The Nationalism that Brings Suffering and Death

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November 11, 2018
My friend Alice reminded me that the 100th anniversary of the Armistice ending World War I is also the 80th  anniversary of Kristallnacht.  What a juxtaposition.  As if the ending of that brutally cruel war  in 1918 was not enough to keep us from another devastating war 20 years later.   As if the rise of Nazi nationalism in Germany that led to concentration camps and the deaths of millions upon millions was not enough to halt the rise of Nationalism in the 21st century.

"I decided to devote my life to telling the story because I felt that
having survived I owe something to the dead. and that anyone
 who does not remember betrays them again."  Elie Wiesel

Kristallnacht was Hitler's state-organized pogram  against Jewish communities throughout Germany on November 9 and 10, 1938, it's name taken from the shards of glass littering the streets after the  windows of Jewish-owned stores, homes, buildings and synagogues were smashed. Over 400 synagogues were destroyed, thousands of homes, over 30,000 Jewish men were arrested, forced to march through Baden-Baden, and then sent to concentration camps. The tragic pogram ushered in additional economic and political persecution of Jews and the beginning of the Holocaust. It led to a second World War.

Europe witnessed first hand the worst face of nationalism and its devastating consequences.


On Armistice Day 2018, the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, stood before the iconic Arc de Triomphe, in a city that was occupied by the Nazis during World War II,  and reminded us that we are doomed to repeat this history if we don't condemn the kind of nationalism now rearing its ugly head in Europe and in America.

He clearly had in mind the nationalism embodied in Trump's "America First" policies (if anything Trump does can rightly be called a "policy"), and his ignorant rant "I am a Nationalist."

"Nationalism is a betrayal of Patriotism," Macron proclaimed.  Trump, who knows nothing about WWI or WWII, nothing about history, did not take kindly to this public whipping.   He is still fuming, a month later.

In honor of the anniversary of the Armistice, Alice did a program at the Teaneck, NJ library called "Poets look at War."  She chose poetry that covered 100 years of war from WWI to the Iraq War. One of the poems she read was "The Yellow Star that goes With Me," by Jessica Greenbaum.  She said it was "my unconsious motivation to memorialize the impact of the Holocaust," a motivation that became more and more conscious as she read it.  I didn't know the poem so I immediately googled it, and was taken by it.

We're on a New York City subway ride to Chambers Street:  a subway ride to the gas chambers of the Holocaust, and to the extreme deprivation, fear,  starvation, thirst that millions suffered.  Intense, insufferable deprivation.  "I mean really dying of thirst,"  "absolutely freezing," packed together like laundry, on the way to Chambers Street.  Hitler's "final solution," targeting, branding, and killing Jewish people because they were Jewish. "The yellow star that goes with me." Concentration camps, Auschwitz/Birkenau, instant death, painful unmitigated suffering. Men, women, children, even children, gassed without mercy, worked to death. Unbearable images that rise up unbidden, when on a train, taking a shower, slicing an apple.  Warped sense of  time and space, no help, no exit, there are no answers.  Only suffering, loss of the life force, madness.  "The only thing to breathe is everybody's stains." Yes, there's no need to analyze this poem. We feel it.  Horror.  Sadness. Deprivation. Despair. 

THE YELLOW STAR THAT GOES WITH ME

Sometimes when I'm thirsty, I mean really dying of thirst
For five minutes
Sometimes when I board a train
Sometimes in December when I'm absolutely freezing

For five minutes
Sometimes when I take a shower
Sometimes in December when I'm absolutely freezing
Sometimes when I reach from steam to towel, when the bed has

soft blue sheets

Sometimes when I take a shower
For twenty minutes, the white tiles dripping with water
Sometimes when I reach from steam to towel, when the bed has

soft blue sheets
Sometimes when I split an apple, or when I'm hungry, painfully

hungry

For twenty minutes, the white tiles dripping with water
As the train passes Chambers Street. We’re all crammed in like laundry
Sometimes when I split an apple, or when I'm hungry, painfully

hungry
For half an hour, sometimes when I’m on a train

As it passes Chambers Street. We’re all crammed in like laundry
It’s August. The only thing to breathe is everybody’s stains
For half an hour. Sometimes when I’m on a train
Or just stand along the empty platform

It’s August. The only thing to breathe is everybody’s stains
Sometimes when I board a train
Or just stand along the empty platform—
Sometimes when I'm thirsty, I mean really dying of thirst

—From Inventing Difficulty, by Jessica Greenbaum (Silverfish, 2000)

Sources:
1.  https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/kristallnacht?fbclid=IwAR0YdBCJTVOlVORjJ05_GJQdfGSYyA04UbUga6_di5Wx9AZprhITSZ3_b6Q

2.  http://fortune.com/2018/11/11/macron-nationalist-trump-armistice-day-2018/

3.  https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/kristallnacht/

"I decided to devote my life to telling the story because I felt that having survived I owe something to the dead. and anyone who does not remember betrays them again." Elie Wiesel