Her parents were Orthodox Jews, and did not want their sons to leave home, but they insisted my grandmother leave, promising they would follow as a family unit after she secured a job in America and sent them enough money to travel.

My grandmother’s journey took her through Germany, where she experienced “Jewish only” stores and hotels for the first time. She also saw people walking around with yellow Stars of David pinned to their shirts. My grandmother was amazed by all of this, and as she chatted with an Austrian woman (who would later become her mother-in-law), she heard of atrocities occurring all over Europe.

My grandmother continued sending money to her brothers and parents via the American Red Cross for years (we later found they accepted this money long after they knew my grandmother’s family had perished in a real Death Camp).

I think she carried survivor’s guilt to her last days.

My mother never allowed us to watch Hogan’s Heroes either! But of course, we snuck and watched it while she was at work.

My other grandparents also had Holocaust survivor stories, but for some reason, my maternal grandmother’s resonated with me the most.

I can only assume that those who are using this type of imagery to protest our current government – whether from left, right or center – did not pay attention in history class. Thank you for starting this thread.

My school when I was a kid was in an area of mostly Eastern European immigrants. Lots of Lutherans, Catholics, and Jews concentrated on building new lives for themselves in the US. The principal, an incredibly wise woman, set aside a day in late April for a big school assembly for the older kids. I don’t think the day had a special name, the date moved around some, but we all knew that when we were older, we would have to spend a day in April in the gym. Well, that day was dedicated to having WWII survivors come to tell us their stories. Different people came every year, and we usually heard from 6-10 people, so by the time we graduated, we had heard quite a few of those stories. The man with his “Auschwitz room number” tattooed on his arm, the woman whose mother and brothers were shot before she and her sisters were raped by the German soldiers, the man who had to stand outside his sisters’ bedroom door while his sisters traded sex for food, the man whose family was killed by the SS because of his activities with the resistance – I remember all of them. Never again! was never explicitly attached to this day, but it didn’t have to be.

My family also had people in the war, and I grew up hearing some of their stories. I didn’t hear any of the most hair-raising ones until the last few years ago, though. I think people in that generation are starting to realize that they need to pass on their experiences to us. This is a good thing – ignorance is NOT bliss!

I may have posted this before on this blog, but one of the relatives who had lived in Germany during the relevant time period said, after watching an SP campaign rally on TV, “Hitler was a lot like her. He really knew how to rile up the crowd.” I figured he ought to know.

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I am happy to report that, at least in my experience, you are mistaken. As much as I despised Bush and thought he should have been impeached, I did reign in some of my relatives and friends when they referred to Bush as “Hitler-like”. Bush and Cheney had certain dictatorial and manipulative tendencies, they were awful for the country, but they didn’t sink to the level of Nazi Germany. And – my friends and family came to agree on new language which would describe the Bush administration without references to Nazis.

You assume people were not appalled by previous protests which utilized Nazi imagery. On what do you base this assumption? I heard quite a lot of outrage when people protested against Bush. In fact, I heard many representatives of the Bush administration refer to the left as “a misinformed and angry mob,” “Nazi sympathizers” and “Unamerican.” This rhetoric was outdated when Dick Nixon used is. When will America outgrow it.

Finally, two wrongs do not make a right. (Pun not intended.) If you felt outraged by this imagery being used against Bush policies, all the more reason you should be outraged to see it dragged out again!

Great post and great comments.

in context with bush the swastikas came up as people regarded him as evil. i remember the hitler-pictures of bush were especially popular when he reigned a war on iraq based on proof of wmds never to be found. i myself have compared quite some of the changes the bush years brought with them (patriot act etc) with the control machinery of the nazis, at least a few times in my mind. shoot me, but it did come to mind!

comparing obama to hitler because of the health care reform seems totally out of context though. i really dont get that part. i have recently read somebodies comment capitalizing socialism in nationalist socialism trying to compare obama to the nazis and was very outraged by that. the nazis were really not about socialism, i thought this should be clear in everybodies mind by now. they were murderers and plunderers of the worst kind! on top of it the health care reform bill isnt even imposing anything like socialism on anybody at all. it is about protecting the individuals of a social democracy, not socialism.

(what is it in this country anyways? you just need to shout communism (i think this is what people hear when you say socialism) and everybody jumps to their guns. communism was stupid and didnt work. iz shakey legs buckled with the ussr. communism is dead! move on already. go on vacation to cuba, they love dollars there.)

the swastikas at the town hall meetings just show that indeed there are people in the united states who do not know what the nazis were about or even worse are happy to miss the point altogether. this is especially sad because this is the people who lost so many loved ones to wwii just three generations ago. it is not unique to the states though. it is sickening but it is happening everywhere, and at all times. people forget. we need to be reminded. ignorance is not bliss but has great potential of danger for abuse.

barack obama must have expected to be hated, given he applied for the whackiest job about. really, the hitler pictures shouldnt hurt but encourage the administration to get to the next step.

free education for everybody! (anybody jumping to their guns now? hello, time for reality-check!). i doubt anybody who truly understands both what nazis / hitler were and what the current president of the united states is doing would think of any comparison.

but who knows? some people are just truly crazy. bad news is they allow guns out here, too. …

That is what I am wondering…were you appalled back then? Was it okay to use it against Bush, or anyone else besides Obama. And why it is racist NOW? Was it racist THEN? I have to say that as a conservative, any objection to Obama’s policies, even with legitimate concerns, seem to be labeled as racist. How is disagreeing with this president different (racist) than disagreeing with other presidents? That is my question. I don’t ever think using Hitler or nazi is acceptable on either side, just to be clear.

Thank you again for civil discussion.

On my father’s side, my granfather’s brother was the Arch Bishop of the St. Vit Cathedral in Prague. He was in charge of the historical cathedral and one of the seven guardians of the Czech Crown Jewels.
Sometime in 1938, the archives of the Cathedral burned. There was no annual memorial where the survivors could remember their loved ones – uncle Antonin Stoy was persecuted not only by the Nazis, but by the Communists who came after them as well.

We all need to remember these events and call political tendencies what they are. Nazis hold a sad place of distiction in a league of their own. Neither Bush nor Obama administrations, nor their detractors, come close…not even with the sad shadow of Gitmo besmirching our national honor.

Kate in Pittsburgh