“Terrible things are happening outside… poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. Families are torn apart; men, women and children are separated. Children
come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared.” – Anne Frank (Jan 13, 1943)

Image credit: Goodreads

The Holocaust did not start with death camps.

It started with Nazis spreading anti-Jewish propaganda and creating anti-semitic hatred.

Then the Nazis called for boycotts of Jewish businesses.

Then the Nazis made laws restricting Jewish ownership of property, where Jews could live, imposing curfews on Jews.

All because the Nazis were trying to drive Jews out of Germany.

Then Jews were forced into ghettos and the first camps – legally.

It wasn’t until the ghettos were emptied and the Jewish residents sent to camps that the Final Solution happened. And it happened because the Germans needed something more efficient than bullets, because bullets were needed to fight the war.

What we’re doing to undocumented immigrants in the US today is very similar to what the Nazis did to the Jews in the early years, before the mass slaughter of the Holocaust had been thought up.

If you don’t believe me, if you believe it can’t happen here, I invite you to visit the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Watch the stories of persecution. Here’s one for starters:

I also strongly recommend reading William Sheridan Allen’s book “The Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experience of a Single German Town, 1922-1945.” It walks the reader through the factors that led to the rise of the Nazis, describes how they took over and what they did after.

The parallels between what happened in the early years of the Nazi’s rise to power and the United States today are significant and should be disturbing to any reader.

A new Holocaust can happen here. It’s up to us to prevent it.