Prof. Lipstadt hits the nail on the head when she states: "These lessons remain relevant today in order to understand not only anti-Semitism, but also all the other 'isms' of society. There is real danger to letting them fade."

I belatedly came to recognize my obligation as a Second Genner to use the sordid history to stir the Millenial and Gen Z demographic to recognize the code words being spread online. These are mere retreads of the kind of hate speech my late father encountered as a ten-year old in Ilmenau, (Thuringia) Germany. If these young people do not know history, they will miss the point:  repetitive racist tropes are mere words, but when left unchallenged, lead to belief in conspiracies--and worse, misguided action by "true believers". We recently saw it play out by a 17-year-old in the streets of Kenosha, Wis. 

On the 50th anniversary of Kristallnacht, my father, noting that the name of a former Grand Wizard of the KKK was on the presidential ballot, rhetorically asked: "It can't happen here? That's what my parents thought too." Less than four years after hoodlums smashed windows of Jewish homes and businesses throughout Germany,  my grandparents were forced onto a transport on May 10, 1942 , culminating in their eventual murder somewhere "in the east".

The lesson that bears repeating is that the time to amplify Holocaust history is the moment we read and hear words of hate, division, xenophobia and support for authoritarian government. You can't blame the adherents of the "isms" Prof. Lipstadt refers to because ignorance.  The aim of my recent memoir, Loss and Legacy,  is to educate them. As I write: "Our father left us an indelible truth: Mere words laid the groundwork for what was to become the most heinous example of mankind's inhumanity."


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-Amnon Gronner, USA
Researching GRONNER SANDLER