As part of an ongoing multinational effort, members of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s leadership toured sites across Germany, including the massive parade grounds in Munich, the Dachau concentration camp, the courthouse in Nuremberg and Tempelhof Airport in Berlin. The trip was the first part of the Critical Memory Project, a program designed to explore hard history — in this case, the rise of National Socialism in 1930s Germany — and how people have adapted in its wake.
The project will continue in the coming months as participants travel to the U.S., where they will explore sites related to the U.S. Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement. Those lessons will be used to reflect on the struggles our nation has faced from racism, slavery and hate as it struggles today with challenges from white supremacists and “Lost Cause” believers.
History is inescapable, but lessons can be learned from it. While white supremacist and far-right ideologues continue to fight for leadership in both nations, events like the 87th anniversary of Nazi Germany’s Name Act on Aug. 17 are both reminders and potential harbingers.
A joint project between the SPLC and the Amerika-Institut at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, the program seeks to spark conversations exploring the roots of the nationalist movement’s rise in Germany, along with the Holocaust that followed. It also seeks to compare those causes to both the historic and current rise of racism, nationalism and extremism in the U.S.
Image at top: The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin. (Credit: Jacob Saylor)