by Karen Bryson

While touring the Holocaust museum, the stench of death, hatred, and mutilation filled the air suffocating any justice or peace.  This stench, also well known throughout American history with striking resemblances to the treatment of African Americans, was highlighted in this museum and explained in detail.  Senseless killing over arbitrary differences were tolerated and even justified by law, but the Holocaust story did not end there.  Today the stories of these victims live on and are recounted around the world.  Germany has dismantled and banned the Nazi regime. German society is acknowledging that harm has occurred, damage was done and thus they have started down a long road to recovery.  In contrast, acknowledgement is the step that America has yet to take.  America is still trying to bury their skeletons of racial killings and abuse. Hiding behind symbols deemed historical, like the confederate flag, which proudly flies over numerous state capitols in the southern region.  America has not yet acknowledged that this flag also represents the fabric of slavery and racial inferiority; principles deeply ingrained in the soil of this nation.   Without these acknowledgements, on a local and national level, America cannot heal.

In the museum, I was awed by the detailed documentation and vast information about the atrocities committed.  Horrific images flooded the hallways, leaving permanent visual imprints in a viewer’s mind of the pain suffered by Jews, homosexuals, Gypsies, and non-Jews in opposition with the Nazi ideology.  From videos to clothing, the museum gave a clear look into 1930’s and 40’s, the rise and fall of the planned Nazi world take over and what that meant for ordinary citizens, Nazis and non-Nazis alike. It painted a sympathetic picture of those victimized during the Holocaust and illustrated for viewers that the Holocaust is to forever be remembered.

I appreciate the Holocaust museum for not only highlighting the damage caused by Hitler’s regime, but also the damage caused by individual citizens who stood by and did nothing while millions of their neighbors were being slaughtered in death camps.  These citizens, whether they were conscious of it or not, were “undocumented Nazi soldiers.”  Their silence aided in the Nazi’s fight and allowed the Nazi regime to grow and flourish.   In contrast, the museum also highlighted the individuals who did not sit idle, but took a stand.  Whether that stand was providing shelter, helping to pay for emigration, or participating in a rally.  Additionally, as the museum exhibit stated, “In Denmark 9 out of 10 Jews were saved; in Norway and Belgium about 1 out of 2; in the Netherlands, 1 out of 4; and in Lithuania and Poland, fewer than 2 in 10 survived.  When ordinary citizens became rescuers, Jews had a chance of survival.”

CCJI is a great example of individuals taking a stand here in America against the racist violence perpetrated against African Americans by organized groups such as the Klu Klux Klan (KKK) and America’s own racist “undocumented soldiers.” The depth of the violence and violation against African Americans throughout American history by law enforcement and “undocumented soldiers” is intolerable and the deaths that resulted should not be erased nor forgotten.  These slain black lives must be memorialized. CCJI represents the continued fight for justice for the families of those who never received it.  The Holocaust museum took years to build, years of fighting, of reminding, of insisting, that this atrocity be shrined and taught.  CCJI too, will not give up. Identifying victims and ensuring that an accurate investigation is performed on behalf of loved ones lost is beyond important, it is imperative.  It is the first step on the road to recovery; acknowledgement of the harm that has occurred and the damage that was done.  Only after this step will America begin to heal.

A quote that hung in The Holocaust museum, by Martin Niemoller:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— 
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— 
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

His point in this quote was that Germans had been complicit through their silence in the Nazi imprisonment, persecution, and murder of millions of people.  Americans share in this complicity.  By not coming forward and helping to ensure justice is served for those who have committed crimes, by hiding or destroying information about African American killings or by simply not acknowledging that these atrocities took place, you too are an “undocumented soldier,” aiding and abetting racism and oppression.  The fight for justice is ours now and each person must do his or her part to ensure human rights for all people.

In the eloquent words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

by Ibrahim Lawton

Pain and suffering are the only words that can be used to describe what Jewish people went through at the hands of the Nazis during the Holocaust. As I sit and think about what the United States did or did not do during that time to help when Jews were getting slaughtered like animals, I am not surprised. The museum exhibits allowed me to understand the parallels then and now between racism in America and the anti-Semitism that took/takes place in Germany. With America’s history of oppression as well as racial and ethnic discrimination, it did not come as a surprise to learn that America failed to utilize their power to aid in closing the concentration camps after they learned of the ethnic cleansing that was taking place. My past studies of ethnic cleansing, spanning from the genocides in Rwanda, the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia, and the Ottoman Turks annihilation of the Christian Armenians- indicate that the root of the hate, can always be traced to white Europeans and their descendants.

American racism is fundamentally based on the most potent principle of Nazi propaganda which is to manifest differentiation. Differentiation would allow for the larger, Christian German population to detach themselves from and lose empathy for the Jewish population as they strip them of their humanity. By removing any “alike-ness”, the German people disassociated with the Jewish population thus, allowing themselves to view them as worthy of genocide. This is eerily similar to how White Americans disconnect themselves from the Black population- often leading them to ripping the Black community of all humanity and finding them deserving of any harmful treatment- even death.

It dawned on me after leaving the museum that the United States did not come to the aid of those in the concentration camps who, in addition to the Jewish population also included homosexuals, Gypsies, people with mental and physical disabilities, and Black populations, because there was an atrocity taking place in their own backyard that was always fueled by, as I stated before, propaganda that promotes differentiation. For example, the ideology of White supremacy which is engrained into the American psyche, propagates the notion that Black men are savages that our sexual desires cannot be contained and our desires for the white woman runneth over. According to White patriarchal belief, White women are viewed as a “trophy” or object of attainment or possession for White men, and White men find it to be their duty to protect them from the “overtly, sexual Black man”. This propaganda justified the lynching of countless Black men, just as Nazi propaganda of Jews as thieves justified the Holocaust. Both racism is America and Nazism in Germany criminalized those who were differentiated from themselves to make death an acceptable option. Because hundreds of thousands of Black people were killed here in America for centuries without any second thought by society or just outcomes, the work of the Cold Case Justice Initiative in identifying victims of racially motivated killings will always be needed.

There are many other similarities and parallels. For instance, I see the concentration camps that the Nazis used to murder millions of men, women and children the same as the plantations, lynching and castrations the White population inflicted on Black people here in America. The sterilizing, degradation and experimenting by the Nazis on Jews is the same as the Tuskegee Syphilis experiments on Black men in the United States by White scientist.  Joeseph Mengele was a German physician for the Nazi party in 1943. Once he became the chief physician and had the full authority to maim or kill his subjects, Mengele performed a broad range of agonizing and often lethal experiments on Jewish and Gypsy twins, most of whom were children. Many of his “test subjects” died as a result of the inhumane experiments or were murdered in order to facilitate post-mortem examination.

It is ridiculous to me that America can be outraged about the Mengele experiments on the Jewish and Gypsy population in the concentration campus, however, and remain unmoved when it comes to the experiments our own government did to Black Americans including the mustard gas experiments conducted on soldiers of color by the U.S government during WWII. Ultimately, if the United States would have stepped in, it would have proved to be a hypocrisy, because how could they denounce a racial/ethnic cleansing in another country, when they were actively and systematically performing one of their own- a racial/ethnic cleansing that is still happening today?

I plan to continue to examine the similarities and contrasts between Black and Jewish experiences of racism and anti-Semitism from past and present times. I am particularly interested in the ways in which White supremacist ideology manifests in each community, the different levels of oppression experienced by the Black population which Jews may not face due to a white supremacy system that favors them, and the economic disparities between the Black and Jewish communities.

The memorial of the many victims of the Holocaust including the Jews, Gypsies and many others in the museum was an excellent display. I was turned off by there not being any recognition giving to the hundreds of thousands of Blacks that were also killed during that Holocaust. Time and time and again, Black people are killed, just as we were in the Jewish holocaust, and just as we are killed today, and it gets overlooked. This stresses the importance of the work that CCJI does, to not only bring justice to families who have lost a loved one, but at the most basic level, to bring to light recognition that a human life was lost at the hands of murderers for no just reason.