In teaching the how’s and the why’s of the Holocaust, I began back in 2001 with where most such instruction begins, by creating identification with, and empathy for, the victims: homes, families, holidays, and school, most effectively in a photo research project that created a moment when one student said, “Mr. Shroyer, that little girl looks just like me.” Exactly.
As my instruction evolved, I fathomed the necessity of confronting the nature of the perpetrators. Just as the victims were people who look like us, honesty compelled me to instruct the difficult lesson that the perpetrators, millions of them, can be familiar, too. From all walks of life. That’s a hard lesson.
The shock and dismay that followed the distribution of Ku Klux Klan leaflets across northern Indiana last month provided for me another example of our difficulty in comprehending that, like the victims of injustice, the perpetrators are also recognizable.
According to Dana Messick’s story in the Goshen News November 19, Goshen’s mayor, Gina Leichty, condemned the flyers, saying “These flyers, intended to spread fear and division, urged residents [to] spy on their neighbors and report them to authorities.” A community leader said she shredded a leaflet she found. A Goshen resident who found 20 of them on her lawn called it “disgusting.”
I agree, of course, but I must also note that the mass deportation plan that the Klan is urging us to support is the same Trump administration plan that has, at minimum, the tacit support of our Republican friends, our congressman, our senators, our governor, our state attorney general and what’s called a super majority in our Indiana legislature. It’s a plan that would require the cooperation of local leaders, too, and local law enforcement. And, as the Klan leaflets urge, you and me.
Cloaked in the robes of the Ku Klux Klan, the plan creates outrage, but dressed in a business suit, it is the business of government, I guess. It is what most Americans voted for. Round people up and deport them. Twelve million.
It was in the reading of an article by Yale University history professor Timothy Snyder about two weeks before the election that I visualized what the Trump plan for the round-up and deportation of 12 million of our neighbors will look like. The example of a child born in the United States losing his parents who were not born in the United States reminded me that the violent anger of a young man whose “illegal alien” parents were deported from Germany in 1938 led to the Kristallnacht pogrom. Is an army of vigilantes at the ready again for when shots are bound to be fired?
Snyder details what it means for the victims of the government’s campaign, but equally shocking for me is what Snyder has to say about what it means for the rest of us. “Such an enormous deportation requires an army of informers,” Snyder wrote October 20. For you perhaps, there will be a request from law enforcement for information, a contact number for the person who recommended the crew that worked on your roof. Perhaps the nature of your job means you’ll have a role in the transportation of the “freight” designated for “resettlement.”
It means participating. It means helping. It means informing. It means facing ourselves when called upon to act in the manner the Klan leaflets describe. “Track and monitor,” and “report them,” they say, with a government phone number to call. The Klan is pledging its support. Standing up and standing by.
What will we do?
Music: "Floating Points, Movement 6," by Pharaoah Sanders