My Take: We so easily dehumanize one another. We must do everything we can to prevent it.
On Oct. 27, 2018, I was leading a funeral for a woman from my community. She was raised Christian, and her husband was Jewish. The funeral had elements from Jewish tradition as well as from Unitarian Universalist (UU) practices. The family gravitated toward our congregation because the couple married in the UU church; no other church would marry a mixed-faith couple.
After the service was over and the family departed, I learned that there had been a shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, among the deadliest attacks against the Jewish people in the United States. Eleven worshipers were killed. Later, I called the family to offer my condolences — again.
Not long before that horrible day, during the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, the neo-Nazis, Klansmen and Confederate flag-waving, swastika wearing marchers cried out, “The Jews will not replace us.” Antisemitism and hate punctuated by violence has become far too common in this country. Such horror must not be allowed to continue. But how does one stop hate? A partial answer is learning about our history.
The Petoskey Public Library is to be commended for bringing a Holocaust Exhibition to town, opening Jan. 5. It is, Americans and the Holocaust: What did Americans know? What more could have been done? The exhibit comes from the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.
Library Director Val Meyerson wrote: "Research for the exhibition began in 2013 to help outline America's role during the Holocaust. The exhibit explores four main questions: what did Americans know, did Americans help Jewish refugees, why did Americans go to war, and how did Americans respond to the Holocaust? Thoughtful reflection on these questions will lead participants towards questioning our current responses to social issues."
For most of us, the Holocaust was a horror story that took place in Germany and led to World War II. The murder of six million Jewish people and others by the Nazis was an unmatched genocide and the world said, “Never again” when the truth came out about the Holocaust.
In Nazi Germany, Jews were blamed for running all the businesses and having too much power; they needed to be eliminated. They were dehumanized as not “real” Germans. When the Nazis started rounding up the Jews, much of the non-Jewish population ignored what was happening out of fear and out of hatred, a hatred fomented by the Nazis.
Here in the U.S., Rev. Charles Coughlin at the Shrine of the Little Flower in Royal Oak, Michigan, used radio-broadcasted messages to effectively spew messages of hate, nearly word-for-word from Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. That’s right. An American Priest carried the message of the Nazi’s to the U.S. where it was widely accepted. If you think you are immune to propaganda, ask yourself why companies spend millions of dollars on advertising.
How does this hatred spread? The first step in creating such atrocities is dehumanizing some “other” by creating a story that creates an “us” vs. “them.” Twentieth Century Philosopher Hannah Arendt studied the Nazi regime to try to learn how it could be so evil and successful. There were three systematic, bureaucratic steps. First, the Germans removed civil rights of Jews, gays, and others, along with any recourse to fight against the loss of these rights. The second step was to diminish human solidarity; people were forced to betray their friends to protect their family. The third step was to destroy any sense of individuality, personal strength, or agency, leading to emptiness and hopelessness.
Once we have opened our eyes to the reality of what one human can do to another, once we have opened our eyes to how easily we might dehumanize another, wouldn’t we want to do everything we could to prevent such actions? We see these patterns repeated today, especially the efforts to remove human rights, create “others,” and limit the ability to organize, or even to teach. Some Petoskey schools have been targeted with swastikas. Our youth must learn this history and the impact of their actions.
The Unitarian Universalist faith tradition promotes the inherent worth and dignity of every person as our first Principle. The notion that one’s religion, culture, race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation should make anyone a target for hate and murder is something we condemn. Let us learn our history so we will not continue to repeat it.
The UU Congregation of Petoskey will share its offering with the Anti-defamation League during the first quarter of 2023.
— Alice Diebel is a pastor at Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Petoskey.
This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: My Take: We so easily dehumanize one another. We must do everything we can to prevent it.
