The world is currently having a Hitler moment. The monster who let loose the dogs of war into the killing fields of Europe and Russia, authored the torture, rape and genocide of over 6 million Jews, and is responsible for the deaths of about 75 million people, before blowing his brains out deep inside a bunker under the bomb-ravaged streets of Berlin is back in the conversation of conscience, thanks to Palestine.
The streets and bridges in Britain and America resound with chants of “Death to the Jews!’’ A US Congresswoman echoed the Palestinian war cry, ‘From the river to the sea’ which is hate code for effacing Israel from the map, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. While Hitler wanted to wipe every non-Aryan from the face of the earth, Hamas aims to erase every non-Muslim—including the maladjusted morons in anti-Israel marches who remove posters of kidnapped Israeli children—and convert the leftover non-Muslims to their faith.
From November 9 to 10, 1938, Nazis smashed Jewish shops, businesses and synagogues during Kristallnacht (‘Crystal Night’); millions of pieces of broken glass of windows of Jewish-owned buildings littered the streets. Evoking memories of Kristallnacht, British Police stood by as Palestinian immigrants and domiciles roared for the murder of Jews. Neo-Nazis bearing Nazi flags called for a Jewish genocide. Swastikas painted on the doors of American Jewish homes are a chilling reminder that Hitler’s ideology of hate has risen from history’s murky bog.
Israeli soldiers recovered a copy of Mein Kampf on a Hamas terrorist’s body. However, most of Europe, which wants to live down memories of collusion with the Nazis, has rallied behind Israel. Austria, a fervent Nazi partner in the 1930s finds itself in a quandary. What to do with the elegant house in Braunau am Inn where Hitler was born? The Nazis turned it into an art gallery and library during the World War; symbolic, since they looted millions of artworks from Jewish homes, and burned books by Hemingway, HG Wells and Franz Kafka. The building was also a Nazi pilgrimage spot.
After the war ended, it hosted a bank, and later a school. Before the Austrian government bought it in 2016, Hitler’s birthplace ironically served as a centre for people with special needs: about 2,00,000 persons with mental or physical disabilities were murdered in the Nazi “Aktion T-4,” or Euthanasia programme, between 1940 and 1945. These unfortunates were gassed in specially built chambers, while the babies and small children were starved to death or injected with lethal drugs; their bodies were burned in large ovens. Now, Braunau am Inn is being rebuilt as a centre for human rights training of police officers which will open by 2026: Nazi paradoxes never end. Controversy is rife in Austria on what should be done with the place; tearing it down would mean denying Austria’s role in the Holocaust, but keeping it could turn it into a neo-Nazi shrine.
Hamas or Hizbul, Iran’s Ali Khamenei or Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, India’s PFI or Pakistan’s Teherik-e-Taliban, all are clones of the Nazis and their demonic captain, who have cast their immortal shadow on the world. Wolves in sheep’s clothing are hiding in universities, schools and offices as liberal peaceniks, marketing persuasive conscience. Denial won’t bring the world its peace. Only accepting the banality of evil will remind us what we should never be. Never again.
Ravi Shankar
ravi@newindianexpress.com