Hitler as the Messiah: Come Again?

I had mentioned in my Holocaust blog post that I wanted to blog about a really bizarre and sort of horrific thing I saw at the museum in the Propaganda Exhibit. That thing? Here it is:

You might look at this and be like, well, it's horrific because Hitler's in it, and you're putting it on your blog, and that's pretty horrific. But the reality of it is that this painting has a name, and that name is "In the Beginning There Was the Word." Anyone who knows their Christian Bible will recognize this phrase from John 1:1. There are a million paintings of Jesus out there in which he's emanating light, where he is, in fact, the only light in a room of people listening to him speak. Take this one, for example, by Rembrandt, called "Jesus Among his Students."

The crappy thing about that first photo, the image of the Hitler painting, is that you don't really get the full effect of the painting. In person, the thing is huge, wall-size. The room is black, save the light issuing from perfect angles from Hitler's face to those around him.

The shocking/disgusting thing about this portrayal of Hitler, in my mind, is that it's incredibly messianic. Hitler as Jesus, Hitler as the savior of the German people. The Nazis found religion pretty repugnant, despite forcing religious leaders to swear allegiance and all. In fact, in the Nazi's plans for a new, worldwide capital, there wasn't a single church in the building plans. What does that say? It says that the Nazis devalued religion, period.

So why portray Hitler as the messiah? Why depict him as the shining light of German redemption? Aside from the basic reason that for the Nazis and their masters of propaganda Hitler was Germany's only future in crawling out of economic turmoil and the disgrace of World War I and the Treaty of Versailles. But it goes deeper than that. The propaganda artists knew, very well, that they had to play to every last member of the German audience, no matter what they did or didn't believe.

The propaganda machine started small, with basic messages like "Buy War Bonds" and "Bread and Water." The machine really got in motion as it started to change its image, depicting the German as breaking his bonds from the Treaty of Versailles and standing firm in Nationalistic, German values. Still later, and almost in slow-motion ramping up to blunt-force came the blaming of Germany's woes on Jews. Then you had things like this that, well, don't hide their message.

This being a book about the Poisonous Mushroom, which, as you can tell, is a Jew. Surprise? Not really. But beware the poisonous Jew out in the wilderness. This was dished out to kids just as radios were dished out to people -- en masse.

I am fully intrigued and disgusted by Hitler as messiah, however. I'm interested in other depictions of Hitler as messiah, in fact. I'm interested in what the Church thought of those images, too. A simple Amazon book search of "Hitler messiah" produces a bounty of interesting books, including some that cite the Swastika as the new cross -- a new cross for a new messiah.

What do you guys think? Does anyone have experience with this Hitler/Messiah theme? Again, I am horrified/disgusted. Hitler, for all intents and purposes, antagonized Modern Christianity. In Hitler's mind, Christianity was meant to be entrenched in its ancient, almost pagan rituals and understandings.

But seriously. A mushroom?

(Note: As I'm preparing to PUBLISH this, two guys sit down next to me at Starbucks and start discussing Hitler and his secret liquor stash. Weird.)

And Then, I Wept for Six Million.

This is my 1,000th blog post here on Just Call Me Chaviva. It's been a good and educational run so far, and during my four years here, I've mapped my way through two degrees (the B.A. and upcoming M.A.), three streams of Judaism, four towns, eight houses/apartments of residence, and countless bad dates that have resulted in my current engagement to Tuvia. I could numerate a dozen other things (books read, cities traveled, movies watched, angry/inappropriate blog post comments), but I won't waste your time. I wanted to stress how long I've been blogging and how big this post is for me -- and ultimately for you -- and the best way I can do this is through just writing the darn thing. So here goes. Enjoy this 1,000th post, comment, and let me know what you think. Oh, and keep reading!

I spent the past few days traversing the East Coast, with the eventual goal of landing in Washington D.C. and at the U.S. Holocaust Museum with a class from my university that I'm not even in. The head of the department planned the trip, which was funded by an awesome couple that literally (I mean that, too, building floors and laboring on buildings back in the day) helped build the university, and I was invited along because I'm a graduate student. I said yes, knowing that, as I've said a million times before, the Holocaust is a difficult thing for converts to connect to. I've been twice before, once in January 2003 and once on a JDate (right) in 2006. Four years later, and I'm in a different place entirely. This blog, for one, has followed me through those four years of growing from Reform Conversion to Orthodox Conversion and all the chaos, tears, and education in between. The last two trips to the museum for me were not particularly emotional. I was stunned, yes, but not emotional. I wasn't involved. I wasn't in the trenches of the Holocaust; there was no memory.

Now? I'm marrying into the memory of the Holocaust. Tuvia's family has Holocaust survivors and stories that are still yet untold. I walked into that museum entrenched in the emotion of two new families: my Jewish family and my future in-laws.

The tour was guided. There were about 20 of us, two docents -- one a retired lawyer, the other a retired doctor -- and several floors of stories, photos, and horror. Lots of random people ended up following us and listening to the docents, who peppered the winding journey with anecdotes about people who they've shown through the museum, people who saw themselves standing near rail cars and in bread lines. I couldn't help but be horrified at the prospect: Walking through a Holocaust museum, staring into a photo of Nazi visions, and seeing yourself or your mother or your father. I looked at every photo in that museum, hoping to see the image of three women I know who survived that horrific vision of Hitler's.

I don't know why, but when I stepped into the museum, I felt different. I've already mentioned that I knew I was walking in with something new, something different, but I didn't know how much it would impact my experience. We made it to the photos. The Tower of Faces. That hall of photos from a village, thousands of people in photos skiing and smiling and eating dinner and hugging and laughing and ... living. And you see them on two floors, and it only took me to the first encounter with them and I teared up. Without tissues, I hesitated. I breathed. I looked at the happy photos and pretended they had names with their faces and that they were just there, in that moment, happy and alive and that that is how they lived and died. On skis. Smiling. Just giggling away. But I know they're dead. I knew there, standing in that hall, listening to the docent tell an anecdote about his granddaughter and Elie Wiesel. I was lost.

We stopped at a bathroom and I grabbed a wad of toilet paper. I had spotted the rail car in the distance, I knew something was coming. A flood. Emotions that I never knew I had, that my neshama has hidden away, yearning something to spark it. Something to help me feel connected, to really get the Shoah.

We carried on, staring at photos from the ghettos. Iron doors and sad faces, people sitting in streets unaware of their eventual fate beyond hunger, thirst, and poverty: death. We rounded a corner, experiencing for a moment the joy of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. And then? The rail car. "Everyone come in," the docent said. "Closer, closer," he said.

CLOSER, he urged.

There we were, ten or eleven of us in that rail car. Gifted to the museum by Poland (how kind of them), placed in the museum while it was still being built. And I lost it. I completely lost it. I imagined what it must have been like -- like I have every other time I was there, but it was different. The air was tight, the light floating inside the small windows was suffocating, the corners smelled like urine, the car was full. Full of death and tears. My tears.

He ushered us out, moving on to photos of individuals arriving at Auschwitz, and I stared into the faces, my eyes blurry, sopping up tears, trying and hoping to see a familiar face. It's probably really morbid that I want to see my future in-laws in those photos, but I want to empathize, I want to see them in those moments they don't talk about. I want to know their story.

The rest of the museum -- up until lunch -- was a blur. Stories of liberation and righteous gentiles, a photo of Chaviva Reik, who paratrooped into the warzone and died. There were striped pajamas and piles of shoes that made me cry again. I looked at them and whispered quietly, "HaShem, where were you?" I marveled at the bible verses in the Memorial Hall, thinking how ironic it is that they're there, after everything, G-d is there. He's always there. Wasn't he? Isn't he?

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never. --Elie Wiesel

By the time we got back to the classroom for lunch, and after I had to beg and plead for more than prepackaged asian noodles for lunch, I had calmed down. Calmed down enough that I sat talking to others and blinking, a lot. I haven't been tired all day, but my eyes, after crying and my mind, after absorbing and processing, left me exhausted. No, it left me depressed.

I just wanted to sleep.

But there was a propaganda exhibit (which I have another post about, believe me), and speakers, and the gift shop, and discussion. There were conversations and complaints about food and space and exhaustion  and in my head I continued to think "we're all so fucking stupid." Stupid, I mean, because our lives? They're a walk in the park. Even with the threat of antiSemitism (think: Monsey as of late), we're not edging as close as we think we are to then. To that life. To that other place where things were ... hell. Where death was at the doorstep. Where life was being sucked out of people. I felt weird complaining about anything. The kosher food, the temperature in the room, my exhaustion. I was sobered. Fast.

My eyes are still foggy. I'm not tired, but my head hurts, my heart hurts. I'm still processing and there are images I can't seem to get out of my head. This one, of a woman in that destroyed village, with long flowing hair; she looked like a gypsy with her headdress, but clearly a Jewess, a Jewess who probably was murdered by the Nazi death machine. Her photo? It was in the Tower of Faces, people from Eishishok in now-Lithuania. I bet she had many suitors in her day.

Suddenly, the Holocaust is my memory. I have a story now, I have a lot of stories. I have too many stories, in boxcars and shoes and images of beautiful, Jewish women. I have my fiance's grandmother's story. And her sisters. My mind is a cloud of darkness and violence and hatred. My eyes? A well of tears that could fill a boxcar. I never thought it would resonate; I never thought I would feel death and aging in my bones like I do right now.

But I'm alive, and I am breathing. I'm not smoke drifting upward, a cloud in formation, dust over the atmosphere. I'm breathing, with bones and blood. I am a Jew. And there was a Holocaust. How do I know? I feel it; I breathe it; when my tears drip, they drip for the 6 million and more.

An End: This post ends on a bus somewhere in Maryland, and Defiance is on the movie screen. Justice makes me smile, living makes me laugh. I just wish the world knew that we're all 99 percent the same. That, folks, is the majority. In most things, the majority wins. So why, in the battle of humanity, do we allow that 1 percent difference to move us to active indifference, collaboration, and murder? I'm exhausted and frustrated with humanity. With genocide and the Holocaust and indifference. Indifference. Do you realize how indifferent we are? My world is topsy turvy right now. My stream of consciousness is dry, my eyes wet. This is where indifference must stop.

History Repeats, Repeats, Repeats.

Today marks Yom HaShoah -- Holocaust Remembrance Day. I know the blogosphere will be crawling with posts dedicated to family members lost, to the feelings surrounding the day, to the horror and catastrophe that happened so many years ago, and the continued fear of "what if?"

I'm not melodramatic when it comes to the Shoah, and I don't want my readers to think I'm nuts. But the question of "what if?" is not so far-fetched. Insanity, after all, as Einstein said is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. If you think about history, there have been plenty of large-scale attempts at destruction of the Jewish people, going back to the Babylonian Exile and ranging through the first crusades through the Rhine and on into the Holocaust. In between, the world has been peppered with pogroms, blood libel, and just plain killing Jews for the sake of killing them. You'll also recall that during the First Revolt that led up to the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, you had Jews (Zealots) killing other Jews en masse.

We're no strangers to death on a large scale.

My "what if?" comes with the additional "people don't learn and continue the path of destruction aimed at the Jewish people?" I don't think it's so outlandish. It's why I don't understand why there are Jews who presently don't think about or support the State of Israel. Worse comes to worse, I'm cutting a rug and b-lining to Israel.

I've often said that the Shoah is probably the hardest thing for a convert to connect to when it comes to Jews and Judaism. There are converts who discover long-lost lineage stepping back to the Shoah, family members who went into hiding for fear of death at the hands of Nazis or others because they were Jewish. Generations later, the truth comes out and a grandchild or great-grandchild returns to the family roots. For those of us with no roots, however, it's difficult. But I'm marrying into a memory.

Tuvia's grandmother (as well as her two surviving sisters) experienced the atrocities of the Shoah, losing their parents and other siblings, as well as other relatives, while suffering the horrors of Auschwitz and other camps. They survived, but at a cost that is unbelievably great. One sister had her physical and emotional abilities disabled, another spoke out about her experiences and Tuvia and I plan on watching the video, which we ordered from the Shoah Project, this evening -- he's never seen it. His grandmother doesn't talk about/remember her experiences during the war, despite being a teenager. I know it's horrifying, and it's almost like the affect of the car accident -- you just want to know and hear the details, to know what family went through. I want to know their story, so our children and their children will not forget what happened. The moment we forget, that's when insanity kicks in.

History, after all, repeats, repeats, repeats.

Be well and today, if only for a moment, think about the sheer volume of those killed. Think about those 6 million Jews who died, as well as those 2-3 million Soviet POWs, 1.8-2 million ethnic Poles, 1.5 million Romani, 200,000 disabled, 80,000 Freemasons, 5,000-15,000 homosexuals, and 2,500-5,000 Jehovah's witnesses that were killed for being exactly who they were.

Suggested reading: I recently finished a book called "The True Story of Hansel and Gretel" by Lousie Murphy, which is a fictional account of two small children, dropped by their father and step-mother at the edge of a forest in Poland while running from the Nazis. The children end up in a village, taken in by a "witch" (who, as it turns out, was a gypsy!), and the parents join the resistance. The story is woven wonderfully, with vivid imagery and a horrific tale about what went on in the village of the woman who harbored these children until the liberation. If anything, the book is graphic and ultimately apologetic to the Polish cause. Portions of the book feel forced (an incident post-war by a Pole lashing out at a Jew, for example), but overall it's a vivid and horrifying tale of what could have gone on in the story of any child left to the mercy of a kind, gypsy soul. The apologetic nature of the book bothered me, and it was pretty blunt in its representation of the Poles as purely victims. For me, with the story "Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne" by Jan T. Gross always clear in my mind, I find it difficult to relate to the "victimless" Polish village.

Are you kidding me?

I really ... really want to know who thought making a Holocaust float for the Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Carnival parade was a good idea. I mean ... really. Beware: That site has a picture of the float on it, so, prepare to be maybe offended.

"A guy dressed as Hitler atop a pile of dead Jews, that's too much. It's beyond
the limits of common sense. There is no way we could accept that," said Sergio
Niskier, president of the Rio federation, hailing the judge's decision.

Too much? I think it's more than "too much." It's the most moronic idea ever. I don't know what the Viradouro Samba School was thinking. I wish they had a website ... and I wish I knew what their decisionmaking process was. Because, seriously. WTF?

If they go ahead with the float, they'll be fined a mere $110,000 for the float and $28,000 for the Hitler impersonator.

Super.

A "I can't believe this just happened to me" Moment

Place: Chicago, IL; Addison Red Line Stop
Time: 6:08 p.m.
Scene: Reading "My Holocaust" by Tova Reich outside the station while waiting for Ian to arrive so we can go to shul. I have just taken my head phones out in anticipation of Ian's arrival. I return to reading "My Holocaust," which I had just purchased and was very involved in. A man, smoking a cigarette, wearing an old cap, a screen-printed T-shirt and jeans, looking very ... well ... not Chicago, walks near me, crosses to the other side, and gazes at the book I am reading.

You read that stuff, eh?
Yes ...?
Ever read the 'Third Reich'?

I stare blankly at the man. With a slight, irritated grin ...

I assume it's about Hitler, yes?
Sure is (he says with a large, toothy, satisfied grin).

A long pause. I fiddle with my necklace, a star of David.

I'm Jewish.

He looks at the book again, tilts his head ever so slightly and takes a puff off his cigarette.

Oh!!! It says ... what's that ... Jo ... Jova Reich?
It's Tova Reich. She's a Jewish author.

Ian walks up.

Hey, how's it going?

The man, who must be in his mid-20s, takes one look at Ian and stops speaking and walks away. I am in dismay. Irritated, frustrated, appalled. It was brief, disturbing, altering. This man visibly digs Hitler. This man visibly thought I, too, dug Hitler. He wanted to share his shit literature with me, because I guess I looked like someone ... someone who would cut a crown out of construction paper just to place it on the fully-haired head of a tyrant of modern times and indescribable proportions.

What the hell?