Friends Of Padre Steve’s World,
Today was a busy day for us in Munich. We visited the Oktoberfest grounds and ate and drank at the Paulaner beer tent before going downtown for some shopping.
Before that I took a couple of hours to power walk to the National Socialist Documentation Center, where I saw the new exhibit “A City Without Jews, Foreigners, or Muslim Refugees” before walking over the the Sophie Scholl and White Rose Movement Memorial at the University Of Munich.
What is frightening is that in both 1938 and 1998 Germans designed board games to promote the expulsion and extermination of Jews and other undesirables from public life.
The 1938 game might have been excused as an act of misdirected revenge based on already widespread and popular versions of anti-Semitism and intensive and anti-Jewish Nazi propaganda, but the 1998 game, spread by the Neo-Nazi NSU was designed to raise funds to combat the Jews.
The game board of the later was discovered by the Polizei during a raid in 1998, along with a sizable weapons cache. It was being sold in order to fund the terrorists activities and to purchase weapons.
I was speaking with one of the docents at the museum about the rise in such thinking and action among people and now government figures in each of our countries. The fact is that there are now sizable majorities in democratic nations who are proceeding down the path of exiling or eliminating, Jews, Muslims, racial and religious minorities, from public life.
This is happening throughout Europe as well as in the United States. In the United States, President Trump and many in the Republican Party tap into this already existing feeling and legitimize it. It is frightening to watch as government agencies work to isolate and drive out minorities and the poor. In Germany such attitudes were spread by the NPD, the Nationalist Party Of Germany, but have been taken into the government by the AfD, the Alternative for Germany Party.
Sadly, I do not see things getting better any time soon. We know where such ideologies led in the 1930s and 1940s. The only question is how far they will spread and how violent they will become in our time.
But that is enough for now.
From Munich,
Peace,
Padre Steve+
The Inglorius Padre Steve's World 
Well my friend,
I’m happy that you visited Sophie.
It’s so important that In these worrying times when the far right are gaining support that right minded people like yourself remind us what has happened in history and take stock.
I’m English and I’m shocked that my friends who used to be moderate left wingers, now support Boris Johnson and Donald Trump.
Thank you for still trying to make a difference and not losing hope.
As long as we have young people like the wonderful Greta Thunberg then I believe all is not lost.
God Bless my friend
Dave
You are welcome my friend. It is hard to believe how once reasonable people now support Trump and Johnson. We always must remember that resistance is not futile.
Oh how little humanity has learned from its own history. So sad.
I know
BTW – I visited Terezin last month.
I have not been there yet…