In 1933, 54-year-old Albert Einstein was one of the last German Jews welcomed into the United States.
In 1935, Germany passed the Nuremberg Laws. These laws were based on America’s Jim Crow laws, and American and German eugenicists whose work was funded by American industrialists and eugenic movement leaders.
The Nazis’ persecution of Jews, African-Germans, the Roma people, mentally and physically disabled and any other “others” deemed unfit, led to the final solution: The “Extermination” of thousands of men, women, children and babies at a time, by execution squads, starvation and gas chambers.
The Nazis sterilized African Germans, but they rounded up the Jews, Romas and dissidents, and sent them to concentration camps. To my knowledge, very few African Germans were sent to the concentration camps. But those that were, were murdered alongside all the other “others”.
Tragically, forced sterilization policies left few African-German descendants behind to testify, or seek reparations. How people from African countries ended up in Germany in the first place, is a story worth knowing. You can find that story at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/afro-germans-during-the-holocaust
And what was America doing during the Holocaust? America was busy declaring “other” Americans “unfit” and forcibly sterilizing them. As you might have guessed, those who did the “deeming” where upper class WASPs. And those they deemed “unfit” were Native Americans, African Americans, white women and girls (deemed morally corrupt), poor white people (especially in the Appalachians) and mentally disabled people. Not only did America refuse to accept Jews fleeing the Holocaust, America sent Jewish refugees back to Germany for “extermination.”
In a discussion like this, recommending a movie, might make you think me an airhead, but I’m doing it anyways. At the very least, I ask you to watch these two scenes from the 1961 film, Judgment at Nuremberg.
“The Guilt of the World” scene from Judgment at Nuremberg (2minutes 41 seconds)
Please, be careful. This 6 minute, 28 second long scene is harrowing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOGC5ccXkww&ab_channel=Movieclips
Hundreds of hours of film documenting the concentration camps, is my answer to question #8.
Sometimes, people must see what their ideologies have done, to believe it. Films of the concentration camps showed the American people where their eugenics ideology was leading them. Having grown up in safety, security, and comfort, white Americans struggled to connect the dots of slavery and genocide, but they felt it – some,felt it deeply.
The idea that anyone saved Jews from Hitler is nuts. The Pope knew, the Vatican knew, American industrialists knew, Roosevelt knew, and Churchill knew what was happening in Hitler’s concentration camps, but no one warned their soldiers.
When American soldiers stumbled upon German concentration camps, battle-hardened men fell to their knees in shock, vomited, wept, recoiled and ran away in horror. Some thought they’d died and gone to Hell. Others thought they’d gone insane. Many soldiers would come home with “shell shock.” The term “shell shock” implied these soldiers had been hurt fighting a war. The truth was far worse. These soldiers had been injured fighting the same ideology overseas, that was still running rampant here in America.
Eventually, documentary films of the concentration camps were shown to the American public. My mother remembered a couple of people left the theatre. My family credited those films with helping white Americans see themselves – for the first time.
15 years after the Nazis were defeated, the 1961 release of Stanley Kramer’s film, Judgement at Nuremberg reminded people of what had happened. Four years later, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts were signed into law.
Rich and powerful Americans had much to hide, and suppression quickly followed. I was among the last to see films of concentration camps shown in high school history and civilization classes (I graduated high school in 1972 – yes, I’m getting old).
1971 was the year American billionaires came back together and launched their “Conservative Movement” (and all their endless culture wars that hound us, even now).
By the time my children were in school, the Holocaust was being taught through the lens of white ideology. I pulled my children out of those classes and taught them that part of history myself. Today, Florida is leading a full-blown resurrection of white ideology from 1900-1941. Not only has slavery been white-washed, Hitler and the Nazis have been cleaned up as well. Their excuse, their justification? Apparently, white children today, are too easily shamed.
That you ask how the Holocaust was worse than 400 years in slavery is understandable. However, the idea that Jews endured just one decade of horror during the Holocaust comes from white ideology taught in American public schools. Long before the Atlantic slave trade, Jews had endured almost two thousand years of torture, enslavement, displacement and slaughter. The Atlantic slave trade swept people in Africa into a long, long history of white brutality.
Again, I’m not trying to form some kind of alliance with you, or anyone else. Right now, assimilation is as dangerous for you, as it is for me. We must follow our own paths. I am trying to help you see that putting Jews in your path, is one of the ways that white ideology keeps people chained inside it.
According to white ideology, Jews are so powerful, we run the whole effing planet. Poor little billionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Charles Koch, don’t stand a chance against us great big, gigantic Jews. According to conservatives, our great big, gigantic, powerful leader is 92-year-old George Soros. Soros is so powerful he controls you and me, and half the rest of the American population.
White people love to remind everyone of how much the Jews have helped black people. But they never mention how much black people have helped Jews. Let me change that.
During the Watts Riots, black neighbors came to the store, hid a Jewish storekeeper, his wife and two sons in the backseat of their car, then drove them straight through the riots and out of Watts to safety. Whenever that night was mentioned, Grampa, always said, when they came for us in Germany, our neighbors refused to help us. When black people came for us, they came to save our lives. The man who repeated that story, over and over again, had a number tattooed on his arm from Auschwitz. That man believed we must never forget.
Kenyatta, do you think it possible for people to learn our way out of white ideology and stay out? I do, but to stay out of white ideology, I need help from people willing to teach me in return. To that hopeful end, I’m here and I am listening.
Sorry, this got so long. When I get to typing, my fingers just keep on pecking.
