim view of harassing women, and a dimmer view of threatening children. And they own many more firearms ‒ and know how to use them. Let us call a halt before a government official is injured or killed, and people feel compelled to retaliate. Let us stop the descent into violence before it gets out of control.
Given time, I could forgive the personal insults. But the targeting of the children and grandchildren of public officials? The trivialization of Nazism and the Holocaust, which now is merging into Holocaust denial? Those I will not forgive.
Beware the fury of a patient man. − John Dryden
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