RFK, Jr.’s His grotesque invocation of Anne Frank — straight out evil or abysmal ignorance?
The trivialization of the Holocaust, and indeed totalitarianism in general, has reached new lows. At a anti-vaccine protest on Washington’s Mall last weekend, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a known anti-vaccine campaigner, held forth on all sorts of theories about 5G technology and satellites, claiming that “they” will be watching you 24/7. In the midst of this, Kennedy stated:
“Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps to Switzerland, you could hide in the attic like Anne Frank did.”
The repugnancy of this statement is apparent to anyone with a moral conscience and a scintilla of historical knowledge; nevertheless it bears analysis and critique.
Either Kennedy is simply evil, purposely distorting and coopting the Holocaust to score a point. Or he is dangerously misinformed and misguided.
• First, his choice of verb: “could,” as in able to; as in, there was an option. No, Mr. Kennedy, the verb you are looking for is “forced” or “attempted” or, most often, “failed,” as in, were forced to go into hiding, or tried, or most often, tried and failed —to attempt avoiding deportation to concentration camps where Jews were being gassed to death or forced into deadly slave labor.
• Second, the repugnancy of pretending that these were viable options that would secure safety for the person. As in, Anne Frank hid in an attic and . . . Did Mr. Kennedy miss the part where she and her family were discovered by the Gestapo, deported to concentration camps? Did he miss the part where Anne Frank and her sister died of typhus, after having been forced to live in the inhumane conditions of Bergen-Belsen? Did he miss the part where their mother, Edith Frank, died of starvation in Auschwitz-Birkenau? Did Mr. Kennedy think the Frank family’s story ended where the diary did?
Is Mr. Kennedy aware of how many people tried to “cross the Alps to Switzerland,” only, after risking life and limb, to be turned away at the border? Does Mr. Kennedy know about jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt, a Romani Gypsy, who tried to cross the border but was sent back to Paris by Swiss border guards? Does Mr. Kennedy know what happened to those who were turned back?
Kennedy also invoked the brave souls trapped inside East Germany who risked death to escape the totalitarian regime. He remembers being with his father in East Germany in 1962. He recalls how escapees were literally killed by border guards. Yet, Kennedy says, at least they had the possibility to escape.
What kind of evil semantics is this? “Had the possibility,” as in, viable option? Again, is Mr. Kennedy evil, or just thick? Yes, the East Germans had the “possibility” to escape — they might just be shot in the back for it, as over 600 people were while exercising their “possibility” of escape.
The irony is that Mr. Kennedy also has possibilities — the possibility not to be vaccinated, the possibility not to purchase a 5G phone. We don’t see the US government forcing him to do either.
In the face of outrage, Mr. Kennedy apologized on Tuesday, but the repugnancy is that Mr. Kennedy used such an analogy in the first place, and equates either of these freedoms to a totalitarian system that implemented genocide against completely innocent civilians. One can choose not to be vaccinated, or be concerned about increased surveillance, data collection and mining. To say otherwise is ludicrous. None of these bear any resemblance to the Nazi policy of genocide or the nearly 30-year-long East German policy of forbidding emigration and shooting to kill. It is ludicrous that this even needs to be restated.
The Auschwitz Museum put it best about Mr. Kennedy’s comments last Sunday: “Exploiting the tragedy of people who suffered, were humiliated, tortured and murdered by the totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany — including children like Anne Frank — in a debate about vaccines & limitations during global pandemic is a sad symptom of moral and intellectual decay.”
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