WHAT WE DIDN’T LEARN FROM THE HOLOCAUST
By
Wayne L. Parker
Recently I visited a local exhibit titled “The Anne Frank Story,” created by the Anne Frank Center USA. The exhibit displayed the heart-rending struggles of a young Jewish girl in countries under Nazi domination, but also clearly illustrated (and we can’t illustrate them enough) the kinds of atrocities committed by citizens against their brethren under the Nazi regime.
As seems to be the case with most holocaust exhibits, the focus is almost totally on the horrendous acts committed by the Nazis, not on the underlying issues that allowed them to do what they did.
The literature provided with the exhibit proclaimed the following as its themes:
Now then, let’s take these themes one at a time.
As for discrimination ITSELF being cruel and irrational, this is not always the case. If I refuse to associate with known criminals, I am engaging in discrimination which seems to me to be quite rational. I presume what the authors mean is that we shouldn’t discriminate for irrational REASONS.
However, if someone holds beliefs that I consider dangerous to my way of life, such as religious differences, do I not have a right to refuse to associate with such people? For that matter, if I’m a business-owner, and I don’t like someone’s religion, do I not have the natural human right, as the owner of my property, to refuse to serve them?
This point addresses the second theme: Ordinary people discriminate against others. Again, sometimes we engage in discrimination for GOOD reasons. Ostracizing community members for engaging in anti-social behavior is one such reason. Of course, discrimination against people for irrational reasons is the point of the exhibit; and I am in full agreement with the authors on the need to eliminate that, although we would probably disagree on the methods used to achieve that goal.
Then we come to the third theme: “Stereotyping continues today.” It certainly does, and such behavior betrays ignorance or shallowness of thought on the part of those engaging in it, however typically “human” a trait it may be.
And now to the last: “Discrimination is a personal choice.” Although this is certainly true in many cases, it has absolutely NOTHING to do with the Nazis or the holocaust, and thus it is my biggest disagreement with the Anne Frank, as well as similar exhibits.
Every day millions of people in America make the personal choice to engage in irrational discrimination, largely due to racial or religious differences. Yet, I haven’t seen any holocaust here. Could this be because in America, discrimination remains strictly a personal choice, whereas in Nazi Germany, it was mandated by the government?
This is the most important lesson to learn from the Nazis.
Many people seem to believe that if we eliminate, via government edict, discrimination as a personal choice, we will no longer need to fear future holocausts. But doesn’t an individual have the right to control his own person and property as he sees fit, provided he commits no act which violates someone else’s equal rights? Are not laws PREVENTING discrimination just as much a violation of individual rights as laws REQUIRING it? I maintain that it is laws that override individual choice, even the choice to discriminate for racial and religious reasons, that will practically ENSURE that we have another holocaust!
When people think of Nazism, all they think of is “racism”. That is only a very small part of what was wrong with Nazi Germany. As I mentioned earlier, we have racism in this country, yet we don’t have people being hauled off, en masse, to death camps.
The difference, of course, is in what the Nazis saw as the purpose of government, and what the founders of our government envisioned. Our nation’s founding philosophy was that a nation exists solely to protect the citizens of that nation; that the various governments in our nation were simply extensions of the individuals they served. Our philosophy places the individual at the top of the social order; having specific rights, by virtue of being human, which no person can violate. In our country, governments are created to PROTECT those rights.
The founding principle of the National Socialist German Workers’ (Nazi) Party was that the individual was only as important as his service to the “common good”. Thus, it became morally acceptable to round up people who refused to submit their lives to the “will of the people” as defined by the government. The Jews were not the first to be rounded up. The freethinking intellectuals went before they did, along with homosexuals, the indigent, as well as political opponents. In Nazi Germany, SOCIETY was the highest entity, and the individual was expected to submit to its dictates.
The mass murders in Nazi Germany were simply one example of what has happened in other “socialist paradises” such as the former USSR, China, Cuba, Cambodia, Vietnam, as well as all the socialist countries in Africa and South America.
The differences between the United States and Nazi Germany were a modern manifestation of those age-old adversaries; slavery versus freedom.
Although anti-Semitism was widespread prior to the Nazi’s rise to power, mass extermination did not occur until the Nazi government IMPOSED discrimination upon their entire citizenry. This legal imposition was based upon the notion that the government had the right to override the free will of individual citizens in order to serve the “common good.” Had the Nazis not come to power, discrimination against Jews would have continued to occur in various areas, by various individuals, all over the European continent, but it would not have occurred in the massive proportions it did under government sanction.
The “Jim Crow” laws in the United States were similar to the Nazi government’s laws requiring racial or religious segregation. Fortunately, in our country such laws were seen as a violation of individual rights in that they violated the right of a person to choose with whom he would associate. Unfortunately, our federal government went further and imposed “affirmative action” on individuals, thus violating their right to choose their associations as free human beings.
It is THIS, and not racism, that made the Nazi government so evil and dangerous. Any government that can override my free will for “the good of the nation” can likewise force me to work in the cotton fields as a slave. Or incinerate me in an oven.
We cheat ourselves out of an important lesson when we focus on the Nazi regime’s racist policies and ignore the philosophical premise that allowed them to carry out those policies.
As I said before, we have flawed people in our country, just like anywhere else. The threat lies in creating a government that enables them to legitimize their actions.