I remember several years ago visiting Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin. Walking through that place of such barbarity and death, unable to even speak, I felt deafened by...
the long silent screams of those who died there.
I felt the same at Oradour-sur-Glane, just west of Limoges. The old village of Oradour is a ruin and a sobering reminder of what unchecked nationalism can lead to.
On 10th June 1944, Nazi soldiers surrounded the village, rounded up the 642 inhabitants on the pretext of searching for weapons, and then systematically slaughtered the whole community. 205 children, 247 women and 190 men were burned alive or shot within the space of just a few hours, and the village itself was torched.
Visitors now walk in silence through the exhibition centre that neighbours the village. It’s an excellent and hard-hitting exposé of the events of that day – and what led to it. The conditions created for Nazism to thrive are summed up in three words: Terror, intimidation and seduction.
These conditions are now prominent in the UK:
…the threatening rhetoric from the UK’s prime minister to the effect that anyone drawn towards the EU is a ‘citizen of nowhere’ and does not belong – not to mention the calls from some quarters for Remainers to be silenced and attacked.
…the intimidation and targeting of academics and judges in the UK by the right wing press; No prizes for seeing the parallels there with and the rounding up of academics, judges, and anyone else considered an ‘enemy of the people’ or undesirable in 1930s Germany;
…the seduction of a huge chunk of the UK population by right wing politicians and UK press: brain-washing people into believing the world ‘as it used to be’ is better for them than the world as it is; targeting those who are struggling financially and duping them into thinking that foreigners and people of colour are the cause of all their woes.
How exactly is any of that different to what gave rise to the misery and slaughter of World War Two? It’s no different. At all. And it’s exactly these conditions that ultimately led to the massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane.
The seeming apathy of most of the UK British population right now, combined with the blind eye being turned, means that by the time people wake up and join the dots it may be too late.
Indoctrination and misplaced fear have led to the massive surge in hate crimes since the Brexit vote – crimes that, in the minds of the perpetrators and their supporters, are now legitimate.
Arkadiusz Jozwik was murdered by Brexit yobs in Essex for simply for being Polish.
A South Korean man only this month had a bottle smashed in his face simply for being Asian, as his attacker openly said.
Jo Cox was murdered for being in favour of the UK’s EU membership.
There are many, many more examples of course.
Those Brits who dismiss this by saying that “there’s always been racism” need to step outside their white British bubble and see what’s going on.
Sadly not everyone gets that. As I walked up the steps to the ruined church where the Nazis locked up the women and children and burned them alive, an utterly stupid British man came out from inside. He declared loudly – and seemingly without a thought for those around him paying silent homage to those who had died – that this was all “just abstract, because it was so long ago”. I wanted to punch him.
He obviously hadn’t read the quote on the wall in the exhibition centre warning that those who forget history are at risk of repeating it.
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“First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
Martin Niemöller
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