How Will History Treat This Day in 2092?
January 20 is now and will in the future a pivotal day
marked by historians. In 2017, this date marks the inauguration of Donald Trump
as the President of the United States. As he puts his small hand on the Bible (perhaps
causing a fire to erupt) I will be philosophizing about an event that,
coincidentally, took places seventy-five years prior; the Wannsee Conference.
In the Berlin suburb of Wannsee, on January 20, 1942,
Reinhard Heydrich presided over a conference of Nazi leaders to solidify their
plans to deal with the “Jewish Question.” Rounding up and murdering Jews,
gypsies, political enemies, and any others who were not deemed worthy of life
under the Third Reich had gone on for many years; therefore, the Wannsee
meeting was not the event that determined the fate of European Jews. Rather, it
was the convergence of men who adopted plans to expedite the liquidation
process of the Final Solution.
Heydrich, so-called by the Slavic People as the “Butcher
of Prague,” chaired the meeting that decreed, “Approximately 11 million Jews
will be involved in the final solution of the European Jewish question.” Briefly, the plan implemented to answer the
Jewish Question was as follows:
“Under proper guidance, in the course of the final
solution the Jews are to be allocated for appropriate labor in the East.
Able-bodied Jews, separated according to sex, will be taken in large work
columns to these areas for work on roads, in the course of which action
doubtless a large portion will be eliminated by natural causes. The possible
final remnant will, since it will undoubtedly consist of the most resistant
portion, have to be treated accordingly, because it is the product of natural
selection and would, if released, act as a the seed of a new Jewish revival
(see the experience of history.)”[1]
Determining who was a Jew fell to the application of the
Nuremburg Laws. If you’ve listened to Donald Trump discuss his theory on
genetics, you’re already a step ahead in understanding these laws. You see,
Nazi’s didn’t care about the religious aspect of being Jewish, they were
concerned with genetic Jews; genetic Jews are Semites and Semites are desert
people of Middle Eastern origin, thus Arabic peoples are also Semites and face
anti-Semitism. That phrase, however, which arose in 19th century
Germany as a way to describe discrimination against secular Jews, is considered
to denote anti-Jewish racism. But let’s look at it in a literal sense; Jews and
Arabs are both Semites; therefore, a hatred toward either group can logically
be considered anti-Semitism. Is this eerie coincidence of January 20 starting
to make more sense?
Seventy-five years to the day after the most heinous
crimes against humanity of the 20th century, arguably of all time,
were solidified, Donald Trump, who is in all likelihood the most anti-Semitic P(e)O(t
u) S in recent memory, will swear to God and country to Protect and Defend the
Constitution of the United States of America. The irony of this is not lost on
me nor should it be on you. I am a historian and since the minute Donald opened
his mouth in the primaries, I have been frightened. A weary nation recovering
from financial hardship, unemployment, and ongoing war was searching for a
charismatic leader who promised us everything we wanted. Well, as long as you
are a heterosexual, white, Christian, male. Government institutions had
seemingly failed us and we were being overrun by those damn foreigners. We
needed room to spread out and live (Hitler called this Lebensraum), we needed
to get rid of the damned Socialists, stop the queers and their warped agenda,
lock up our political enemies, keep women barefoot and pregnant, and silence
those no-good, smart-ass intellectuals. It worked for Hitler….and Mussolini.
The Nazi Party was legally elected into office, perhaps that is the one area in
which Trump and the Nazis differ. Once people’s lives started to improve
financial under the new regime, people closed their eyes to the atrocities that
were occurring right under their very noses. We can’t do this. As human beings
we must not allow this to happen.
So, whether you watch, attend, or protest the
inauguration ceremony, remember that on the very same day in 1942, wheels were
also in motion for the Final Solution. Think of one of the millions of people
who were tortured and murdered simply because of their ethnicity. Whatever you
do on the 20th as far as the inauguration is concerned, don’t ignore
the significance of the day or the irony of the symbolism. You never know who
will be next.
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