Louis de Groot was stunned by the question. While speaking to a group of teens a few months ago, one student asked the Dutch-born Holocaust survivor whether he thought Donald Trump is another Hitler.
“This kind of question shook me up,” said de Groot, 87, a former president of the Holocaust Center of Northern California and a Holocaust educator. “I didn’t expect those thoughts were rising.”
That was July. A lot has happened since.
In the days after the election, hate-group monitoring organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League have tracked hundreds of incidents of racist and anti-Semitic vandalism, graffiti, bullying and intimidation across the country.
Sometimes the perpetrators use Nazi imagery, which greatly unsettles Holocaust survivors in particular, reminding them of the hate and bullying they lived through in Nazi-occupied Europe. Could it happen here, they wonder?
Their fears may not be completely unfounded. ADL national director Jonathan Greenblatt said last week at a conference that anti-Jewish sentiment in America is at its most virulent since the 1930s, with anti-Semitic acts having risen significantly during the campaign. He blamed the “alt-right,” a white nationalist movement including neo-Nazis that backed Trump, with leading the charge. Leaders of that movement celebrated Trump’s victory at a Washington, D.C., convention last weekend, and were not hesitant to trot out one-armed salutes and other blatant Nazi tropes.
Palo Alto resident Eva Maiden hears “echoes” of prewar Germany in the aftermath of the Nov. 8 election. Born in Austria, Maiden escaped from occupied Vienna to Zurich, Switzerland, with her family. where they waited two years for visas to immigrate to the United States. She was 5 when she left.
A psychotherapist by profession, Maiden, 81, has spent her adult life attuned to world politics. She worries that many Americans may be ignoring warning signs from the incoming administration.
“I’ve been rather shocked at people’s ability to be in denial, especially that of Jews, with our ethics and our history of persecution,” she said. “I’m shocked that people [view Trump] as a slightly out-of-control uncle having another tantrum.”
De Groot has been paying close attention ever since the traumatic experience of the war years. Though he survived by hiding, not one member of his family survived the Nazi occupation of Holland. He came to the United States at age 21, joined the Army and eventually earned a master’s degree in economics before working for IBM for 27 years. America has been good to him.
With the election now over, de Groot does not think Trump is like Hitler. But he worries that the heated rhetoric from the campaign, as well as the appointment of Breitbart publisher and alt-right cheerleader Stephen Bannon, may bode ill.
Maiden condemns Bannon, whom Trump has tapped as a senior counselor and chief strategist, for “using racist statements, including anti-Semitism from time to time, as a propaganda tool. We have to pay attention.”
“I do think there is a possibility of measures against immigrants and Muslims, as [the Nazis] started against the Jews,” de Groot noted. “Somebody said to me if there’s a registration of all Muslims in this country, he was going to register, too, as a protest. I’m afraid those things are possible.”
Though he has faith that America can withstand a lurch to the hard right, de Groot wonders whether demagogic appeals eventually might do damage. But not all Holocaust survivors fear Trump. Some voted for him.
The Jerusalem Post reported on Sidney Shachnow, a Jewish Lithuanian who escaped from a Nazi concentration camp, made his way to America and went on to become an Army major-general.
Shachnow was one of 87 military figures to endorse the Trump candidacy in a Sept. 7 letter that read in part: “Enemies of this country have been emboldened, sensing weakness and irresolution in Washington. … We support [Trump] and his commitment to rebuild our military, to secure our borders, to defeat our Islamic supremacist adversaries and restore law and order domestically.”
Berkeley resident Ilse Hadda is having none of it. She grew up in Danzig, a German-Polish free city until the Nazi invasion of September 1939. She was evacuated to England on the Kindertransport at age 15. Hadda has lived in Berkeley for decades. Now she’s not sure how much longer she will stay, so fearful is she of the Trump presidency.
“I am terrified,” Hadda said. “So many followed Hitler. So many follow Trump. The fact that he even had a chance of becoming president is terrifying. He’s going to be a dictator. I feel very pessimistic.”
She added that, at age 92, she is “ready to leave.”
The Trump campaign proved a trigger for Hadda, something Mindy Berkowitz has seen in her capacity as executive director of Jewish Family Services of Silicon Valley. Her agency counts among its clients some 250 Holocaust survivors, and she says the election has left then upset and scared.
“America is supposed to be a safe place,” she said. “We see swastikas appearing all over the place. The survivor community has been through hell. They have seen this before. They have seen leaders who preach hate and they have no tolerance for it.”
Berkowitz’s agency serves many immigrants and refugees as well as Holocaust survivors. The day after the election, she gathered her staff to remind them that the people they serve come to the agency because it’s a safe place.
“I told them how important the work we do is,” she said, “and to tell our clients that we would always be here for them. We are a sanctuary agency.”
Maiden, who has distinct memories of her Viennese nanny trying to take her outdoors to watch a parade of invading Nazi soldiers while her furious mother drew the curtains, isn’t about to leave the country that took her in. She says it’s more important to stay and work for a better future.
“I see a lot of hard work ahead, and a necessity for political engagement and activism,” she said. “It’s also important to hold on to hope, not to permit oneself to give into hysteria or extreme grief. Many of us have been in shock. Now it’s time to focus on healing and roll up our sleeves.”