First of all, I hope that you, my readers, are not shocked to receive some political discourse when you had signed up for articles about a vegan lifestyle, the environment, and the value of non-human animals. But my claim that everything is connected makes sure that nothing is entirely off-topic; so please, bear with me. Just like many, many others I’m reeling from the constant horror show in the news.
Because I was born in 1946 in (then) West-Germany, the Nazi-time and the war which had just ended strongly influenced my childhood and youth, and thus who I am today. And I’m grateful for it. For as long as I can remember I’ve felt a fundamental aversion against war, uniforms, authoritarianism, patriotism, weapons, and violence. No, I didn’t experience any air raids, but I heard about them: when my father’s older siblings and their families gathered at my grandparents’ house on Sundays, they used to reminisce about the sirens at night, when they had to wake up, grab their little kids, and run to the nearest bunker or at least hide in the cellar. Once they heard the All Clear, they had to worry whether they still had a place to live or would find a pile of rubble instead. As a kid, it freaked me out to think that people had to live through years of war.
When I was 16, I went on a school trip to Paris. It was a surprise to realize that the French kids my age were proud of their country! For me, an unknown feeling. There was absolutely no “Make Germany Great Again” sentiment when I grew up. It was clear to me that I hadn’t missed anything; every pissy little country would have some citizens who thought theirs was the greatest country in the world. Obviously, a silly notion.
My parents’ generation didn’t really want to think about the recent past. Asked about the Nazi-time and the Holocaust, “we didn’t know what was going on” was the common answer. Highly unsatisfactory, but even in high school when we were supposed to study this time, our history teacher got conveniently sick. They just couldn’t deal with it yet.
All this led me to become a little revolutionary in the late Sixties when I was a university student in Munich. I was quite the radical, beaten up by the police, arrested. In part, I was rebelling at the apparent complacency of my parents’ generation; “See? You don’t have to be quiet – if democracy is threatened, you DO something!” Of course, I soon realized how arrogant and naive my attitude was. Well, a friend of mine DID get shot by the police, unarmed, with his hands up, facing a wall; one of the reasons I left Germany for good in 1973. But on the whole, one’s personal risk was negligible compared to the mortal danger a protester faced during the Nazi-time. The siblings Sophie and Hans Scholl were executed by guillotine for distributing flyers criticizing the Nazis.
The phrase “Never again” is mainly associated with the Holocaust, but it also refers to the fight against Fascism. Never again, never EVER again – this is certainly how I felt about anything related to Nazi ideology. And now I find myself in a country that is sliding dangerously close to authoritarianism. For over 20 years, scholars and journalists etc. have warned of rising fascism in the US. Again and again, these warnings were downplayed as exaggerated and overblown. Then, during the Trump presidency, for example, this opinion piece in the news website VOX asked Is Donald Trump a Fascist? (October 2020). The scholars interviewed all agree that he is not, but that’s not meant as a compliment, it would give him too much credit to be compared to Hitler or Mussolini. “You can be a total xenophobic racist male chauvinist bastard and still not be a fascist.” states Roger Griffin, professor of history at Oxford Brookes University.
I wonder if they’ve changed their minds after the January 6 attack on the Capitol and the recent revelations by Cassidy Hutchinson. But the state of the Supreme Court and the manner we ended up with the current members worries me much more, as far as Fascism is concerned. Six of them were appointed by Republican presidents, five of them by presidents who lost the popular vote, and Mitch McConnell is the devious mastermind who managed to leave us with this travesty of justice. Motivated by fundamentalist Christianity and extreme rightwing ideologies, the conservative majority of the Supreme Court judges may not stop with overturning Roe v. Wade. Clarence Thomas already indicated that he’d like to go after gay marriage and access to birth control. And their latest ruling limits the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate and restrict carbon emissions from power plants. At a time when reducing carbon dioxide emissions is of crucial importance, the court’s climate change deniers pose an imminent danger to the future of our planet and its human and non-human inhabitants. Without judges who make decisions based on independent law instead of their ideological inclinations the SCOTUS “... is just nine costumed political appointees looking for the votes they need to get the outcomes they want.”1
The news of the last few days, together with no visible end to the Covid pandemic, the hideous and dreadful war in Ukraine, and constant natural disasters caused by global warming, left me feeling miserable and despondent. There doesn’t seem to be anything one can do. It’s a paralyzing feeling, which easily spirals into dark recesses.
Whenever I find myself in this feeling of hopelessness, I try to focus on gratitude. I think of the countless things I can be grateful for. There literally is no end to the list of items that qualify, no matter how dire my situation seems to be. This little exercise puts everything in perspective. You may argue that it doesn’t really solve any of the problems. But feeling depressed and hopeless doesn’t help, either.
If this exercise resonates with you:
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Yes. My ears ring & burn in the reading of your piece. Always a self-siren the ringing may be tinnitus from being a long time loud rock music etc. freak, yet I believe the burning to be an authentic alarm. Your words resonate clearly and there is much to relate. My unchosen ancestry german and linked through paternal line to grandfather's upbringing as a nazi youth whose own parents had relocated to the US sensing his corruption. Yet still, the installed youth group brainwashed cruelty resulted in incestuous rapes vented on me. As for my own choices, my belief in species equality and the cleansing of body mind spirit through clean food, creativity and gratitude meditation have resulted in Survival over victim behavior. Thank you ♡
I remember temping with a gal who grew up in Germany and described what it was like after the war. We forget what that must have been like. This is the second piece of yours and I like that you share your honest truth and aren't afraid to speak it, write it, share it. This piece reminded me of an experience I had in Munich. I hope you don't mind my sharing this with you.
He was at least 6 feet tall, blonde, azure-eyed, looking like a robust pig-fed mid-westerner with an identity crisis. I was my 5’2” chocolate hair and eyed self, twenty years old, having just registered at the Munich hostel next door when I met him in the summer of 1980. Over a stein and a pretzel, I discovered we were both US political science college students.
He was bright, articulate and had a wicked sense of humor. He’d had an uncle who used to be the Mayor of Munich. He was one year shy of graduating from the University of Minnesota. “One day I will return to Munich and become the Mayor of this beloved town,” he said proudly. He then asked if I wanted a tour guide.
“I came to Munich to see Dachau.” I said innocently.
“That’s no place for a person to go alone. You don’t need to go there. Munich is a cosmopolitan city. The architecture is great; the culture here is top rate. Let me show you the Hauptbahnhof, the English Garten and then if you still need to see Dachau I’ll take you.”
I think two days went by in a blur, with mostly beer gardens in my memory. At the end of each day there was an argumentative session with him trying to talk me out of taking the train to the empty barracks outside of town.
Sure enough he was on the same train the next morning. There was no lively banter between us as we’d had between rounds of live oompah music the night before. We entered the “Arbeit Mach Frei” (Work Makes Free) gates together. I remember walking, with him following me, through the small box-like museum of old eyeglasses, mountains of ancient suitcases and dusty shoes, mounds of hair, and the pictures and paperwork of those who passed on the premise. I was completely silent in the room where the ovens were fed bodies incessantly. The brick wall had two half moon steel doors open to see exactly where bone and skin became ash and smell. My legs were heavy and I could not move. There were not many tourists swarming around me and I didn’t feel pressured to move quickly from exhibit to exhibit. My identity as a Jew had been formed with the annual movie showing skinny people in striped pajamas waiting to die and piles of skeletons dumped into mass graves. So it was true, man demolishes man.
When I finally escaped the confines of the ovens, I walked out of the dark into the German sunshine and saw an area that was where they lined people up against a wall and shot them. There was a large sign that prominently said, “Never Again.” Suddenly my tour guide who had been silent said, “That’s so ridiculous. Of course, it will happen again. People want it to happen again.” In that heartbeat, I realized that had it been 40 years prior or maybe 40 years down the road he’d probably have me up against that wall with a gun aimed at my forehead.