A chilling thought, even today. But in the mid-1960s, as a young mother of a toddler and an infant, it was something for which I was so completely unprepared, the experience actually made me physically ill. And the memory of it still does.
It was during the Cold War, when the world was focused on the threat of possible attack from the Soviet Union, and thoughts of World War II and the Nazi horrors were 20 years behind us. I was living in California, somewhere south of San Francisco, with my two children and then husband, who worked as an industrial engineer.
I was a stay-at-home mom at the time, and when I learned that we had been invited for dinner at the home of a friend of my husband’s from work, I was delighted. We had even been told to bring the children, as they had little ones of their own.
I don’t even remember their names now, but I do remember being told that they were from Germany, and thinking only that that probably meant the meal would be delicious. And on the following Saturday evening, packing up diapers and bottles of formula for the baby, off we went.
The evening was going well. The man and his wife were charming and hospitable; the children — ours and theirs — were behaving well; and, as expected, the food was outstanding. After a couple of drinks for the adults, talk turned to the couple’s history — where they were from, when they had come to the U.S., etc. And the husband decided to pull out an old family photo album to share.
I love looking at other people’s pictures, and especially old ones. We were happily leafing through the collection, seeing charming shots of happy people in 1930s Germany, when the husband turned a page and pointed proudly to a photo of a man he identified as his brother, who now lived in Argentina . . . a tall, distinguished-looking gentleman wearing, not an army uniform, but the distinctive black uniform and unmistakable insignia of the German SS.
And my blood froze.
As, apparently, did the rest of me. Because my husband immediately noticed, and didn’t argue when I suddenly developed a headache and said I needed to get home to put the babies to bed. Shaking, and choking back the bile that kept trying to force its way up my throat, I managed to say a reasonably polite good night and thanks for a lovely evening, and made a beeline for the car.
And as soon as the car doors were closed, the violent trembling began. I couldn’t stop it; all I could do was keep taking deep, gasping breaths until I was finally able to choke out some actual words. I said that I realized there was nothing to be done about the work situation, but that I would never, under any circumstances, see or speak to those people again. I needn’t have bothered — he understood completely, and had been as shocked as I was.
Well, nearly as shocked. He wasn’t Jewish.
*. *. *
I’ve had other, not quite so close, encounters with the American Nazi Party: a campaigner for the party’s founder, George Lincoln Rockwell, trying to hand me propaganda leaflets on the street in Virginia; and a demonstration on the Memorial Bridge connecting Washington, D.C.’s Lincoln Memorial and Virginia’s Arlington Cemetery. In the first instance, I told the scumbag to go to hell; in the second, I reported the illegal demonstration to the police, who promptly broke it up.
But nothing affected me as fiercely as coming into direct contact with an individual — a naturalized American citizen — who proudly showed off his Nazi roots to a total stranger.
And even now, nearly 80 years after the end of that horrific war and the Holocaust that took so many millions of lives, neo-Nazi groups continue to exist among us. Hatred, it seems, never dies.
Just sayin’ . . .
Brendochka
7/28/24
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