First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist [Read more…] about ‘First They Came’ by Pastor Martin Niemöller
fascism
FASCISM! An Army Orientation Fact Sheet, 1945
Fascism is not the easiest thing to identify and analyze; nor, once in power, is it easy to destroy. It is important for our future and that of the world that as many of us as possible understand the causes and practices of fascism, in order to combat it.
Points to stress are: (1) Fascism is more apt to come to power at a time of economic crisis; (2) fascism inevitably leads to war; (3) it can come to any country; (4) we can best combat it by making our democracy work.
“Fascism” is a word that’s been used a great deal these last few years. We come across it in our newspapers, we hear it in our newsreels, it comes up in our bull sessions. We’ve heard about the cruelties of fascism, its terror, its conquest of country after country. [Read more…] about FASCISM! An Army Orientation Fact Sheet, 1945
William Sharp: An Artist in Troubled Times
William Sharp was born Leon Schleifer in 1900 at Lemberg in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (Lviv, now part of Ukraine), where he attended the Academy for Arts and Industry and continued his studies in Kraków, Poland, before finishing his education at the University in Berlin in 1918.
After serving briefly in the German army, he stayed on in Berlin and worked as a book illustrator, etcher and painter. He focused on courtroom sketches for the liberal Berliner Tageblatt and the social democratic weekly Volk und Zeit.
As Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist Party grew in the late 1920s, Schleifer adopted various pseudonyms whilst contributing political cartoons for the anti-Nazi press. Threatened with imprisonment in 1934, Schleifer and his wife Ruth fled to the United States. [Read more…] about William Sharp: An Artist in Troubled Times
Nazis of Long Island: Sedition, Espionage & the Plot Against America
Even as Hitler and his Nazi regime ran roughshod over Germany and Europe in the 1930s, there were those in America who championed their rise. And nowhere so much as on Long Island.
Camp Siegfried in Yaphank (a community in the south part of the Town of Brookhaven, Suffolk County) became a focal point for certain German Americans to gather and espouse the Nazi cause. [Read more…] about Nazis of Long Island: Sedition, Espionage & the Plot Against America
Beware the Enemy: World War II Upstate New York Manhunts
It was July 1942, the seventh month of the United States in World War II (1941–1945). The German military had driven into the Caucasus region of southeastern Europe. New York residents were shocked, too, by news that fascists from a German U-boat had landed several weeks earlier in eastern Long Island but the Nazi agents were captured.
Then the media reported that on July 16, six parachutists had been spotted in the skies near Hyde Park, NY, home of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The government worried that enemy spies or assassins might be near Roosevelt’s Hudson Valley residence. [Read more…] about Beware the Enemy: World War II Upstate New York Manhunts
Red Scare Mania: The Karl Marx of Music
Composer Hanns (Johannes) Eisler was born in July 1898 in Leipzig, Saxony, where his Austrian father Rudolf worked as an academic. The family moved to Vienna in 1901 and settled in Leopoldstadt, a district known for its large Jewish population. Being an outspoken atheist (although of Jewish descent), Rudolf was denied a post at Vienna University and worked for the publisher Werner Klinkhardt as editor for a series of books on philosophy and sociology. [Read more…] about Red Scare Mania: The Karl Marx of Music
The Spanish Civil War: A New York Story For Modern Times
The Spanish Civil War has been called “The Last Great Cause” as the fight against Fascism involved a striking number of intellectuals, writers and journalists both from Europe and the United States. They fought in battalions, supported medical services, reported from the front lines or entertained the troops as non-combatant partisans. [Read more…] about The Spanish Civil War: A New York Story For Modern Times
How Fiorello La Guardia Became America’s Mayor, and Why He Still Matters
Fiorello La Guardia was one of the twentieth century’s most colorful politicians ― on the New York and national stage. He was also quintessentially American: the son of Italian immigrants (his mother was also Jewish), who rose in society through sheer will and chutzpah.
Almost one hundred years later, America is once again grappling with issues that would have been familiar to the Little Flower, as he was affectionately known. [Read more…] about How Fiorello La Guardia Became America’s Mayor, and Why He Still Matters
The Odd Couple: Yussel the Muscle & Maximilian Schmeling
Joe Jacobs was born in 1896 to Hungarian Jewish immigrants. He grew up in the neighborhood of Hell’s Kitchen, Midtown Manhattan, then a bastion of poor Irish Americans, where his father ran a tailor shop.
For many young males living in that tough setting, boxing was both a badge of identity and a means of survival. Every immigrant neighborhood had its own champions and heroes. Boxing was a flag of ethnic pride, attracting a large and loyal local following. [Read more…] about The Odd Couple: Yussel the Muscle & Maximilian Schmeling
The Migration of European Modern Art to New York: Solomon Guggenheim & Karl Nierendorf
Born on April 18, 1889, in Remagen am Rhein into a Catholic family, Karl Nierendorf was educated in Cologne. He worked as a banker before World War I, but his career was disrupted in 1913 by the social upheaval in the Weimar Republic. One of his acquaintances, an art collector, introduced him to the Swiss-born German painter Paul Klee who persuaded him to attempt a career as an art dealer. The two would remain close. When Klee died in June 1940, Nierendorf published Paul Klee Paintings Watercolors 1913 to 1939 (New York: Oxford UP, 1941) as a tribute and an act of friendship. [Read more…] about The Migration of European Modern Art to New York: Solomon Guggenheim & Karl Nierendorf
Uniting America: FDR, Henry Stimson & World War Two
On June 20th, 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt shocked the country by announcing that two Republicans would take posts in his cabinet. Henry Stimson, former President Herbert Hoover’s secretary of state, became secretary of war, and Frank Knox, the Republican vice-presidential candidate in 1936, became secretary of the navy.
Roosevelt intended the appointments to build national unity. It also placed a bipartisan relationship at the center of America’s confrontation with global fascism. [Read more…] about Uniting America: FDR, Henry Stimson & World War Two
Never Before Seen Kristallnacht Photos Shine Light On Fascism
A recently discovered photo album donated to Yad Vashem, Israel’s official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, includes rare, never-before-seen photos of “Kristallnacht,” on the night of November 9, 1938.
During that night Nazis and their supporters ransacked and demolished Jewish homes, hospitals and schools; destroyed 267 synagogues; damaged or destroyed more than 7,000 Jewish businesses; and arrested and sent to concentration camps some 30,000 Jewish men. [Read more…] about Never Before Seen Kristallnacht Photos Shine Light On Fascism
Bayreuth & New York; Wagner & Bernstein
In 1943 Henry Alexander Murray, a psychologist at Harvard University, was commissioned by William Joseph Donovan (“Wild Bill Donovan”) – founding father of the CIA – to prepare an investigative report on behalf of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS).
Designated as the “Analysis of the Personality of Adolph Hitler,” it became a ground-breaking study in the fields of offender profiling and political psychology. The inquiry into the malignant and narcissistic personality of the Führer was an effort to understand the “charismatic” nature of his leadership and an attempt to “predict” patterns of his behavior and actions. [Read more…] about Bayreuth & New York; Wagner & Bernstein
Comic Book Artist Jack Binder & Fort William Henry History
What might Lake George have looked like 265 years ago, on the eve of the French attack on Fort William Henry?
That’s the focus of the display in the entryway to the Fort museum and historical attraction. It includes three figures – an American provincial, a British regular and a ranger, all created by the late Jack Binder for the reconstructed fort, which opened to the public in 1955. [Read more…] about Comic Book Artist Jack Binder & Fort William Henry History
The Red Scare: A Personal History
The Seagle Festival will present the contemporary opera “Fellow Travelers” in Schroon Lake, NY August 3rd through 6th.
“Fellow Travelers” is set in the Washington, DC of the 1950s, as the anti-communist crusades of Richard Nixon, Joseph McCarthy and their ilk infiltrate and all but overwhelm every department, agency and office in government.
I can not help but reminded of my own family’s experience with “the Red Scare” during the administration of President Harry Truman. [Read more…] about The Red Scare: A Personal History
Jazz, Mussolini and Italian Fascism
On February 4th, 2006, La Repubblica reported the funeral in Rome of Romano Mussolini. His death had been made public by former actress and politician Alessandro Mussolini, Romano’s daughter out of his first marriage to Maria Scicolone (the younger sister of Sophia Loren) on the website of her neo-Fascist party Alternativa Sociale.
The church service began with Gershwin’s “Summertime” and ended with “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Outside the church hundreds of mourners paid their respect with Fascist salutes. [Read more…] about Jazz, Mussolini and Italian Fascism
Wartime Writings of French Intellectuals At NYPL
Hitler’s occupation of France presented writers with a difficult, often dangerous dilemma: keep silent, collaborate, or resist the Germans and their Vichy allies. A 2009 exhibition at The New York Public Library explored how Sartre, Gide, Cocteau and dozens of other public intellectuals responded to Nazi rule. Personal correspondence, photographs, manuscripts, books and posters — most displayed for the first time in the United States — illustrate the contrasting, often complex response by writers to the country’s defeat and the Vichy regime. [Read more…] about Wartime Writings of French Intellectuals At NYPL