My family and I lived in Germany for almost two years from 1999-2001. Being Jewish, I was very sensitive to how Germans viewed their horrific past under Hitler and Nazism.
I love and admire the German people. I must tell you that they are remorseful and have done much to make things right with the Jewish community. Germany has set up a program for Jews from the former Soviet Union to invite them to come to live in Germany providing a very generous monthly income and access to educational opportunities and living situations. Tens of thousands of Russian Jews have taken advantage of this generosity.
While we were living there, small bands of Nazi sympathizers would try to hold rallies in different cities in Germany. This news would sharpen my observation of how Germany would react in this situation.
No problem. The German government and people’s response was swift and unequivocal. Slam dunk! No marches and immediate arrest for these people. Germany was telling the world, “We are never going back to way we were.”.
As you well know by now, American Nazi sympathizers held a rally in Charlottesville this past weekend where a young lady, Heather Heyer, protesting the Nazi presence in this city was mowed down and killed by a car purposely driven into the anti-Nazi crowd, injuring scores of others.
There is no place in America for people like this. Yes, they have the right to freedom of speech as much as I do but their heinous racism, antisemitism and white supremacist attitudes have no place in our culture. We must marginalize them and their hate speech.
The Bible is quite clear that all of us are equal before God. Jesus came to die for all of us equally. No one, whether rich or poor, black or white or any race, educated or uneducated is better than any other. The root of these isms are pride and arrogance and they are evil to the core.
We Americans must stand up like our German friends have done. Our racist, slave owning past demands it. We must unequivocally denounce these heinous ideologies and say, “We are never going back to the way we were.”