Godwin's Law

[shipperx]

Read an excellent blog post  here

Excerpt:

My father spent his 21st birthday in a prisoner of war camp. Deaf in one ear, and completely flat-footed, he could have easily been a "4-F" and escaped service for medical reasons. He was a peaceful man but he, like so many of his generation, felt the need to serve his country, and to fight against the fascism that was threatening to engulf the democratic nations of Western Europe, and had even attacked the United States.

When he was 20 years old, he'd been taken prisoner by the Germans at the Battle of the Bulge, was marched for miles, imprisoned, and starved. Like many men of his generation, veterans of World War II, he didn't talk about it much. He held his memories close to his chest. If he talked to anyone about them, I didn't know. It was only many years after his service and just before his death that he shared some of those memories with me.

Starvation does strange things to people. He told me that after a while in the camp, he had the same recurring dream, every night -- a stack of pancakes topped with two fried eggs, sunny-side up. He'd dream that dream over and over, a still frame, a picture of a breakfast that never came. He told me that his fellow prisoners got so hungry that once they had killed and eaten a cat that had strayed into the camp. You don't forget a story like that.

Or the story of the man in the camp who snapped. In peace time, we'd have called him a boy. Suddenly and without warning in the middle of the day, out in the yard, his mind went. He ran for the fence in a desperate effort to escape. There was nowhere to go, and in broad daylight with armed guards everywhere, he didn't stand a chance. My father, who was quick to pick up languages, had learned some German. "Don't shoot! He's crazy! He's lost his mind! He doesn't know what he's doing!" my father called out to the guards as he ran out in the yard waving his arms. The man kept running for the fence, and he climbed, and the guards didn't shoot. They waited until he reached the top. And then they shot him. They left him there for three days as a warning to anyone else who might have been thinking about escape.

Any survivor of World War II has stories. Millions were never able to tell them. Their lives ended on battlefields, and in gas chambers, at the hands of the Nazis. My dad was able to tell me some of his experiences, but most of those memories died with him, like they died with many vets and victims of the war. I didn't even know he'd received a Purple Heart until after his death. But he survived. He survived to marry the girl he left at home, to buy a house, to get a college degree, to start his own company, and to raise a family of five children.

I asked my dad if he ever got his stack of pancakes with the fried eggs on top. I imagined it being his first meal after the Russians had liberated the camp. The Germans had heard that the Russians were coming, and they left quickly in the night. The prisoners hadn't known what was happening until two days later when the Russian army came and let them out, confused and near death. No, he told me, he never did have the pancakes and eggs. It took months in the hospital to build his system back up to where he could eat normally. He began at 5'11" weighing less than 100 pounds, and started with an IV, then a liquid diet, then cream of wheat, and finally solids. A fellow prisoner, he said, on his way from the camp to the hospital in France had managed to get a hold of a box of donuts and had gorged himself. He died a free man, but still a victim. By the time my dad was able to eat that stack of pancakes and eggs, the desire had passed.

{...}  Those  were Nazis.

I am tired of people comparing Obama to Hitler. I am tired of seeing signs with swastikas and Nazi symbols at health care rallies. I am tired of people saying that a health care plan intended to aid millions of Americans, to give them dignity and choice, is like Naziism.   As time passes, and as the greatest generation becomes a memory, passing into history one soul at a time, it is up to the generations that follow them to keep "Hitler" and "Nazi" out of the clutches of those who would make them political buzzwords for people they don't like, or policies they don't understand. Those words remind us of the worst that people can be. There is nothing horrible about Germans in particular that caused them to do these things. This is humanity's dark potential, and something that we all need to remember, whether we were there or not, or whether our family was affected or not, because this is what people can do to each other. To strip those words of their power and meaning in order to create political fear for self-gain is inexcusable and needs to be confronted and refuted whenever it arises, by all of us, whether we support the current health care bill and the current president or not.

 

Comments

[petzipellepingo.livejournal.com]

Leonard Pitts is right there with you . As am I.

[deborahw37.livejournal.com]

Wild applause!

[ladypeyton.livejournal.com]

Word.

[shapinglight]

:Applauds:

Well said. It appals me the way the words Nazi has been bandied around in this controversy, without the least understanding on the part of the people using it as to how inappropriate and downright offensive and wrong they're being.

[molliemole.livejournal.com]

I couldn't agree more.

[ms-scarletibis.livejournal.com]

Yes. And yes.

Mind if I link this%Pr

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Feel free.

[elsaf]

Word!

I find the Hitler signs and swastikas deeply offensive. Even more so because the people who are carrying them seem to have no clue to what they mean.

I am gobsmacked that we seem to have so many citizens with absolutely no understanding of the history of the 20th century. It wasn't THAT long ago.

And I wish I could work out what sort of logic equates affordable health care with Nazism.

[thedabara-cds.livejournal.com]

*applauds* I hate the way "nazi" is being bandied about so casually even more then I hated not being able to call Bush & Chaney nazis even when some of their rhetoric sounded amazingly like an English translation of mein kampf.

And about your Dad: I know whereof you speak. My Dad was a ground-to-ground combat sargeant at Iwo Jima. He has lots of medals packed away - I've only seen them once - and when I ask about the medals or the war all he'll say is "it was hell, and anybody who managed to survive got lots of medals." He's a very private, very modest man who never talks about his war experiences. A few years ago after my grandparents died, my aunt gave me a V-letter he'd sent them with his narrative of the battle of Iwo Jima. It is one of my very most prized possessions.

[kassto.livejournal.com]

Excellently put. Has to be said. So much ignorance around.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry for any confusion. That was still part of the excerpt from the linked blogger. My dad was born with a congenital heart defect. He would have been 4F if he'd reached draft age before the war ended, but he was still in his early teens by the end of the war.

But, yes, I've heard that those who served in that war don't speak of it much. I'm sure it was beyond harrowing and appreciate your father's service.

And it is an insult to all the men who fought and all the people who died under the Nazi regime to pull the accusations out for far less dire political situations.

[jerrymcl89.livejournal.com]

I don't think it takes a lot of brain power to realize that, although the Nazis did indeed provide nationalized health care, that's really not the defining aspect of Nazism.