A recent news story informs us that the Minnesota-based National Socialist Movement sponsored a rally at historical Valley Forge, Pa.
The anti-Semitic rally was held on the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur.
How demented is that?
Once again we see the great American attribute of freedom of speech and assembly being sullied by the evil of cruel prejudice.
I can see how this can happen, but why?
Maybe in the brief history of our country we haven’t experienced enough of the true nature of hate.
One certainly couldn’t say that of Poland.
Local coach Carl Wilkins took a group of wrestlers from Washington on a cultural exchange trip to southeastern Poland this summer. As part of the trip, they visited the area of Majdanek, just outside their host city, Lublin.
Majdanek was the site of a Nazi death camp where between 300,000 and 700,000 human lives were extinguished. The numbers are in question because the Nazis didn’t keep careful figures on the toll. It is said, though, that 1,000 bodies a day burned in the crematorium at Majdanek.
We do know that when the inmates at Majdanek were finally liberated, they were 2,700 in number. Wilkins quotes a young student coach from Poland as saying “so many Polish people have died.”
I wonder what this young man would think of the rally at Valley Forge.
Wilkins cited the inherent evil one could feel while standing at the mausoleum and crematorium, kept as a shrine by the people of Majdanek to remember what happened there. One of the icons displayed is a turtle. The Nazi guards were unaware that the picture of the turtle was an inmate code meaning “work slow” in hope that help would come and lives could be saved if the process was impeded.
At one time, the road into Majdanek was paved with grave markers that were taken from the Jewish cemetery. They were removed, of course, but Wilkins says you can still find bits of the crushed memorials in the rocks of the roadway.
The citizens of Lublin, many of whom were taken to Majdanek, could look out their windows and see the smoke rise from the crematorium as their friends and neighbors were incinerated. And of course the suffering inmates of Majdanek could look out and see their former city in the distance.
Three stone eagles are displayed at Majdanek, “to give the prisoners hope.” It’s interesting how our national symbol is and has been a ray of hope for so many.
Wilkins related a chilling story told by their guide, Ana, when they visited Majdanek.
She had visited Auschwitz, certainly one of the most infamous death camps. She said that they started the tour by bringing everyone into the “showers,” where people were gassed. They turned the lights off and sounds of gas escaping permeated the room. Shortly thereafter the lights came on and a bulldozer engine revved up. This was the means by which the bodies were pushed into piles for removal to the crematorium.
Wilkins said it made his blood run cold just being told about it.
How would this experience affect the National Socialist Movement members who rallied for hate at Valley Forge? Regrettably, probably not enough to change the mindset that led the leader of the hate group at Valley Forge to harangue the crowd with a racist and anti-Semitic diatribe.
In defense of the people of Valley Forge, they gave back in kind, being quoted as chanting “get out of our melting pot.”
Wilkins characterized the trip to Poland as “a great experience, seeing the contrast in our two countries and how other countries view the United States.”
As for me, my heart swells with pride when I think of the positive examples we have displayed to the people of the world, examples that have spawned the great hope held by so many to live in America. This is the America in which, by accident of birth for most of us, we are blessed to spend our lives.
I worry, though, when I see the depth of hate and prejudice that is still pervasive in our land. This moral decay can, like the proverbial bad apple, spoil the whole barrel.
Certainly we have become weary of those who embrace the role of victim. We tire of their excuses for bad behavior that suggest mistreatment in the past somehow justifies or allows such actions.
But we must not allow these factors to cause us to lose sight of those inalienable rights our Constitution guarantees, rights that must be vigorously protected for everyone.
We must be vigilant. For as an inscription at the mausoleum shrine in Majdanek reads: “Our fate should be a warning to you.”
Freelance writer Bruce W. Burns, a retired teacher and coach, lives in Marysville. He can be contacted at crookedelbow1@msn.com.
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