Gratitude Monday: Light and dark in Berlin and elsewhere

Over the weekend I saw basically the best and worst of Germany: on Saturday I visited the Reichstag building, and yesterday it was Topographie des Terrors, a documentation center dealing with the Third Reich.

I’ll start there.

Topography of Terror is located where the Gestapo, SS and RSHA (state [secret] police; paramilitary organization that—among other things—administered the extensive network of slave labor and death camps throughout the twelve-year period of Nazi control; and the security administration with broad remit to “protect” the Reich against all enemies) located their headquarters. The building—destroyed during World War II and never rebuilt—also included a “house prison” where you could begin your journey to Hell if you were deemed an enemy of the state.

I’m fairly well versed in the monstrosities of that regime, but even so, it was hard to take. What struck me powerfully, however, were the ways in which the progression from Weimar (Germany’s first-ever attempt at democratic government and society) to Nazi-flavored totalitarianism resemble something much closer to my home these days.

Just a couple of thoughts:

In demanding the conformity to National Socialist goals, Party rallies were a major element. Whom do we know who does that? Not in the kinds of numbers that Hitler enjoyed, of course, but still.

And by conformity, I mean, no outward sign of disagreement. This photo of such a rally at an industrial plant caught my eye:

The caption indicated only a possible identification, and no information on what—if anything—happened to the guy who didn’t give the Nazi salute.

Remind you of anything?

Also—they started ‘em young with conformity:

A second element that I find troubling is the co-opting of instruments of law into the criminal activities of totalitarianism. The Nazis early on dragooned your everyday cops into their machine. Here are some local police marching in a Party parade:

They also teamed up regular cops with “auxiliaries” from the SS, to provide guidance on whom should be arrested, and how:

Another way laws were perverted was the use of “protective custody”—arrest of non-conforming/troublemaking people who had committed no offense against laws on the books, but they were hauled off to prison all the same. How long before we start seeing that in the US? Is the ACLU the only thing preventing that these days?

As an aside, and not dealt with in the exhibition, the Nazis also subverted the courts themselves. In the end, the Volksgerichtshof, with rabid Nazis on the bench, operated entirely outside any constitutional restrictions. Under the direction of Roland Freisler, the People’s Court did basically nothing but pass death sentences on anyone who came before it, because to be arrested was clear evidence of guilt.

When Hitler failed to win a clear majority soon after taking office in early 1933, the Nazis coerced the Reichstag (legislature) into passing the “Law to Remedy the Distress of the People and the Reich”, better known to us as the “Enabling Act”. That law basically gave Hitler the right to rule bydecree—something Commander Bone Spurs has been trying on with his Executive Orders. Also, the Republican-controlled Congress has been acting like the de-fanged Reichstag, doing nothing but some mild hand flapping and kowtowing to his every whim. Bobble-headed lapdogs can still do damage when they just do nothing.

I looked at a lot of faces of Gestapo, SS and RSHA members, both high-ups and worker bees. I wondered if you could tell without their uniforms what these guys did for a living? Here are some camp guards from Auschwitz at a nearby “retreat”:

Can you see the cruelty in their faces, or do they just look like average Joachims?

But look at this guy, on the right, as a Jew in the East (Poland, probably, I didn’t write down the location) has his beard forcibly cut:

I’ve seen that kind of gloating exultation at the Kleptocrat’s rallies. Hell—I’ve seen that face on Republican leaders of Congress when they pass tax cuts for the rich and cut healthcare for the rest of us. They display the same pleasure in humiliating "the other" that the Nazis did.

There was also a temporary exhibition on Kristallnacht, since it’s the 80^th anniversary of that night. I’ve written about it before, so I won’t go into the whole thing here. There were two things about the exhibit (which told the stories of Kristallnacht in six German towns and cities) that struck me: first, that it took until the late 50s and 60s for Gentiles in those municipalities to come to terms with what took place in 1938.

However, there’s been a reluctance to return the property that was stolen from Jews back then, or provide reparation for the stolen property. (The [West] German state did compensate survivors, but the citizens really, really wanted to pretend it never happened.)

Here’s a looter with a Mogen David he stole from a Synagogue. What do you suppose happened to it?

As for prosecuting the arsonists, the looters, the vandals—in many cases that desire to make it just disappear was also in action. When—after decades—some of the perps were identified, the judicial system and the public basically threw up their hands and said, “Oh, that happened a long time ago. Why bring it up now?”

Kind of like when the Republican base dismisses the horrors of slavery and racism, eh?

Finally, here’s a quote that shot straight through my heart, by Dr. Felix Aber of Bremen, a former rabbi who was one of the thousands of Jewish men and boys arrested and sent to concentration camps for “protective custody” in the aftermath of Kristallnacht. “We passed through a town that kept silent.”

It’s the silence that kills me. Their neighbors, colleagues, friends—no one spoke up. By 1938 the mechanism of terror was already that strong. And it played into existing prejudice against Jews.

It’s interesting to me that admission to both the Topographie des Terrors and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe is free. It’s like the Germans want no barrier at all to their people taking a good look at the past.

On the plus side, my experience with the Reichstag was stellar. In the first place, because you have to register in advance to gain admission (yes, it is possible to do it on the day, if you have identification papers and you’re willing to take your chance on there being room), I’d booked a few weeks ago for Saturday. I thought. But when I got there, it turned out to have been for Friday.

What an idiot.

But the kid checking papers at the entrance hared off with my confirmation letter and my passport, and in a while he came back and said I was cleared to go in. (TBH, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how lacking in pokers up their butts Berliners are. They’re a lot less heavy on the stickler side than I recall Germans in Munich, Dresden and Cologne being.) I did have to go through security scanning, but then I was in.

They send you up to the base of the Norman Foster-designed glass dome, which sits on the historic building that was the bane of Wilhelm II and that the Nazis torched in 1933. The Reichstag was left in ruins in East Berlin during Communist occupation, and on reunification of the two Germanies in 1990, when the Federal Republic moved national government back to Berlin from Bonn, they decided to rebuild the old building, and hired Foster to add a dome, replacing the old one that was destroyed in 1933..

Well, I’m not a huge fan of Foster, but this dome is bloody marvelous. Not only is it a spectacular manifestation of Germany’s commitment to the transparency needed in a democratic government—anyone in the dome can literally look down on the deliberative chamber and see what their legislators are up to—but the overall design incorporates a variety of sustainable energy features.

I think about the US Capitol, and all the shenanigans our Repugnant Congressmorons get up to literally behind closed doors (oftentimes even excluding their Democratic colleagues from joining them) to emerge with faits accomplis, and I just grind my teeth.

Well, I'm grateful to see how the Germans are stepping up to the plate WRT leadership of the democratic world, seeing as to how it looks like we're ceding. It was a powerful experience to see how they face the darkest part of their past, but I was inspired how they've turned that darkness into light.