“The extravagant propaganda for a ‘Yes’ vote. One very commercial vehicle, post office van, mailman’s bicycle, on every house and shopwindow, on broad banners, which are stretched across the street — quotations from Hitler are everywhere and always ‘Yes’ for peace! It is the most monstrous of hypocrisies. Demonstrations and chanting into the night, loudspeakers on the streets, vehicles (with wireless apparatus playing music mounted on top), both cars and trams.
Yesterday from one until two the ‘festive hour.’ ‘During the 13th hour Adolf Hitler will come to the workers.’ The language of the Gospels exactly. The Redeemer comes to the poor. And on top of that the American show style. The howl of sirens, the minute’s silence.
I was upstairs with the Dembers. In the little room sat Frau Dember, doing needlework, Emita, an elderly Wendish children’s nurse and part-time maid, Frau Mark and myself. From the engine shop at Siemensstadt. For several minutes one heard the whistling, squealing, hammering, then the siren and the humming of the switched-off wheels. A very skillful, calmly delivered evocation of the atmosphere by Goebbels, then more than forty minutes of Hitler. A mostly hoarse, strained, agitated voice, long passages in the whining tone of the sectarian preacher. Content: I know no intellectuals, bourgeois, proletarians — only the people.
Why have millions of my opponents remained in the country? The emigres are ‘scoundrels’ like the Rasser brothers. And a couple of hundred thousand rootless internationalists — interruption: “Jews!” — want to set nations of millions at one another’s throats. I want only peace, I have risen from the common people, I want nothing for myself, I have power for another three and half years and need no title. You should say yes for your own sake. Etc., in no proper order, impassioned; every sentence mendacious, but I almost believe: unconsciously mendacious. The man is a blinkered fanatic.”
— Nov. 11, 1933
I can’t comprehend Jew-hatred. I’m a Jew, I’ve experienced mild prejudice, I’ve read or heard of thousands of anti-Jewish actions large and small, and it still baffles me. This is a weakness of mine: until I find something explicable, no matter that I’m aware it exists, I can’t quite believe it’s real. The Iraqis quoted in this article, for example — I have no idea how to deal with such irrationality, though I know it must be dealt with.
Michael–How can one comprehend such things? Who really ‘comprehends’ Jeffrey Dahmer, the KKK, Ted Bundy, and other such mindless horrors? It is enough to coldly accept that such things exist, and to take personal responsibility to expose, oppose, and depose them(Wow, a little Jesse Jackson in there). It is trite to say, but evil persists because, at times, good people can’t be bothered to face it–and stop it. When I was young, I had a very close friend who was Jewish. When I was about nine, I read something about “hatred toward Jews.” I couldn’t understand it. To me, it was like someone having a hatred for Lutherans, or Baptists–it didn’t make any sense. My father sat me down, and gave me an historical overview of anti-Semitism. I remember thinking the world was a lot more confusing than I had realized.