I didn't know
When I learned about the holocaust as teenager in Germany, many people from the Nazi era were still alive and lived all around me. Being the curious person I always was, I asked them about what happened and their role in it.
"I didn't know" was the boilerplate answer. And as they were relatives and friends, I believed them at first.
Then in 1981 we got a new teacher for history and he exposed the lie. Or more precise: he got us exposing those lies.
1/5
We started out in school by analysing the murder of Friedrich Schumm on April 1st 1933. He was a jewish lawyer born in #Kiel and where his parents still lived. On the day of a visit at home due to the marriage of his little sister, the SS was enforcing a boycott of the shop his father was operating.
He wanted to the enter the shop of his father but was hindered by the SS picket. A short fight ensued, a shot rang out and a man from the SS was seriously injured. Schumm fled, presented himself at a police station and was arrested.
Later that day, a lynch mob compromised of members of the SA/SS formed. The ransacked the shop of his father and with the help of Nazi politicians they entered the prison and his cell. They shot him 30 times.
2/5
This didn't happen in secret. We went to the archive of the local newspaper and got articles about the event from back then. And it was all in there. The newspaper (which still exists today) stumbled over his own feet in order to justify the lynching. I couldn't believe what I was reading: "We strongly condemn any lynching but this case was clearly justified". The newspaper argued against any prosecution of the lynch mob. They said that "gesundes Volksempfinden" (healthy popular sentiment) made the event inevitable.
It was a huge story back then that dominated the news for quite so time. It was not hidden on the second page, but the top news of the month. There were quotes from local Nazi politicians who claimed to be proud of the deed. All was there in broad daylight. The SS wasn't even attempting to hide it.
3/5
So knowing what we new, we went out to ask people who were adults at the time of the deed. We asked them where they were living and which newspaper they had back then. After establishing that, we started asking about the murder.
And again we got the famous "I didn't know" again and again. We had copies of the newspaper from the incident and confronted them with it. They stuck to it. Nobody knew anything at all. The thing happened, became top news and nobody ever even heard of it.
They became angry at us for asking. Sometimes we were chased away. This was because we clearly noticed that they were lyiing and being teenager, we were not good at hiding the fact that we knew.
4/5
The frustrating thing about history is: When you study it, you see it all happening again. When one day the grandchildren of the young adults in the U.S. today will ask "Why didn't you say something when they deported innocent people to camps in El Salvador?" I can already tell their answer today "I didn't know."
5/5
@masek Deportations of protestors are happening today in Germany. Will you say you didn’t know?
@scobra1cz @masek So what you’re saying is that you too would have said “We strongly condemn any lynching but this case was clearly justified” because he was shot in a prison, not a concentration camp? It’s literally in the story that he wasn’t sent to a concentration camp!
@ahltorp
I think what he's saying is that it is very unjust to the victims of genocide to compare denial of entry to the country for the 4 foreigners - to the massacre of millions of local people.
@scobra1cz @masek
@scobra1cz @ruff I did not make the leap to deportations, @masek did, and I replied to that.
@ruff @scobra1cz If that was the only thing Germany was doing, then yes, I would agree that it would be unfair. And my initial comparison was to that of deportations in the US as mentioned in the post I replied to, not to historical genocide in Germany.
@ruff @ahltorp @masek Exactly. It's completely uncomparable even if we don't compare it with concentration camps, but with 'just' murder from the story.