-
Issa Recovers
May 22, 2013 | 1 comment
-
Colorado Governor Gives “Reprieve” to Murderer
May 22, 2013 | 1 comment
-
Steven Crowder: Jesus vs. Muhammad
May 22, 2013 | 2 comments
-
Kaminsky’s Corollary to I, Pencil
May 22, 2013 | 2 comments
-
Muslims Murder British Soldier in London
May 22, 2013 | 12 comments
The Spectacle Blog
My friend and colleague, Mike Rosen, the dean of Denver talk radio hosts, received the following letter from a listener. Please read it, and then afterwards I will give you a little more information about it. (I have corrected minor spelling errors.)
Dear Bess,
Got your letter this morning. Whatever the future holds for America as a result of the election, I can take it, if the rest can, but I think this election showed that the majority of Americans are not concerned about their individual liberty and freedom, about how much the national debt is, or whether it is ever paid, about (another) term for any man, but what they want most is their security, and the majority of Americans are bleating like little lambs for their security, not for their freedom or for their liberty. And let me add, that when people get a sense of insignificance, when they begin to believe that the affairs of men are controlled by forces too great to be influenced by their individual effort, their belief in popular government is shaken and the people become broken in spirit, disappointed, pessimistic, and fatalism results.
No Bess, as long as great numbers of people can be kept dependent upon their government, and as long as we have the money to keep them dependent, there is not much that you and I can do, but the ultimate result of such a program is that America will drift into a national dependent socialistic controlled state under what we have thought was our liberty, and freedom will no longer be ours in America. I am almost 55 years of age. I won’t be here many more years, but oh how weak and spineless we of our generation have been to try and preserve all these great things our forefathers gave to us.
The other night I had a dream, my home had been destroyed, my wife and child were in a concentration camp, my money had been taken from me, my rights as a freeman had been taken from me. I had no rights. I was a slave. Then I awoke, then I realized what freedom had meant to me, but it was too late.
This is a morbid dream, I know, but it has happened to millions of people in Europe, not a thousand years ago (but within my lifetime.)
Keep this letter, read it two, three, or four years from now. My prayer is that I am wrong.
Bob
This letter was sent to Mike by an 88-year old listener. Although it could plausbily have been dated 2009 (except that there was no incumbent running in 2008), it was written by the listener’s father (to his sister, the listener’s aunt) on November 8, 1940, three days after FDR won a record third term in office. Mike’s listener noted that her father died at the age of 57, or about two years after writing this note.
In the note, in the first paragraph where I put “(another)” the letter says “a third”, and near the end where I put “(but within my lifetime)” the letter says “but within the past few months.” (I changed these just to leave a little suspense regarding when the letter was written.)
It is, to me, remarkable to read someone of that generation complain how little those of his time had done to defend freedom, though the context is someone who died before the end of WWII. Keep in mind that this is not someone who would have been a soldier in WWII, but was substantially older, probably born in 1885 and lived through World War I and most of the Great Depression.
In any case, this letter reminds us of Santayana’s warning that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” It makes one wonder whether our young people being taught so little about our own political history is part of an intentional strategy of the left. (Actually, I don’t wonder that much; I believe it to be true.)
————————
For the record, I do have a slight question about the letter given that it is dated late 1940 which is earlier than the existence of concentration camps, or at least their use in the Nazis’ genocide, was generally known in the U.S. To be sure, some of the camps, including Buchenwald and Dachau, had been around for years by 1940, with Dachau having been opened in 1933. That said, the mention of FDR’s having won a third term adds credibility, and I am inclined to believe that this letter is real. I have also verified through public records that there is an 88-year-old woman with the name (and in the town) signed to the e-mail to Mike. Therefore, regarding concentration camps, “Bob” was probably just more aware of world events than the average person, much as a depressingly large percentage of today’s Americans are geopolitically illterate.
A friend of mine offered this: Regarding concentration camps: my father was sent to his, where he spent 5 years, Orianenburg Sachsenhausen, in the spring of 1940. It was already infamous in Polish history as the camp to which many Poles were sent in the wake of the German invasion of Poland in September 1939. The prisoners there included most of the professors from Krakow’s leading university, many of them well past their physical prime, and as such didn’t survive very long. I think it’s safe to say such camps were known about in the West, even if the “death” camp aspect and special sites for outright genocide were still in the offing.
View all comments (15) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by Ross Kaminsky
http://spectator.org/blog/2012/09/10/dear-bess
Follow us:
ADVERTISEMENT
Current Issue
- Ailes: A Voice for the Silent Majority
- Nuts to Nutter
- Peace in Our Times
SPONSORED LINKS
FLASHBACK TO: 1995
-
Pope Culture
A man of faith in a godless age is hitting Americans where it hurts.
-
Why the GOP Does Not, Like, Totally Suck
Mr. and Mrs. American Spectator Reader, let P.J. O’Rourke talk sense to your kids.
-
Dames at Sea
-
In the Absence of Guns
In Britain, defending your property can get you life.
-
The Metaphysical Martini
-
Counting the Costs of Clintonism
The debacle of this president’s administration is both a cause and a symptom of the decline of American values. Unless Congress impeaches him, that decline will go on unchecked. An eminent jurist surveys the damage and assesses the chances for the recovery of our culture.
-
Chuck McHagel
It won’t take long for conservatives to scratch this presidential wannabe off their 2008 scorecard.
-
The Legacy of Old John and Mother Fresh-Roasted
-
It’s the Best Time of the Year
The American Christmas, like the songs that celebrate it, makes room for everybody under the rainbow. Is that why so many people seem to be hostile to it?
-
The Bush Crack-Up
Was the President done in by the economy, or by the politics of the economy?
Clip of the Day
ADVERTISEMENT
Ken (Old Texican)| 9.10.12 @ 1:51PM
Hi Ross.
My morbid dream has me sitting in my ftont window protecting my home and dependents as the starving suckers boil out of our center city.
RJ| 9.10.12 @ 2:42PM
Fascinating letter. Thanks for posting it, Ross and I think you are right about "Bob's" awareness of German concentration camps.
I share the same concern that Americans don't seem to value liberty and rule of law as much we have in the past and the country strikes me as drifting towards dictatorship. I recently reread Alan Bullock's "Hitler, A Study in Tyranny" and read Milton Meyer's "They Thought They Were Free" (recommended by one of AS' commentors). Both books are very sobering as to how easy it is for government to turn into a brutal dictatorship.
Oldefarte| 9.10.12 @ 2:49PM
I don't [sadly] have too many "dreams" [where for instance John B. Patempton's Michael shows up at my front door with a check in hand]; but I do have NIGHTMARES! The most frightening of same involves this group of domestic terrorists that have captured a country, and over a period of eight years [and due to the its people voting """""STUPIDLY"""""] monetarily destroy its economy leaving everyone's financial accounts being seized by the government and redistributed to beggars and theives; that open up its southern border to an invasion of foreigners and religious fanatical/terrorist foot soldiers who commence to plant roadside bombs within the country's infrastructure, decapitate non-believers' heads for non-adherence to Sharia Law, rape females for not submitting to their husbands sexually or for not marrying male members of this radical religion; etc. The only problem is that when I have these type nightmares, I always wake up to discover that it was no nightmare at all, but in fact is actually occurring presently!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Teflon93 | 9.10.12 @ 3:01PM
Widespread knowledge is not the same as no knowledge---remember this?
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrar.....louis.html
Teflon93 | 9.10.12 @ 3:02PM
And let's not forget how many Americans in the 1930s were for appeasing Hitler and staying out of the war. The Greatest Generation was formed after Pearl Harbor.
Occam's Tool| 9.10.12 @ 5:50PM
Like, famously, Charles Lindbergh, whose "America First" movement almost put America down for the count.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.
RJ| 9.10.12 @ 6:11PM
A few years ago I read an interesting book entitled "Five Days in London: May 1940" by John Lukacs. The theme of the book is that the most critical days of WWII were when the new Prime Minister of Great Britain, Winston Churchill, exerted all of his influence to keep GB in the war. It took all of his skill, effort, persuasion, and determination to prevail. Looking at GB's prior efforts in confronting Hitler, it is surprising that Churchill was able to pull it off. How lucky we are that the right man was in the right position at the right time.
historian| 9.10.12 @ 4:59PM
“Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.”
Benjamin Franklin
As a historian, I should add a couple historic notes: 1) FDR has the distinction of being the only president in US history of establishing "concentration camps" which is one label used for the Japanese internment camps during the war (unless you want to include what was done to the Cherokee in the 1830s or the plains tribes later); 2) The "death" camps, as opposed to concentration camps, began mass murders on an industrial scale in early 1942 and was not widely known in the West until much later.
Pelleas| 9.10.12 @ 9:38PM
I beg to differ...
The Western Powers KNEW EXACTLY what was happening in the Death Camps, from mid 1942, onwards... the deportations and emptying of the Lodz/Warsaw/and other Polish Ghettos were in full force by February of that year..and articles were appearing (albeit buried in the inner pages) of The New York Times, and other newspapers , in various Cities in America and England , reporting that there were "rumors and confirmed reports" of wholescale massacres occuring in "special camps" throughout Poland
Nick| 9.11.12 @ 12:01AM
Well, you can thank your hero, the Polio Prince, for that, Pelleas. Oh, and your comrades, the Soviets.
Who were responsible for the Katyn massacre, where over 20,000 Polish officers, police men, priests, business owners, etc., etc., were killed.
C. Vernon Crisler | 9.10.12 @ 7:42PM
I have a feeling the letter is faked. My Dan Rather light came on over the "concentration camp" reference, too. However, I haven't found it on Snopes.com so there's still a possibility that it's genuine, but I have my doubts.
Pelleas| 9.10.12 @ 9:24PM
This posting totally undid itself with this dubious segment:
"A friend of mine offered this: Regarding concentration camps: my father was sent to his, where he spent 5 years, Orianenburg Sachsenhausen, in the spring of 1940. It was already infamous in Polish history as the camp to which many Poles were sent in the wake of the German invasion of Poland in September 1939"
-------
Orienburg Concentration Camp was one of the first Camps to be set up, after the Nazis seized power, in 1933. It is on the outskirts of Berlin, and was the Camp that political prisoners/religious "trouble-makers" (non-Jewish)/Homosexuals/ and a variety of people that the Nazi's considered "asocial"
NO POLISH prisoners were shipped to "The Greater Reich"---and in particular..NOT to the Berlin area, in ANY CAPACITY, until at least 1943-44, when man-power shortages in Germany were the cause for Polish- and other captive European slave-laborers to be shipped into Germany, itself
In 1940, Polish prisoners were forced to construct, and inhabit a new Camp, in the area of the Polish back-water City of Osweicim, which two years later, began to receive its first transport of Jewish victims--which were sent directly to the gas-chambers, which the Germans had previously been experimenting on the Polish captives-- this camp is now known by its German name-Auschwitz...
Ross Kaminsky| 9.11.12 @ 8:47AM
You sure do write with an authoritative tone for someone whose "information" appears to be completely wrong.
For example, the Holocaust Research Project entry on Sachsenhausen says "Beginning in 1939 the populations of the occupied countries, foreign forced laborers and allied prisoners of war were also imprisoned in Sachsenhausen..." And "By 1939 large numbers of citizens from the occupied European states arrived."
http://www.holocaustresearchpr.....ausen.html
And from another web site: "German forces in Poland shot or deported to concentration camps thousands of Poles, especially teachers, priests, government officials, and other national and community leaders, in an attempt to eliminate the Polish educated elite and thereby prevent organized resistance to German rule in Poland. The German authorities sent some of these Poles to Sachsenhausen. On May 3, 1940, for example, 1,200 Polish prisoners arrived in Sachsenhausen from the Pawiak prison in Warsaw. The prisoners included many juveniles, Catholic priests, army officers, professors, teachers, doctors, and minor government officials. "
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/ar.....d=10005538
So, it is your comment that is dubious, not my friend's father's history. I'm sure he accepts your apology.
Rich Rostrom| 9.10.12 @ 9:33PM
According to Google Ngrams Viewer, the phrase "concentration camp" was already well established in American English by 1940. Usage in 1939 was almost half what it was in the peak year of 1943.
Until 1934, usage was extremely low; it was 0.00004-0.00006% in 1934-38 ; in 1939 it was 0.00012%, and it peaked at 0.00028% in 1943.
So it was a known, (if not common) term in 1940, and its usage clearly was correlated with Nazi Germany.
Nick| 9.11.12 @ 12:22AM
Lenin & Stalin had concentration camps (a.k.a. the gulags) in the 1920s, Mr. Kaminsky.
So, if "Bob" was well-informed about events during the Bolshevik Revolution, he could have become familiar with the term concentration camp even before the rise of Hitler.