The night of November 9, 1938 saw the horrific pogrom known as Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass, signaling a new phase of the oppression of the Jews in Germany that had begun in 1933. Jewish homes and stores were vandalized and over 1,400 synagogues were burned.
The world had swallowed all Germany’s earlier violence and discrimination against its Jewish residents – residents, not citizens – Jews had lost their German citizenship in the Nuremberg laws of 1935. The world watched as Jews were forbidden entry to high schools and universities, lost their licenses to practice professions and were purged from government service.
Today, restrictions and humiliations are being imposed on people who don’t perform gender in ways the Christian Nationalists running our government demand. They are forbidden to use the bathroom, barred from sports and even disallowed using their preferred names.
Maybe this doesn’t seem that dire to you, but remember the lessons we should have learned from the escalating attacks on Jews under the Third Reich. Remember that a little bit of discrimination is never the end. Every small disability, every passing humiliation, that is imposed upon a minority, if not fought vigorously, will inevitably lead to further oppression.
Speak up!