Southern Regional Middle School, 8th grade. We spent a whole quarter studying the Holocaust across every subject except math and probably gym. We read Night by Eli Weisel, a survivor came and spoke to all of us in the library; we watched the horrific footage of bodies, piles of people, jackets, shoes; heard the nightmares that one group of humans forced upon another.
We took a class trip, 2 or 3 hundred kids for a weekend in Washington DC, to The Holocaust Museum. We took a panoramic photo in front of the Capitol, and if I recall correctly, Ian is in it twice because he ran from one end to the other before the shutter closed. What I definitely recall is we lined up in order of height, and the sad sack writing this was officially the shortest kid in 8th grade. That sucked! Middle school was not my favorite stretch of life, but I digress.
I.
Part of learning about the Holocaust was learning how it came to be in the first place. The short story is the Winning Countries punished Germany after WWI which crippled their economy and in stepped a dude who could rile up a crowd. And he had a perfect solution: it’s the foreigners fault:
“The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”
– Reichsmarschall Hermann Wilhelm Goring, founder of the Gestapo, leading member of the Nazi party, and Head of the Luftwaffe.
This did not happen overnight. Hitler was elected in 1932; WWII started in 1939.
II.I Human Smoke
There’s a book called “Human Smoke,” by Nicholson Baker that I can’t recommend enough. There’s no narrative, there are no chapters; just a paragraph, or page at most, of what happened on a particular day between 1914 and when America entered WWII, and 91 pages of sources and footnotes.
I bought it at a used bookstore years ago for pretty much no reason other than it was $2.50 and I felt that was an acceptable risk/reward. I miss thumbing through books and walking out with my arms full.
Anyway:
Hitler began speaking in his odd, croaking voice…. He wept over the woes of the people. Then he excoriated the Jews and the socialists, and he promised lower taxes, higher wages, more jobs, better housing, and cheaper fertilizer….”Hitler was talking nonsense, making the grossest mis-statements, garbling history in a voice that was raucous and suggested the parade ground, and with gestures uncouth and unconvincing,” she thought. Yet when she looked around at the audience, she saw not just assent but ecstasy: a young girl with lips parted, eyes fixed on her leader; an old man nodding; the sixty-year-old woman next to her, saying, “Richtig! Rightig!” after every promise Hitler made.
pg 29, Human Smoke
In Poland, right-wing nationalists rioted, beating up Jews. The budget committee of the Polish Parliament in Warsaw had a meeting. The Jews of eastern Europe had a dark economic future… because there weren’t enough jobs. “…We would appreciate the Jews if we had 50,000 of them,” he said. “Our negative attitude is caused by the fact that there are 3,000,000. A change in this abnormal situation is the only way to a solution of the thorny Jewish problem.”… Another member of Parliament, Deputy Minzberg, criticized the notion of treating Jews as if they were surplus goods available for export.
It was January 13, 1937.
pg 66, Human Smoke
In the Warsaw Ghetto, resident Mary Berg went to a community home, where the poorest refugees lived. “On the floor I saw half-naked, unwashed children lying listlessly. In one corner an exquisite little girl of four or five sat crying. I could not refrain from stroking her disheveled blonde hair. The child looked at me with her big blue eyes and said, “I’m hungry.” Mary Berg was overcome by shame; she had not eaten that day and had no bread to offer the girl. “I did not dare look her in the eyes, and went away.” Three hundred people per week were dying of starvation.
It was June 12, 1941.
pg 399, Human Smoke
The State Department announced that it was worried that refugees might become spies once they arrive in the United States. It was June 17, 1941. If the refugees had family members behind in Europe, the State Department contended, the Nazis might compel them to spy on America by threatening their families with torture. The United States was therefore no longer going to grant visas to refugees in occupied Europe.
This ruling covered Germany, Holland, Belgium, Norway, France, Poland, and the Balkans.
An increasingly discouraged Clarence Pickett told The New York Times that the decision would have “far reaching effects” on all efforts to help refugees.
The governing committee of the Keep America out of War Congress wrote a letter to Secretary of State Cordell Hull: “Is our government so destitute of facilities for detecting true spies that it must close the last door of hope to thousands of Jews, Spaniards, Poles, and Czechs who hate fascism and love democracy?”
pg 342, Human Smoke
III.I Ms Braun’s History Class
Ms Braun was a young southern woman who taught our history class. I remember polka dotted dresses and maybe a perm.
At the end of the quarter, after the liberation of Europe, she stood in the middle of our desks and said,
How can something like this happen? How does something like this start?
When we make fun of differences we accept that different is wrong. And if people are different then we can make different laws for different people. And if the law discriminates then what’s wrong with physical abuse? And if we’re beating them up, locking them up would be for their own good, right? And, if we lock them up, we can force them to do labor. And if they’re only good for labor, then we don’t need to keep them healthy. And we don’t need to keep them healthy, who needs them at all? They are small steps, but they are all steps toward racism and fascism.
I’m paraphrasing after 20 years of desperately pretending it hasn’t been 20 years, but the point stands.
Ms Braun then gave us a worksheet. We had to write one nice thing about every single person in the class – even the weird kids.
It was hard, man! I was 13, short, and defensive by nature; my gut reaction was always to make fun of everyone else first to keep from the bottom of the pecking order. Frankly, that’s just New Jersey. I’ll defend that til the day I die, but I realized my desire for laughs shouldn’t come at others expense.
Ms Braun collected the sheets and a few days later handed out a blue piece of paper with ~25 nice things classmates said about me. I was surprised at how nice it felt to receive compliments.
III.II
Making fun of the kid with hair to his knees isn’t hard. He’s got hair to his knees.
Did I want cheap shots for cheap laughs, or actually to find humor in life and truth? Did I want self-esteem if it knowingly came at others’ expense? My perception changed, and while making fun of my friends as much and as often as humanly possible – because what are friends for? – I left strangers alone. I don’t know you, I have no right to judge you.
That’s the heart of my politics: I don’t know you but I want to be left alone, so I’ll leave you alone – until you start to stretch the boundaries of leaving other people alone, like boldly claiming to know what Love means; like telling women what they can or cannot do to their own bodies – bodies, the only thing that is ours on this godforsaken planet; whether or not other countries really need our military all up in their lives; whether a business saving a few shareholders’ pennies at the expense of of their employees has any moral ground to stand on.
To me the government exists as a structure and a safety net and I’ll pay my taxes as the cost of living in a society that takes cares of itself.
It’s like being a libertarian, but you admit from the outset that you’re a piece of shit instead of farting into cupped hands and sniffing deeply every time you walk into a room.
III.III
I still have that worksheet in the closet at my parents’ house. As a depressed teenager I would break it out just to have proof that I existed in a positive light in some part of the world, and that maybe some people actually liked me.
I often wonder how the kids that I made fun of felt reading something positive about themselves, maybe for the first time.
Look, this isn’t, “Making fun of kids is the same as Holocaust, so don’t do either.” Those two thing are on opposite sides of a very, very, very, very large spectrum.
It’s just that, there’s a path that leads that way, and it’s thoroughly documented. Those steps inevitably began with bigotry.
IV. Focus
There is no, “Make America Great Again.”
All we’ve ever done is read this history in retrospect. At any point in history one group is having an alright time of it while another eats absolute shit. We all know who writes the history books.
There is no perfect America to go back to. You can draw a straight line from plantation owners to private prisons, for instance. People are fucked up, have always been fucked up, and this Trump bullshit is just more of the same – which is what makes this so fucking frustrating: we’ve seen this before! We know how this ends!
Read Human Smoke, feel that slow build, then tell me what is different in America, right now.
Prove me wrong.
Please.
V.
I know a lot of you were with me when I was learning all this shit in history class. Furthermore, that same year we learned how to write open-ended essays from Mrs Hull, so while I doubt that she’d appreciate the cussin’ I think she’d be happy with the structure, as far as 8th grade essays go. In the spirit of Giving Essays Endings Again (#GEEA) here’s my motherfucking conclusion:
Anyone who attended Southern Regional back in the day has no excuse. You know better. You can color it however you want, but I know you learned these lessons, too. I’m not calling you out because I think you are the root of the problem; if I knew any other 8th grade classes who did the same stuff, this would be directed at them. It’s not because I don’t.
You know when your piss-wasted and you have those honest-to-god moments with yourself in the bathroom mirror? Go have one. You’re due. I strongly recommend you pick up Devil’s Lettuce, whiskey, or both, then sit under a tree. Sit with yourself and block the bullshit; look at the sky and the trees and think of your favorite person and while your smiling go ahead and try telling yourself that it’s all everyone else’s fault.