198 Sundays: Resisting Evil

Today I finally went to the United States Holocaust Museum.

Right from the start, visitors are crammed into elevators fashioned to look like cattle cars.  Then you emerge into a dark hallway and are greeting immediately by terrifying pictures.  Very powerful.

You also get an identity card providing biographical information about someone who lived during the Holoscaust.  Ostensibly you're supposed to only read sections of the little booklet as you navigate the various periods of the Nazi era, contemplating what happened to this person as the world caught on fire around them, but I read the whole thing at once.  I don't suppose there's a right way to do it, anyway.

Mine was that of Rev. Marian Jacek Dabrowski, born in Niewodowo, Poland on January 15, 1905.  He survived, unlike 2 out of every 3 European Jews.

Being an obsessive student of history, including that of my own family, I already knew most of the facts presented in the exhibition.  That didn't prepare me for the overwhelming visceral experience.  The thing that impacted me the most was a huge collection of shoes, pictured above (taken from the museum guide since no photography is allowed, and rightfully so).

I kept trying to figure out why that moved me so much, and on my walk across the National Mall afterward I ended up deciding it was because shoes are so mundane.  Yet they are all that's left of so many people who were destroyed, discarded symbols of inhumanity.

Another powerful part of the exhibition is The Tower of Faces:

[A] three-floor-high segment of the permanent exhibition at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum devoted to the Jewish community of the Lithuanian town of Eisiskes, which was massacred by units of the German Einsatzgruppe and their Lithuanian auxiliaries in two days of mass shootings on September 25 and 26, 1941. The exhibit consists of approximately 1,000 reproductions of prewar photographs of Jewish life in the town gathered from more than 100 families by Dr. Yaffa Eliach, who spent her early childhood in Eisiskes. Eliach is the granddaughter of Eisiskes photographer Yitzhak Uri Katz, who, together with his wife, Alte Katz, their assistant Ben-Zion Szrejder and Rephael Lejbowicz, took most of the photographs in the exhibit.

Jews had lived in Eisiskes for almost 900 years, and in 1939, the 3,000-3,500 members of the Jewish community constituted a majority of the town's population. The photographs in this exhibit document the rich religious, cultural, economic and familial life of the Jewish community that existed prior to the occupation of Eisiskes by the German Army in the last week of June 1941. Shortly after German troops entered the town, a Jewish council was formed, and men were conscripted for forced labor.

On the eve of the Jewish New Year in September 1941, the community was ordered to surrender all its valuables. The following morning all Jews were ordered to assemble in the main synagogue and its two houses of study. Another 1,000 Jews from the neighboring towns of Valkininkas and Salcininkai were brought to Eisikes and crowded into the three buildings. For the next two days the 4,000-4,500 Jews were held without food or water. On the third day the killing action began with the mass shooting of all the men at the old Jewish cemetery. The next day the women and children were taken out and shot near the Christian cemetery. Only 29 Jews escaped the slaughter.

Walking through the halls of darkening history brought to mind other things I've been thinking about a lot over the last few years as we unleash our own inhumanity on Iraq:

In addition to the usual "it can't happen here" defense, one of the problems with suggesting that we face the danger of tyranny is that any attempt to bring up historical parallels generates outrage and questions like, "oh yeah, then where are the death camps?"  I would simply observe that there were no death camps in 1933, but there were more modest concentration camps and a variety of other laws were passed to control particular segments of the population.

Lots of bad things were done via legal measures for several years.  Kristallnacht didn't happen until 1938.  There was no open discussion of getting rid of Jews until 1939.  German Jews didn't have to wear yellow stars until 1941.  Logistics of the Final Solution weren't planned until 1942.  So you see, the Nazi regime that most people think of was not create ex nihilo--it evolved over time, and might have been stopped had people fought each injustice.

Much of the overt State hostility toward Jews began to manifest itself in 1934, the same year that 90% of Germany approved of Hitler's new powers.  I wonder how history would've been different had the German people stood against evil instead of giving into their fears of the Other.

Fortunately, even in the middle of all the horrors, people did resist:

In France, General Charles de Gaulle refused to swear allegiance to the Vichy Regime...In February 1941 the Dutch population, led by resistance leaders in the trade union organizations, mounted a general strike in protest of arrests and brutal treatment of Jews... Jehovah's Witnesses resisted Nazism through defiance. They refused to serve in the German army and, as concentration camp prisoners, organized illegal study groups.

Other forms of non-violent resistance included sheltering Jews, listening to forbidden Allied radio broadcasts, and producing clandestine anti-Nazi newspapers.

Those examples give us today's Methods.

117. General strike (economic noncooperation, multi-industry strikes):

The general strike is a widespread stoppage of labor by workers in an attempt to bring the economic life of a given area to a more or less complete standstill in order to achieve certain desired objectives.  The method may be used on a local, regional, national or international level.  Wilfred Harris Crook defined the general strike as "the strike of a majority of the workers in the more important industries of any one locality or region."
...
While a general strike is usually intended to be total, certain vital services may be allowed to operate, especially those necessary for health...Crook distinguishes three broad types of general strike--political, economic and revolutionary.

120. Withholding or withdrawal of allegiance (political noncooperation, rejection of authority):

This form of political noncooperation involves a refusal to recognize a particular regime as legally or morally deserving of allegiance.

140. Hiding, escape, and false identities (political noncooperation, citizens' alternatives to obedience):

[These] are not usually a part of nonviolent action.  Normally they are not protest or resistance as such, and they commonly reflect fear which disrupts the effective operation of the technique.  However, there are certain circumstances under which they may constitute a method of nonviolent action.  These are largely political circumstances in which the regime seeks the arrest, internment and perhaps extermination of a particular group of people for ideological reasons or as a massive wave of repression.  It could also apply to groups wanted as hostages or for reprisals, forced labor, or military duty.  And of course escape by slaves is resistance to the institution of slavery.  In certain circumstances members of the resistance movement might also seek to disappear.
...
As an act of political noncooperation this method was very widely practiced in the Netherlands during World War II...Approximately 25,000 Dutch Jews when into hiding; those who "submerged" later included much larger groups in the population who were to be deported to Germany, such as members of the Dutch armed forces, students who had refused to declare loyalty to the new regime, and workers needed to boost German production.  By the summer of 1944 there were more than 300,000 "underdivers" who had to be provided with shelter, false identity papers, food and usually ration cards.
...
This method was one common means by which Jews in other parts of Europe also sought to counter Nazi measures.

180. Alternative communication system (nonviolent intervention, social intervention):

Under political systems which have extensive control or monopoly over systems and media of communication, the creation by opposition groups of substitute systems of communication may constitute nonviolent intervention when they disrupt the regime's control or monopoly over the communication of information and ideas.  This may involve newspapers, radio and even television.  Systems for communication between individuals (as substitutes for the controlled postal or telephone system) may also be involved.

Finally, all throughout the exhibition there were a smattering of quotations writ large on the walls, and one from Albert Einstein in 1934 leaped out at me:

Those who today rage against the ideals of reason and individual freedom and who seek by means of brutal force to bring about a vapid state-slavery are justified in perceiving us as their implacable enemies.

So what kinds of resistance can we put forth against our current enemy who visits death and destruction upon the Iraqis while curtailing freedoms in America?

ntodd

Covered on previous Sundays:

5. Declarations of indictment and intention
8. Banners, posters, and displayed communications
9. Leaflets, pamphlets, and books
15. Group lobbying
19. Wearing of symbols
21. Delivering symbolic objects.
38. Marches
57. Lysistratic nonaction
71. Consumers' boycott
90. Revenue refusal
137. Refusal of an assemblage or meeting to disperse
178. Guerrilla theater
193. Overloading of administrative system

Comments

[Uncle Smokes]

The holocaust was just a vague notion to me until my high school junior history teacher showed us Night and Fog.

There were the warehouses not just of shoes, but giant mounds of human hair and eyeglasses.

No other film I saw during those school years affected as much as that did.

[madamab]

Those who today rage against the ideals of reason and individual freedom and who seek by means of brutal force to bring about a vapid state-slavery are justified in perceiving us as their implacable enemies.

Indeed. And we on the side of reason would be wise to view THEM as OUR implacable enemies.

This is a quote that we should send to every Democrat in, or running for, office. I still feel like even some of the good ones still don't realize that the rightwing is truly intent on establishing fascism here in America. They're too used to focusing on trying to accomplish specific tasks and don't see the scope of the conservatives' ambitions.

[Toucari, fka cosmic tumbler]

The shoes stayed with me as well. It is interesting how something so mundane can become so profound.

[Supra Shoes]

I have fun with you distinct blog. So nice and it brings me a lot of pleasure. It is good for society for this style of writing.