Watching Scrapbooks From Hell and Inside the SS on the National Geographic Channel about Aushwitz and about former SS soldiers who look back on their mindset at the time of WW2. These shows bring home the fact that these were not monsters but people who gradually handed over their identities to the State, and it got to the point where nothing was inexcusable for them.
Both my parents lived through WW2, dad as a very young boy born in 1941 Germany and mom as a young girl born in 1935 Hungary. Both have told me personal stories of the horrors they witnessed, especially my mother, whose older sisters were raped by the Russians and whose jewish friends were taken away by the Germans as she watched. My mother's village was on the front lines and was intermittently occupied by both the Germans and the Russians.
The behaviors that led up to the atrocities started slowly, and those were quite different times and circumstances. But as Germans excused more and more erratic behavior by their leaders in the name of progress or power, their ability to stop it became diminished.
When I think of Trump espousing violence, or "grabbing them by the *****", or tossing rolls of paper towels, or throwing his weight behind a pedophile, or attacking a Gold Star family, or the bereaved wife of a soldier, etc., etc., it makes me wonder just how far down the road of the inexcusable becoming excusable we'll go.
Both my parents lived through WW2, dad as a very young boy born in 1941 Germany and mom as a young girl born in 1935 Hungary. Both have told me personal stories of the horrors they witnessed, especially my mother, whose older sisters were raped by the Russians and whose jewish friends were taken away by the Germans as she watched. My mother's village was on the front lines and was intermittently occupied by both the Germans and the Russians.
The behaviors that led up to the atrocities started slowly, and those were quite different times and circumstances. But as Germans excused more and more erratic behavior by their leaders in the name of progress or power, their ability to stop it became diminished.
When I think of Trump espousing violence, or "grabbing them by the *****", or tossing rolls of paper towels, or throwing his weight behind a pedophile, or attacking a Gold Star family, or the bereaved wife of a soldier, etc., etc., it makes me wonder just how far down the road of the inexcusable becoming excusable we'll go.
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