Almost by definition, Hitler and Holocaust comparisons trivialize that era and reveal the ignorant insensitivity of those who make them.
But the key word there is, almost.
Because for the record, I’m not the only one who sees the shadow of Germany in the 1930s over America in the 2010s. Once again, a clownish demagogue bestrides the political landscape, demonizing vulnerable peoples, bullying opponents, encouraging violence, offering simplistic, strongman solutions to difficult and complex problems. And men and women who bear more moral authority on this subject than I ever could see something chilling and familiar in him.
“I don’t want to make any comparison to Hitler, but believe it or not his delivery and the way he conducts himself is very similar to Hitler’s way of doing things. He discredits everybody who disagrees with him. He’s insulting. He discriminates against everybody.” So says Martin Weiss. He’s a survivor of Auschwitz.
“It is repeating itself and it is again the inattention that people pay to real cues that one should understand. … I think one has to speak up. And that’s the one lesson from the Holocaust. Do not be a bystander.” So says Margit Meissner, who fled occupied France on foot through the Pyrenees. Like Weiss, she spoke in January to Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank.
Then there is Eva Schloss, who in January said of Trump, “I think he is acting like another Hitler.” Schloss, who spoke to Newsweek, was the stepsister of Anne Frank.
We have no excuse
No, I don’t predict a new Holocaust if Trump bamboozles America into electing him. But some new calamity, inconceivable to us now, but repulsive to the values we claim to hold dear, does seem certain.
And that raises a question: If one should never be too quick to make comparisons to Germany in the 1930s, is it not also important, on the rare occasions it is merited, to make sure one is not too slow?
One reason, after all, that no one saw Hitler for what he was is that people simply could not conceive of anything as preposterously monstrous as what eventually occurred. They took refuge in the assurance — the false assurance, as it turned out — that reason would eventually reassert itself.
The failure of imagination is often a component in tragedy. That’s why I’ve always declined to blame the Bush administration for 9/11. Before that, who could have conceived of fanatics using jetliners as missiles?
But afterward is another story. Once you have seen for yourself that the unthinkable is not, it moves from the arena of imagination to that of history. And then, you must use it to understand where we are and help chart where we should — and should not — be going. You can’t blame people who didn’t realize what Hitler was. They had never seen anything like him before.
You and I, however, have no such excuse.