A thoughtful piece published in the New York Times by author Shalom Auslander, reflecting on what he was taught as a boy about “ordinary” Germans who allowed the horrors of the Third Reich to unfold around them, seemingly oblivious and unconcerned about what they were condoning at the time. He analogizes the willing self-deception of the German population to what is seeming to occur in this country as partisan social media and political manipulation warps perceptions of the death of Renee Good and others being systematically brutalized by ICE. It’s titled “We are the Bystanders This Time.”
Auslander, an American Jew whose grandparents’ families were murdered in the Holocaust, recounts finding a diary at a flea market several years ago. The diary was written in the early 1940’s by a German soldier. It included photographs depicting ordinary and mundane life in Germany at the same time the Holocaust was being perpetrated, including photos of smiling and relaxing soldiers, the diarist’s family and girlfriend, and a “festive dinner.”
As Auslander writes, he was struck by the banality and unconcerned attitude of the diary’s long-dead author, a type of “ordinary” German citizen whom Auslander had all his life been taught to revile as complicit in Germany’s massive crimes:
To me, what was most notable was what I didn’t find: There were no photos of death camps, or mass graves, or starving prisoners. Instead, there was one of him with his parents in front of their house. Proud.
I shook my head at what I saw as this man’s almost pathological ability to compartmentalize the madness he likely played a role in and the quaint, pastoral life he led at the same time. It reminded me of something I was told as a child.
What he was told as a child was that the German citizens who stood by and went about their lives during the exterminations were as guilty as the SS and Gestapo that actually committed those heinous crimes. He was taught that such complicity was a historical evil, that by allowing the Holocaust to happen without trying to stop it, “They were all hateful, fascist murderers — fools who could be led by a fearmonger to commit atrocities he claimed were necessary and good.”
He was also taught that Americans were different. That Americans were better, and would never allow themselves to be misled by such monsters.
After Renee Good was killed, Auslander observed how the Trump administration immediately closed ranks to smear her. That she had invited her own death by “failing to obey.” That she was was a “domestic terrorist.” He observed how the Justice Department swiftly denied Minnesota law enforcement officials the tools to investigate her death. He saw how they trumpeted videos supposedly exonerating the ICE thug who pulled the trigger that in reality showed exactly the opposite.
And he acknowledges he expected nothing less from this administration which reflexively lies about and distorts anything that reveals it in a negative light.
But Americans — “ordinary” Americans — wouldn’t be suckered by those lies, right? How could they? We were “different,” after all, right?
Alas, my comfort was short-lived, as I made the mistake, then, of sinking into social media. There I encountered ordinary Americans who believed the Trump administration without question. Ordinary Americans who blamed Ms. Good, who repeated the things they learned from the government, like that she was a paid agitator, a far-left radical who got what she deserved. Ordinary Americans who said the armed agent who killed an apparently unarmed woman was a hero, defending his nation from undesirables. Ordinary Americans who, soon enough, lay the blame for the whole thing on Democrats, antifa, Gov. Tim Walz, Jews, women and gays.
Now Auslander admits he is coming to an uncomfortable understanding about Americans that he wishes he never knew. That they may be no “different” from those “ordinary Germans” who he was taught to despise as a child. That they may be just as easily led, just as susceptible to state propaganda and lies as those Germans were, and just as willing to look the other way for the sake of their own comfort.
He asks whether in the distant future someone will come across the digital records, the sunny Facebook and Instagram pages recording our day-to-day normality, “as the country was descending into fear-induced psychosis at the hands of an autocrat.”
And he wonders, will they be taught to revile us as well?
