Nadene Goldfoot
Hitler passed his Emergency Decree on February 5, 1933 and all hell broke loose. In just 3 weeks after this, he took his 2nd step towards dictatorship as by the 27th, the Nazis demanded new rules about "protective custody" and legalized imprisonment without warrant or trial came into effect. The Germans had given an inch and the Nazis took a mile.
Speaking of differences, Joe Biden wanted to arm Ukrainians in their fight against Putin without getting the USA into trouble. Senator Ted Cruz, who rarely agreed with anything Biden had to say when he was a Vice President, agreed with him about providing support to beleaguered Ukrainian fighters, as did Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. Chancellor Merkel of Germany, on the other hand, "can't see how arming people who are willing to fight and die for their freedom makes things better," while Lindsey Graham told reporters in Munich that "he did see how it makes things better." This was back when John McCain was leading the US congressional delegation at Munich and Biden had given a speech to our NATO allies. “I refuse to accept the demise of our world order... I refuse to accept that our values are morally equivalent to those of our adversaries. I am a proud, unapologetic believer in the West.” These are the words of Senator John McCain from his address at the 2017 Munich Security Conference. It was his last one.
By 1933, Dachau was the 1st concentration camp put into operation by the Nazis. It's location was in Bavaria of southern Germany, 10 miles NW of Munich. The 1st prisoners were Hitler's political opponents, not the Jews unless they were part of that opposition at the time. The Nazi opponents happened to be German communists, social democrats, and trade unionists. then came Jehovah's Witnesses, Roma (Gypsies), homosexuals, and other people the Nazis deemed as "Undesirables."
Prisoners lived in constant fear of brutal treatment and terror detention including standing cells, floggings, the so-called tree or pole hanging, and standing at attention for extremely long periods. There were 32,000 documented deaths at the camp, and thousands that are undocumented. Approximately 10,000 of the 30,000 prisoners were sick at the time of liberation.
By the late 1930's, the Nazis began to fill the camp with Jews. Nazi beliefs and ideas about race shaped all aspects of everyday life and politics in Nazi Germany. In particular, the Nazis embraced the false idea that Jews were a separate and inferior race. This belief is known as racial antisemitism. Jews and Arabs are related distantly; just read the Old Testament (Torah). They are both Semitic people, but no one seems to recognize this fact because it was the Jews who were blamed for killing Jesus-the Christian "God." or God's son, as the New Testament tells.
The number of Jewish prisoners also grew. After Kristallnacht of November 9th to 10th, 1938, over 10 000 Jews from all over Germany were brought to Dachau. They were released a few weeks later after promising to leave Germany. Most of them, following their experiences in the concentration camp, were only too glad to emigrate. But getting out was about impossible.
My uncle had been picked up and placed in Auschwitz, and it wasn't until May 4th 1939 that he had the papers and money to get out but had to leave his parents and 16 year old red-headed sister who then all perished. He may have been the last Jew to get out of Germany in 1939, boarding the SS Washington.
The combined set of Nazi beliefs and ideas about race is sometimes referred to as “Nazi racism” or “Nazi racial ideology.” Like other forms of racism, Nazi racism was based on prejudices and stereotypes. Because of anti-Semitism, Jews had become small business owners, working for themselves as it was hard to get hired by Christians. Some became very successful. When the Nazis attacked Jews, they were destroying their businesses which affected their Christian workers by putting them out of jobs and adding to their financial woes. By destroying Jews, they were ultimately destroying themselves.
Almost 30,000 prisoners were worked to death or murdered at Dachau between 1940 and 1945.
"But, Nazi persecution quickly expanded to encompass a variety of other people and groups, including Niemöller himself. Most Germans did not object to Nazi actions. Rather, they either supported the regime or ignored the plight of their fellow citizens.
Niemöller believed that after the war many Germans were reluctant to confront their complicity with Nazism. In his lectures, he bemoaned that individual Germans failed to accept responsibility for Nazism, German atrocities in German-occupied countries, and the Holocaust. According to him, individual Germans were passing the blame onto their neighbors, superiors, or Nazi organizations like the Gestapo."
Martin Niemoller, a Protestant pastor, was thrown into a German concentration camp at the end of the war who had written a famous well-repeated poem of warning:
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out----
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out----
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out----
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me----and there was no one left to speak for me.
The Jews of Germany had been among Europe's most assimilated, most cultured, most active contributors to the national life of the state in which they lived. Hundreds of thousands of them had become an integral part of German society. Albert Einstein was one. They had made significant contributions to German medicine, literature, science, music and industry. They could not possibly believe, Benno Cohn later recalled, that this cultured German nation, the one which was the most cultured of the peoples of the world since time immemorial, would resort to such iniquitous things."
"As the threat of Nazism spread throughout Europe, Jews were faced with a difficult decision, whether to leave their homeland or remain in the face of oppression. Many scientists made the decision to leave. In fact, between 1930 and 1941, twelve Nobel prize winning scientists came to the United States because of the threat of Nazi Germany. Seven of these twelve Nobelists were Jewish. These Jewish scientists included physicists Niels Bohr, Albert Einstein, James Franck, and Eugene Wigner, and biologists Otto Loewi, Otto Meyerhof, and Otto Stern. Upon arriving in the United States, the majority of the scientists worked on the east coast, at universities such as Princeton, New York University, Cornell, Fordham, Carnegie Institute of Technology, and the University of Pennsylvania (Schlessinger, 1996). Bohr, who had been forced to flee Denmark, Pauli, and Dam spent the war years in the United States but left America and conducted their research after the war. "
The people Nazis abhorred, Jews, communists, etc, could not protect themselves. They didn't have a chance. The Nazis made sure of that. Those being attacked, like Israelis, and today's Ukrainians, deserve the chance to protect themselves from aggressors. Hitler's
Resource:
Book: Joe Biden----Promise Me, Dad, by Joe Biden, p.108-109
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dachau_concentration_camp
The Holocaust-a history of the Jews of Europe during the 2nd World War, by Martin Gilbert, p. 35
https://www.holocaust.cz/en/history/concentration-camps-and-ghettos/dachau-2/
https://www.mccaininstitute.org/resources/blog/remembering-senator-john-mccains-message-in-munich/
https://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/physics/brau/H182/Term%20Papers/Eric%20Weiss.html
http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/feature/causes-of-the-civil-war/index.html#:~:text=A%20common%20explanation%20is%20that,key%20issue%20was%20states'%20rights.
https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/world-war-ii-history#:~:text=Hitler's%20invasion%20of%20Poland%20in,globe%20than%20any%20previous%20war.
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