I remember the shoes. Baby shoes. A large pile of them forming a pyramid in a glass enclosure. The setting? A museum in the Nazi concentration camp of Buchenwald, located on a very bucolic hill above the equally pacific looking town of Weimar, Germany.
These were the shoes taken from babies and toddlers prior to the gas chambers and ovens of Buchenwald. How could I or anyone possibly forget those shoes or the experience of touring such a death camp?
We twenty-first century sophisticated ones are horrified about such atrocities and grateful we are living now. We are fooling ourselves. Rwanda: where Christians would slaughter Christians, one saying to another as they struck a blow, “God doesn’t need you anymore.” To the world around us, how did January 6 appear? To those with whom I am acquainted, it appeared a world-leading major democracy was teetering on its edge. What would have happened in our sophisticated land and time had the insurrectionists been able to accomplish what they were chanting?
In recent times we have had Charleston, Charlottesville, and smaller, less publicized eruptions of racism and white supremacy and we see such is not just wrong or bad, but evil and dangerous. We have elected leaders using words of violence to attract, stir up, and incite I do not know what. But I do know none of what it creates is good.
Recall your history. Nazism had such rumblings prior to its takeover. Hitler was arrested and jailed so he and the movement could be silenced. It was thought this “problem” was dealt with. Ideologies, however, cannot be imprisoned and not even death can silence them. Remnants remain underground and surface when it appears safe.
What makes me fear most is not just the violent language, the hateful rhetoric, and the bubbling up of such twisted and evil demonstrations and deeds. What I fear most is the silent indifference with which these things are often met. A leader says something horrific and frightening and no one around them denounce it. This grants permission to carry on. This creates the impression support is greater than it really is or, at least, there will not be resistance. Thirty percent will be able to control the seventy percent.
Whom have you contacted to denounce the words and events that are so contrary as to how we once saw ourselves? Do those for whom you vote know your stance? Are those saying and doing such things aware there are many who denounce their words, positions, and actions? Do they know many within their group are opposed? Have you encouraged those who do speak out and let them know they are not solitary voices speaking to an empty chamber?
I don’t know what the future holds here. I do not know if the seed for violence and hatred of those different is growing, remaining stable or in a state of atrophy. I do know its volume is being turned up. A death rattle or a call to mobilize and march on? Time may tell, but so can our resistance. It is time for those who deplore what they see and hear to do more than shake their heads in disgust or simply say they disagree.
It is time for everyone to remember those shoes in Buchenwald. During the time of Buchenwald over a quarter million people stepped off trains into vehicles carrying them up the hill to the camp, never to return again. The good and silent people of Weimar said they didn’t know what was going on. How could they not know? Why did they think none ever returned and boarded a train to depart? Upon liberation of the camp, Gen. Eisenhower marched the local citizenry through Buchenwald to see what had been done there. He wanted them to see what Nazism was at its very core.
With televisions and computers we have marched through Charlottesville, Charleston, the U.S. Capitol, and far too many other places. Do we see what those groups who do such things believe at their very core? Can we remain silent?
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote a letter from his cell in the Birmingham jail. He wrote it not to the politicians, police, clergy, and citizens who opposed him and his movement. He wrote it to those clergy who supported him. In essence he said their call to move more slowly was a greater enemy than police dogs, billy clubs, and fire hoses. Support is not soft applause from the gallery, but callouses and bruises created in the trenches.
We do not want a museum with a pile of children’s shoes, pictures of rubble, videos of atrocities, or artifacts from events and places of terror. Perhaps your speaking out to enough of the right people can encourage them to abandon their permissive silence.
Perhaps more people need to envision a pile of baby shoes. More need to say “NO! This will not happen here!”