SOMEONE IS MAKING AMERICA
FACIST
4 the
FIRST TIME

Some People are saying . . . . . . . .

Concentration Camps

If you complain of people being shot down in the streets, of the absence of communication or social responsibility, of the rise of everyday violence which people have become accustomed to, and the dehumanization of feelings, then the ultimate development on an organized social level is the concentration camp. … The concentration camp is the final expression of human separateness and its ultimate consequence. It is organized abandonment.

Arthur Miller (b. 1915), U.S. dramatist. Miller regarded this concept as one of the prime themes of his 1964 play After the Fall, which featured a concentration camp in its staging.

The concentration camps, by making death itself anonymous (making it impossible to find out whether a prisoner is dead or alive), robbed death of its meaning as the end of a fulfilled life. In a sense they took away the individual's own death, proving that henceforth nothing belonged to him and he belonged to no one. His death merely set a seal on the fact that he had never existed.

Hannah Arendt (1906–1975), German-born U.S. political philosopher. The Origins of Totalitarianism, pt. 3, ch. 12, sct. 3 (1951).

Survival

Nobody is stonger, nobody is weaker than someone who came back. There is nothing you can do to such a person because whatever you could do is less than what has already been done to him. We have already paid the price.

Elie Wiesel (b. 1928), Rumanian-born U.S. writer. Interview in Writers at Work (Eighth Series, ed. by George Plimpton, 1988).

The Holocaust

Today, almost forty years later, I grow dizzy when I recall that the number of manufactured tanks seems to have been more important to me than the vanished victims of racism.

Albert Speer (1905–81), German architect, Nazi official. The Slave State, ch. 21 (1981).

Without centuries of Christian antisemitism, Hitler's passionate hatred would never have been so fervently echoed.

Robert Runcie (b. 1921), British ecclesiastic, Archbishop of Canterbury. Daily Telegraph (London, 10 Nov. 1988).

Adversity

I have often been downcast, but never in despair; I regard our hiding as a dangerous adventure, romantic and interesting at the same time. In my diary I treat all the privations as amusing. I have made up my mind now to lead a different life from other girls and, later on, different from ordinary housewives. My start has been so very full of interest, and that is the sole reason why I have to laugh at the humorous side of the most dangerous moments.

Anne Frank (1929–45), German Jewish refugee, diarist. The Diary of a Young Girl (1947), entry for 3 May 1944.

In current usage, holocaust refers to any widespread human disaster.

The Germany Holocaust began in 1933 when their leader began taking systematic measures against Jews. Their "Dear Leader" made concerted efforts to eliminate Jews from economic life, and from German life in general.

In 1938, they began arresting innocent Jews. The rest were forced to move into ghettos surrounded by walls and barbed wire. In June 1941 German armies were dispatched to kill all Soviet Jews on the spot. Soon after, Hermann Göring, the second in command of Nazi Germany, directed the chief of the Reich Security Office, to begin the task of organizing a "final solution to the Jewish question" in all of German-dominated Europe. Jews in Germany were then forced to wear badges marked with a yellow star. When they took them to the camps, they put numbers on them.

 

Fascism begins slowly.

The best way to cook a live frog is to turn the heat on his pond up slowly.

 

History ~ Repeating Itself in America

America is in crisis that looks familiar if you know your history.

The excerpt below is from a screenplay treatment that I wrote about brave American women who went to the war in Europe shortly after American GIs landed in France on June 6, 1944.

I am sharing this section of the treatment synopsis of DONUT Dollies here, today, because it holds the moral to the story and carries such a strong warning about the future, a future that I can now see unfolding right before my eyes.

The storyline about these American women who went to war armed with a pistol, endless coffee, tons of donuts and a smile goes something like this:

They were recruited and sent into the war zones of Western Europe at the request of General Dwight D. Eisenhauer. At this point in their journey, they have been in the battle zones for more than nine months. Their job is to keep the boys' spirits up. They are very good at their jobs.

They landed on Utah Beach six weeks after D-Day; had seen war; had seen Paris; and had seen a miserable, freezing Christmas worried to death about some of their boys, the Battered Bastards of Bastogne. They had seen the injured, and they had seen death. In the spring of 1945, they saw a death camp.

As it was beginning to look like the war was finally winding down, they were ordered under martial law to go to a place in the country, not far outside of the nearby town. In fact, every living person in the area between the ages of puberty all the way up to too-old-to-get-around-on-your-own were ordered to go, at gun point if necessary. Everybody was commanded to go see the kind of camps that the Aliies were finding all over Europe.

I wrote these words more than 15 years ago.

DONUT Dollies

A Day at Buchenwald —

The girls are lighthearted as they pile into the big German convertible. They have a picnic basket and two American soldiers in tow. LORETTA tosses the car keys to one of the GIs and tells him to drive. Out in the open air and sunshine, they enjoy a few carefree moments and some swinging music on the radio. It is a perfect day. Until they arrive at Buchenwald.

“What on God's Earth kind of place is this?” JILL asks. “And what the hell is that smell?” GERTA tells them that “It is one of the camps. The Allies are finding them all over Europe.”

They follow the crowd entering the fenced encampment. There are smoke stacks with wisps of smoke rising from them. They see prisoners looking almost like ghosts shuffling past along paths, piles of human bones, piles of bodies, cramped barracks some with prisoners still inside looking too weak to move. Death and misery is everywhere. Most prisoners seem detached and expressionless. German civilians are forced to walk through and look at everything left behind by their army. One obviously wealthy woman protests and an armed guard shouts her down in German and points his weapon at her.

JILL wants to know what he is saying and GERTA translates. “The American is saying that she had to know what was going on and now she has to look at what she let Hitler and the Nazis do in her name. This is a death camp.”

They walk deeper into the camp and they see all the horrors that Buchenwald has to offer. Some weep silently. They see a female prisoner coming toward them. She stumbles and falls. GERTA and SARA rush over to help her. As they do, another woman prisoner comes and helps her friend. VIRGINIA and another girl arrive just as the two prisoners walk away.

JILL asks if this is what the war was about and GERTA tells her that “It's just a part of it. This war has been about world domination and all the money, power and glory that comes with it.” VIRGINIA interjects that “Germans are the scum of the earth. They are just monsters pure and simple. Not even human.” And in an unusually aggressive tone SARA says “Oh, Virginia, try not to be so stupid.”

VIRGINIA is offended. “How dare you? Just who do you think you are?” SARA responds, “I think I am a Jew from Boston who has gone out of my way to educate myself on what the hell is going on in this world so I wouldn't ever say anything as stupid and simplistic as you just did.” But VIRGINIA is not ready to back down. “If you're so smart why are you defending these monsters?”

SARA gets to the point. “I am not defending the people who did this. I am taking exception to your moronic statement that they are not human. Of course they are human. Every day, humans have to decide between right and wrong. Some choose to stick their nose in their holy book and pretend they are better than the rest of the world because they are true believers! Too many German people were true believers and they are Christians just like you and look what came from it! Of course, there are some Germans who could see that Hitler was a dangerous man. If they were lucky they were able to get out of Germany and a lot of them have been fighting behind the scenes. (She gives Gerta a questioning look & Gerta nods.) My dearest friend, Gerta here, has been living very dangerously...parachuting behind enemy lines ever since the war started, risking her life to work with the resistance in France.”

GERTA agrees. “Yes, too many Germans chose to look the other way when their government started jailing innocent people. You see, they bought into the lie that it was the only way they could hold onto their false illusion of safety and security. After a while, of looking the other way, it was easy to keep looking away when their dear leader started killing innocent people. The German people are human beings just like you. Though you clearly believe that the choices they made are pure evil, it didn't seem that way to them. Propaganda had convinced them that these people, Jews, Gypsies, tailors and actors and mothers and fathers and little children were their enemies, and were a serious threat to the German way of life. People were so frightened by these many, many enemies that they ceased to care what their government did to these people, just so long as they were able to remain safe in the fatherland. They chose to believe that their leaders would protect them and their homeland from all the bad people in the world and all they had to do was look the other way and offer unquestioning loyalty.”

SARA jumps back in. “Every single day human beings have a choice to make between what is right and wrong, good and evil, and the German people made the wrong choice thanks to their political ignorance and patriotic arrogance. Something you, of all people, should understand Ginny.” When VIRGINIA spits out, “You bitch. I don't have to listen to this.” SARA menaces, “If you stay around here you do!”

LORETTA is proud of her friend, but SARA apologizes. “I'm sorry. I just...this is so upsetting. This could have been me. I knew these camps existed. It's why I came. I had to do something even if it was just serving donuts and coffee.”

JILL says that she didn’t know anything about this and that she just wanted to go home where something like this could never happen.” GERTA is amazed at her naivety and SARA says, “Jill, honey, there are corporations and plenty of greedy bastards in America TODAY that have made a fortune off the Nazi war machine. These are the kind of men who love money and power more than they love anything else including their own country.”

JILL is unconvinced. “You can't be saying that this war is all about money. That's ridiculous!”

SARA tries to be clear. “Jill, it wasn't about money for the men who came over here to fight the Nazis. Your brother died for a noble cause. He died because he wanted to free oppressed people, but the greedy bastards who supported Hitler while he was building his war machine, for them it was all about money and power and control. That's what war is always about.”

LORETTA tries to think positively. “At least it's all coming to an end now and after what Americans have seen here, and all that we've lost, our country won't let it happen ever again.”

SARA tries to make them think. “I'm sorry to appear pessimistic, Loretta, but as long as war is more profitable than in peace, we will never know world peace.’ JILL can’t bear the thought. “Oh, Sara! No! This must be the war to end all wars. It's been so horrible.”

GERTA is the realist. “My dear...Anyone who is so naive as to think that this thing couldn't happen again one day...they are just fooling themselves. There will always be men who think they should rule the world and there will always be some fool they can bring to power who will do their bidding all the while thinking the whole thing was his brilliant idea. And everything will be just wonderful until the puppet goes too far.”

SARA brings up the bottom line. “The Americans who made money off this war machine are still around, probably planning their next war. I can imagine it even now...Peace American style. A lot of money to be made bringing peace to the world at the point of a gun. All someone would need to get the ball rolling is a dangerous enemy that is a threat to America and a country full of people ruled by fear and anger.”

They drive back in silence. No music. No conversation. Just thoughtful silence.

NARRATOR LORETTA: “After what we'd seen at Buchenwald, nobody was in the mood for a picnic so we headed back to the Chateau. And even though the war was winding down, there were still plenty of GIs who needed a little morale boost.”

It Could Never Happen Here?

About eight years ago, a friend invited me to her home for Christmas. While dinner prepartions were underway, I was telling my dear friend, along with her daughter and mother, about my screenplay. When I described this part of my screenplay, her very conservative husband, who was not involved in our conversation, began shouting at me from across the room that I was CRAZY if I was trying to say that something like that could ever happen here in America.

He was extremely agitated and shouted over and over again, "You are CRAZY if you think anything like THAT could ever happen HERE!"

Who's crazy now?

Image result for immigrant child

MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN
apparently means jailing & numbering children!
This little guy is #47.

This website is underconstruction. When it goes live, it will be a resource for people who need freely available, valuable and trusted information about living a better life based on what one curious old woman has found of value to know in a lifetime of learning.

The national tragedy that is unfolding right before my eyes on this day (06/24/2018) has prompted me to put this one page up as the first piece of knowledge I share with the world. More to come.

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