Yes, it took me until the 2000s to realize "de-nazification" was a lie, and to begin applying what I'd learned in college about how ancient history worked to more modern history (I, uh, am not proud it took me that long to apply what I'd learned).
And the fucked up part is that the continued racism towards the targets of the Holocaust makes sense, in that the culture & society that had enabled the Holocaust still existed. And they felt resentment for the crimes that had happened being exposed, alongside some repentance as well. Basically, "how dare you make us look bad by having been in the camps, and even worse, remind us of it by continuing to exist".
And then you think about all the anti-communist propaganda I grew up surrounded by in the 80s, and realized it was a useful fiction for NATO that all the "bad Nazis" had been removed. It feels, as an outsider, that all the reckoning that should have happened about the full scale of the Holocaust was just put into the Jewish part of the Holocaust. I'm glad you say it's changing, however. And I hope American education on it has improved, although I suspect it has a long way to go on the topic.
Yes, it took me until the 2000s to realize "de-nazification" was a lie, and to begin applying what I'd learned in college about how ancient history worked to more modern history (I, uh, am not proud it took me that long to apply what I'd learned).
And the fucked up part is that the continued racism towards the targets of the Holocaust makes sense, in that the culture & society that had enabled the Holocaust still existed. And they felt resentment for the crimes that had happened being exposed, alongside some repentance as well. Basically, "how dare you make us look bad by having been in the camps, and even worse, remind us of it by continuing to exist".
And then you think about all the anti-communist propaganda I grew up surrounded by in the 80s, and realized it was a useful fiction for NATO that all the "bad Nazis" had been removed. It feels, as an outsider, that all the reckoning that should have happened about the full scale of the Holocaust was just put into the Jewish part of the Holocaust. I'm glad you say it's changing, however. And I hope American education on it has improved, although I suspect it has a long way to go on the topic.