How the narrative after WW2 was nothing else than to obscure the truth and how it is connected to the treatment of refugees today.
The narrative after WW2 that the whole West did not know what Nazi Germany was doing to the Jews is one of the biggest and most shameless lies the West could come up with.
From 1933, when Hitler and his Nazi Party won the elections in Germany, till 1940, all the governments in Europe and the government in the US saw very clearly how the German Jews were first deprived of their citizen rights and then openly attacked, mistreated and even murdered. At that time there were journalists from all over Europe in Berlin who for sure informed their newspapers at home about this. At that time The Dutch government declared Hitler as ‘a befriended head of state’ and forbade a radioprogramm of the Free Thinkers who warned the population of Hitler’s nazi regime. They were accused of slandering a befriended head of state. Many Jews wanted to leave Germany and, for example, many wanted to pass the frontier with the Netherlands. The government ordered to let the Jews who brought fortune with them pass and to send back into Germany those who came only with a suitcase and no money. The rich could pass, the poor were send back into the maw of the Nazis. For sure those who passed and had to leave behind their factories and other bussinesses came with stories about what was happening with the Jews in Germany. Also many wanted to go to Britain but the British government only accepted children, not their parents who had to stay in Germany. For sure France a d Belgium had a same kind of incidents.
Already the simple fact that Jews who could, fled Germany must have been enough to alert the whole West that things were getting very ugly. Then came the Kristal Night when in the night from 9 to 10 november 1938 in the cities of Germany Nazi mobs attacked and destroyed Jewish shops and synagoges (the Progroms). The European countries and the US knew all of this was happening and did nothing. I also should mention that the Jews living in the Netherlands and the other European countries were tolerated but not very favorably looked upon. Which made it later, when Germany had conquered France, Belgium and the Netherlands, quite easy for the Nazis and their collaborators to deport them with the help of the public services of tramways and railways. Everybody looked at how with razzias the Jewish population was rounded up and send away, first in camps in the respective countries and then further on to the concentration camps in Germany and Poland. All by railway.
In fact this showed that not only in Germany everybody looked away, but also in the other European countries. Best to get rid of the Jews, best to steal their houses and belongings.
Even after the war, when only a 10% of all those who were deported, came back, they found their houses occupied by others and the banks did not want to give them access tot heir savings because they could not present a passport or other documents which were taken by the nazis and destroyed. A very cold and indifferent welcome home which was not a welcome at all after all the attrocities they had suffered.
The European governments and politicians in the 30’s of the last century knew what Nazi Germany was planning, but they choose not to do anything. It made them complices of the holocaust. During WW2 the so called western allies UK and US not even once bombarded German railways to impede the massive transportation of Jews in animal transportation wagons, although they knew or could easily imagine what all this meant. Hitler never hided the fate he had decided for the Jews. He said it clearly in his broadcasted speeches: “Die Juden müssen ausgerottet werden”. The Jews must be exterminated.
Then came the end of WW2. The Germans as a whole must be condemned to whitewash the rest of the European population and their politicians. Only a handful of citizens on a whole population, mostly communists and practising Christians, went into resistance against the Nazis and organised to hide as many Jews as they could in all kind of places. And there were others who went to the nazis telling them where they could find thoses hidden Jews.
Also in Germany there existed resistance and Germans who helped hiding Jews or getting them over the borders to Switzerland. But that must stay hidden because not good for the collective punishment of the German population and the whitewashing of the good populations of the rest of Europe after the end of the war.
In the most dire situations there are always people who do the morally right thing, even with danger for their own lives. And you find them in all the countries, also in Germany at that time. There were never politicians amount them.
Jews were not loved nowhere in Europe and they paid the price. The only European country that saved its Jews was Denmark. When the Nazis invaded Denmark, the Danish brought their Jews living in Copenhagn in boats over to Sweden in one single night.
What is happening now and since the start of this new century with all its US instigated wars (on so called terror) is basicly the same that happened in the 30’s and 40’s of the last century. Only this time the West creating wars in the Middle East and Africa, causing millions of people to flee their countries looking for a better live in the EU and UK. The Europeans do not like them. They should stay in their own destroyed countries. Those refugees are desperate, enough desperate to risk their lives and many die and are everyday dying. On borders in the seas. And when they manage to get into the EU they are not treated well nor welcomed with open arms. Application procedures for asylum are getting tougher and tougher. A growing number of the population are hostile against immigrants.
But also in this situation there are those, a small part of the population, who are able to feel empathy, who want to help, who also want to save them from a grave in the seas.
It is the same mentality as in the 30’s and 40’s of the last century. A multitude who looks the other way and a few who want to help those in need. And the same situation of heartless governments who decide who can come in and who not.
Nothing has changed, only the people in dire need have changed. The treatment is the same. The Jews were utterly abandoned to their fate, apart from a number of people who helped them to escape. And now millions of people are abandoned to their fate again, caused by the same European countries through the wars they have waged in the name of NATO and spreading so called democracy. They are not wanted in fortress Europe, fortress Europe that destroyed their lives.
When we obscure the truth about what really happened and who made that happen, we will live in a lie that does not permit us to integrate a past and transform that past into something better for the future to come. We have lived in a lie since WW2, maybe even since WW1. And that lie is now repeating itself in a ever uglier way. Fascism is here again as if it never was away. That is what happens when the ugliness of a not so far away past is not collectively integrated and reconciled. The shame was never addressed and the complicity and duplicity of politicians, banks, public transports and a general indifference for the suffering of the Jews was hidden under the rug, everybody washing themselves clean of any wrongdoing.
But when again the European politicians have found a new scapegoat, the immigrants, they make sure with their lies that the populations follow their lead and the monster that was dormant rises again from its slumber. This time not against the Jews, but against Syrians, Libians, Irakese, Afghans, Africans etc. Mostly fleeing from wars waged by NATO or from poverty caused by the neocolonial actions of the EU.
We are reliving an unresolved past through the repetition of a Lie. Only the characters and the victims have changed.
