reading the testimony of a Red Cross official who visited a site that was described by the authorities as a “shelter for the refugee children.” After visiting the site, this Red Cross official stated the following:
“Not far from the ambulance, from another barracks, the sad cries of the children were heard. There was set, on the bare floor, four hundred children: newborns, children from a few weeks or months, up to ten years of age. How many children came, and where they were dispatched, could no longer be found out. The children in the children’s barracks cried inexorably and were calling their mothers, who were only a few steps away from the children, but the fascist criminals did not let mothers to approach their children.”
Again, this was the Red Cross official’s description of what was called a “shelter for refugee children.” But this so-called shelter was not in the U.S.; it was in fascist Croatia during World War II. In reality, it was not a shelter for refugee children: It was a concentration camp, known as Sisak, and run by Ustaše fascists allied with Hitler. It began with 900 children in 1942, most of them Serbs, and eventually there would be more than 6,600 children that were taken to the camp. Between 1,100 and 1,600 of these children would die there.
The Nazis, too, had concentration camps for children. And, in at least one case, the Nazis manufactured a small village in one of its camps, forcing its prisoners to temporarily convert their hellish gulag into a propaganda site for a visit from the Red Cross.
I bring this up because of the mind-boggling press conference on Monday of the Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen when she was confronted with the audio obtained and published by ProPublica on Monday.
What we hear on this tape are cries of children in detention, desperate, looking for their parents, promising to behave if they let them see their parents. It’s gut-wrenching and sickening. But Secretary Nielsen assured the press that the conditions in these detention centers for children are actually really good, and she can testify to that because she’s been there.
There’s been a lot of discussions lately about comparing the Trump administration’s family separation policy to policies of the Nazis, specifically concentration camps. Some people have objected to such comparisons, saying that they trivialize the mass extermination that took place during the Holocaust.
Some say that Jeff Sessions and Stephen Miller are adopting or utilizing Nazi tactics. But listen to what Adolf Hitler wrote about his vision of immigration in “Mein Kampf” in 1925. Hitler writes, and I’m quoting:
“At present, there exists one State which manifests at least some modest attempts that show a better appreciation of how things ought to be done in this matter. It is not, however, in our model German Republic but in the U.S.A. that efforts are made to conform at least partly to the counsels of common sense. By refusing immigrants to enter there if they are in a bad state of health, and by excluding certain races from the right to become naturalized as citizens, they have begun to introduce principles similar to those on which we wish to ground the People’s State.”
That was in 1925, Adolf Hitler saying that he was inspired by the way that the United States was handling immigration.
You see, history and context are vitally important. At the same time, the horrors being meted out by the Trump administration are their own crime. And the racism, the xenophobia, the labeling of undocumented people as “vermin,” the lie from Stephen Miller that forced separation is actually a humanitarian program — all of this deserves to be fought because it is happening and it is happening now. Yes, the tactics, the rhetoric, the white supremacy — all of these are rooted in history. That history includes the Nazis, but it also includes the history of the United States.
All mass crimes throughout history start with a justification, a necessity rationalization, a sick form of nationalism and racism. And also, that notion that we are God’s chosen people and everything we do under our manmade laws is actually divinely blessed and endorsed. We do not know what horrors are gonna come next with this criminal, human rights abusing, child-abuse factory being run by the Trump administration. But history teaches us that now is the time to be vigilant, now is the time to fight, to resist, to stop this before it moves onto its next stage — whatever that may be.
— source theintercept.com by Jeremy Scahill