The inscription on the remnant of the ghetto wall in Krakow is written in Yiddish and Polish. The words tell an inescapable and uncompromising truth.
They prove something of great importance for all time, including this time, where there is a difficulty comprehending what is real and what is not, what is true and what is not. The inscription is true, and because it is an indisputable truth, it proves that truth is real.
The denial of what happened to the Jews of Europe and Poland starts at this spot because behind this wall 15,000 - 20,000 people were packed into 302 buildings. They were starved and humiliated. It was from this spot that they were forced to wear the armbands emblazoned with the Star of David. The price of being caught without it was death. The price of being caught outside the ghetto was death. The price of any infraction was death. Being a Jew was a crime in occupied Poland so death came instantly, arbitrarily and capriciously — at any moment.
The Jews were herded like animals to await what was ahead. I wondered how many eyes fell on this exact spot of wall from behind it. I wondered how many saw this exact spot.
Here they lived, suffered and died at the hands of the German torturers. From here they began their final journey to the death camps.
There were only 2,000 Jews who entered the ghetto who were not murdered by the hour of Hitler’s suicide.
One thousand of them were the Schindler Jews, who survived the Holocaust at the Enamelware Factory (Deutsche Emailwarenfabrik) in Krakow. I will visit there tomorrow.
This story is world-famous because Steven Spielberg, the greatest director of motion pictures who has ever lived, told the story. He transported millions of people emotionally, spiritually and mentally into the horror, madness, corruption, violence and chaos of what happened. Make no mistake — what happened, happened.
Tomorrow, I will walk in silence around the Plaszow concentration camp commanded by the psychopathic Amön Goeth, so brilliantly portrayed by Ralph Fiennes in “Schindler’s List.” The Grey House, where he fired at Jews randomly and lethally, still stands. The movie depicted the house as the SS murderer’s residence as opposed to his office, but those details are trivialities. The carnage and destruction happened, and the reason we can comprehend it, is because of film. Without it, there are just empty spaces and the memories of the dead. We can imagine, but not understand.
There are a small group of Americans who have been involved in telling the stories of humanity’s most difficult hours and greatest event at epic levels, who deserve a great deal of respect for their artistic and humanitarian achievements. Let me mention a few names. Some of them are staggeringly famous, some less so, but all have spent many years of their lives involved in the epic battle against forgetting what happened. What they have created is more than just artistically or technically brilliant, but a masterpiece of warning and memory that will endure so long as human beings can watch a screen.
The collective works of people like John Orloff, Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman, and many more, have told the story about humanity’s greatest tragedy, war and triumph, through a series of epic stories.
“Band of Brothers,” “The Pacific,” “Masters of the Air,” “Schindler’s List,” “Saving Private Ryan,” and “Greyhound,” respectively, tell the story of World War II through examinations of the American invasion of Europe, the air and naval wars, the US experience in the Pacific, and the story of what happened to the Jews of Europe.
Two hundred years from now, it is these films — made while the eyewitnesses were alive — that will be remembered and offer a portal into the events that saved humanity from the darkness in a way in which the archival footage will never be able. Each person is more than deserving of being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. They exist in a rarefied space that includes Spike Lee, Oprah Winfrey, and a few others, who have managed to breathe life into history so we can learn and understand. They are, collectively, muses and historians. Along with the great Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and others on their team, they have made some of the most important contributions ever made to understanding what happens at the end of the road.
Jews lived in Krakow for 900 years, and then they were gone. Removed.
The idea was to remove the vermin, while maintaining the beauty of their architectural and artistic heritage. The buildings, stripped of their Jews, were made ready for Germans. Pure Germans. Superior Germans.
The truth is that most people were indifferent about politics in early 1930s Germany. Large crowds — and even a million torches — don’t equal a majority. The loudest voices can be heard, but their noise does not give them followers. The Nazis had enough to take power and take control of everything.
What happened before will not happen again, but it will happen and is happening anew. It is happening in Ukraine. There is a new virulent fascism and nationalism in Putin’s Russia. There is a broad sympathy for the foreign fascism in the United States. There is a rising cause with an old name: America First. It is as perverse as it was before.
America First = Fascism.
Fascism is a form of slavery that crushes the human soul. Do you understand what it is? I was recently asked by a member of our The Warning community to describe it more simply. Before I attempt to do so, I wanted to ask a question of our community.
What is fascism?
I want to ask two more:
Do you believe Trump is a fascist?
Are you afraid?
There is an artistic record that captures these events about which I am writing from the locations where they occurred. Like any place where history was made, and the trajectory of humanity’s course ruptured, diverted or changed, the present is quiet. Everything is still. Birds sing where machine guns rattled, and screams were heard and unheard. It is deeply humbling to walk in the footsteps of such suffering, and also appreciate the genius that has made it possible for the entire world of eight billion human beings to comprehend what we are capable of doing to one another.
The United States of America is far from perfect. I see that clearly far from home.
Yet, somehow, the great idea put forward by the pen of a slaveholder took root. It ultimately shattered the shackles of subjugation through years of epic violence in a war of liberation, America’s first.
Americans fought and prevailed.
The Polish people fought too. The Jews fought. The story of Nazi occupation is a story of constant uprising, rebellion, defiance and bravery. The Poles simply would not submit. The price that they paid is unspeakable and hard to comprehend.
Tomorrow, I will go to Oskar Schindler’s refuge. I will walk the fields below the house where he bartered for the lives of 1,000 slaves in a system of unparalleled corruption. I will retrace the steps between the camp and the factory, and then I will go to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The man who planned the Holocaust was the namesake of Aktion (Operation) Reinhard where 1.5 million Jews were shipped to Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka. His name was Reinhard Heydrich, the butcher of Prague.
I’m going to bring you to Prague next, and tell the story of this man’s assassination and the price paid for it.
Freedom is never free. The cost has been immense.
I am grateful to be an American tonight. I am humble and grateful from Krakow on the eve of a visit to Auschwitz.
My father grew up right outside Krakow. In 1939 he was 26 and practicing law; he had a very promising future. When the Nazis invaded he fled east with his brother and cousins (including a 3 year-old) and spent 6 years in Siberian labor camps; they all survived. My grandparents, who were well-to-do with a beautiful home, didn’t feel that they needed to uproot their lives. My wealthy grandfather died of starvation in Matthausen, and we don’t have many details of my grandmother’s murder.
My father eventually came to NYC and spent the rest of his life fighting for human and civil rights. He taught my sisters and I that if one person is persecuted, we are all persecuted, and no one is free unless everyone is free.
I went to Krakow and Warsaw after my father died. The moment we crossed the border my body went limp. I couldn’t see the beauty of these cities because I felt like I was walking on the ashes of the millions murdered. And I was.
There is the textbook definition of fascism, where state and unfettered capitalism reach their zenith in unholy unity. But truest definition is this: Fascism is the desire to make the lie truth, love of state a religion, religion the justification for destruction. It is the voice of hell speaking with the tongue of man. It is merciless, ignorant, brutal and base. It is mankind at his worst. It is the void. Yes, Trump is a fascist. And no, I am NOT afraid. As long as their is breath in my lungs and blood in my veins, I will stand in the face of this darkness. I will reflect the light I serve and I will FIGHT. And you know what? I am not alone.