My Father’s Legacy I: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it
Elon Musk supports a right-wing German political party in their rhetoric about "moving beyond the guilt of the past". It's easy to agree on the need to forget the guilt of the past and move on, right?
That is pure gaslighting.
I'll tell you a story. My father Rolf Hauge was arrested by the Nazis in 1942 and sent to Sachsenhausen. He was NOT Jewish. He was an 18 year old tall and strong Norwegian boy who opposed the Nazi occupation regime. The Nazi empire needed slaves. He became one of the gray masses of slaves. In May 1945 he was rescued and brought home. His heart, soul, and body forever destroyed.
In 1994 I was in high-school and we got a new teacher. He was German and had specialised in German-Norwegian history. He was born after the war and was definitely NOT a Nazi. When he learnt about my father, he asked if they could meet. My teacher was so afraid of being judged. What happened was that they spent two hours talking, sharing stories and connecting on a human level. There was ZERO resentment from my father's side. On the contrary, he was adamant that moving forward, the world had to distinguish between modern day Germany and the dangerous ideology of fascism and nazism.
Taking the statement "moving beyond the guilt of the past" as hostage for fascist ideas isn't just foul sh*t, it is extremely dangerous.
I have for a long time let my father's heritage collect dust. It's time to continue his work and remind the world of the horrors of facism and nazism. Yes, Holocaust was a significant part of this, killing 6 million Jews. But let's not forget the 11 million non-Jews who were also killed. Let me repeat that; 11 million non-Jews.
It's so easy to think that fascism and nazism = Holocaust, and that as long as you are not Jewish, it doesn't affect you. Wake up.
Sources:
The White Busses, recorded in 2005, the story about the Red Cross rescue operation to bring home Norwegian and Danish prisoners of War from Nazi concentration camps. Unfortunately only in Norwegian.: https://lnkd.in/dUqn_u3P
The title of this article is a quote borrowed from George Santayana's work The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress, Vol I, Reason in Common Sense.