By Larry Simoneaux
I come late to this one, but the the matter at hand has been (and will be) around for a long time.
That said, one has to wonder what they’d think of what happened in Charlottesville, Virginia, earlier this month. “They” being the men and women who fought and died in the European Theater of World War II.
If you’re not familiar with the cost in lives of that war, do even a cursory search and your mind will boggle at the millions of innocent deaths directly caused by those whose brains were stewed in the repugnant idea that one race is superior to others.
Unfortunately for the world at large, after simmering their brains in that fetid stew, those who believed in a superior race then decided that “something” had to be done to those who didn’t fit into that race or bend to the ideas it represented.
More specifically and, as regards that “something,” if you did not accept such an idea as being the be all and end all of racial theory and, then, had the temerity to dissent, you became a “problem.”
Spreading a much wider net, if you were mentally handicapped or a homosexual, same thing. If you were a Catholic, a Freemason, a Jehovah’s Witness, a Gypsy, a Slav or some other version of an “inferior person,” you could join the aforementioned groups. If you were a Jew, you were especially targeted for something known as “The Final Solution”: a program aimed at the methodical extermination of an entire people. There were even special groups (Einsatzgruppen) that were nothing more than “mobile killing units” charged with liquidating all political enemies of the German Reich.
It seems that the Nazis didn’t leave very many groups off of their list of “problems.” Too, they were nothing if not efficient. The places where “problems,” “protestors,” “mental defectives” and “inferior” people were sent (and from which very few ever returned) had names such as Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Birkenau, Buchenwald, Dachau, Majdanek, Mauthausen, Sobibor and Treblinka.
If you’re unacquainted with these places, you should read about them too because, there, you died. And, usually, you died very horribly. Mothers and fathers, women and children, the very old and the very young. And it was all done under the banner of the swastika.
Added to all of this was the further cost in lives — both military and civilian — to put an end to it all. Which is why I wish that time travel were possible and that this latest group of white supremacists and neo-Nazis could’ve had the pleasure to meet, when they’d just returned from that war, those who’d put an end to the Nazi regime.
I’d have paid good money to see them wave the swastika in front of those who went ashore at Normandy. Or jumped into Holland. Or fought through the Hurtgen Forest. Or survived Bastogne.
Or, perhaps, those who found the extermination camps.
I don’t think it would’ve ended well. More than likely, this new batch of white supremacists and neo-Nazis would’ve been — rightly, summarily, and definitively — stuffed back into the dark, slimy holes from which they’d emerged.
All wishing side, after watching what happened in Charlottesville, one has trouble expressing just how disgusting the events of that evening were.
It’s hard to fathom how and why such ideas and such hatred take root in peoples’ minds. How some can come to and even espouse the idea that someone is to be hated for something over which they have little or no control. Worse still is the fact that their hatred fuels what soon follows: ridicule, forced exclusion, isolation, beatings and even killings.
All of which is depressing and beyond disgusting in a supposedly civilized society.
There really aren’t words to describe the vileness of such people and their beliefs. Far better writers than me have tried and even they can’t quite capture the evil of it all.
What I do know and what I can do, however, is say that if such groups ever come here to demonstrate, I’ll be one of those standing on the other side of the line, right next to other members of the only race to which we all belong.
Humans.
Humans who, simply by their presence, will be telling them in no uncertain terms: “Not here. Not now. Not ever.”
Larry Simoneaux lives in Edmonds. Send comments to: larrysim@comcast.net.
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