My high school classmate Dave Preston has lived the Holocaust through many years of writing about his parents. Back in January, he wrote a piece for the Philadelphia Inquirer that brought him a lot of flak from the Breit-wingers.
It deserves to be reproduced here — see the link. As he explains:
Dear Friends:
Until this month, I had stood with those who believe that the Holocaust is sacrosanct, that nothing could or should be measured against it, lest the sacrifices of my martyred grandparents and uncles be diminished. To mention any leader in the same breath as Hitler would feel like blasphemy, a betrayal of my parents.
See David’s op ed at:
https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/commentary/trump-hitler-insurrection-autocracy-holocaust-january-6-20210127.html
But things changed for me on Jan. 6, when I watched Trump supporters storm the U.S. Capitol incited by the lie that the election had been stolen. Those angry and misguided Americans enabled me for the first time to see the real people in the old photos and newsreels of Germans burning synagogues and looting Jewish-owned shops on Kristallnacht in 1938 swayed by the lie that the Jews had caused Germany’s economic misfortunes.
I channeled my feelings into an op-ed column that I wrote for International Holocaust Remembrance Day, published Wednesday in The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News – and online on inquirer.com with this headline: Is it wrong to compare Trump to Hitler? No.
The response was swift – and, in many instances, vicious. Although I clearly stated in my essay that I was not suggesting Trumpism was akin to Nazism, the mere mention of Trump with Hitler seems to have been enough to ignite a firestorm.
The next day, the rightwing Breitbart News Network reprinted angry tweets, some finding my essay particularly objectionable because it was published on a day marking the liberation of Auschwitz. As of noon today, my essay had 480 comments on the Inquirer’s site. On Facebook, where I had shared the piece in several places, it had 380 comments in the “Auschwitz concentration camp” group, 142 in the “2G Second Generation Children of Holocaust Survivors Holocaust Remembrance” group, and hundreds more in other groups that later took it down.
Many attackers missed my point. A 66-year-old California Jew who found my phone number on my website called to say that he had twice voted for Trump and that my essay was offensive. During a 15-minute conversation in which I remained respectful, he admitted that he had not even read my piece.
Certainly not every response was negative, and some demonstrated that my point was understood. For example, a man whom I don’t know posted on the “CNN Alumni” group on Facebook: “The comparison that the Cult of Personality on a national stage can lead the susceptible to do evil things is valid.”
I was heartened by some of the emails that came to me via my website from readers for whom my words resonated.
• The wife of a retired Marine Corps colonel wrote: “Thank you for your brave words, knowing you would be harassed by opposing views.”
• A man who described himself as “a veteran, a senior citizen, a Roman Catholic” informed me that he had emailed my essay to his three sons. “If we do not speak up now, who will for our children and grandchildren?” he wrote. “The process is fragile and continuation of hate and fear can and will keep trying to topple our U.S. Constitution and freedoms. More must become vigilant! And read, be vocal and take all the warning signs seriously.”
• A retired police officer and longtime college professor who said he was of German descent wrote: “I often wonder how I would have conducted myself had I been born a generation earlier. It is the influences I have had, mostly writers like yourself, that have guided me to honor the just and vital cause of remembrance and activism.”
• A man who admitted to having “dismissed comparisons to Hitler by one of our adult children when Trump took office in 2016,” wrote: “Events culminating in the incited violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 caused me to realize how wrong I was to dismiss our daughter’s comparison as wild overreaction. Your measured reasoning hit the mark for me.”
Many of the readers who got my point were older folks who remembered what our nation was fighting for and against in World War II. We all have a responsibility to recognize the warning signs of fascism and to call it out when we see it. We have a duty to show the younger generation how to learn from history.
If I don’t call it out when I see it, then the four grandparents I never met will have been murdered for nothing.
Thank you as always for your support.