Gold Stumbling Stones appear frequently in what was once the old Jewish quarter of Amsterdam. It is impossible to miss them. In other parts of the city, they appear with less frequency but, still, they caught my attention. They tell you who lived in a given property, the year they were born, the day they were arrested, and the date and place where the Nazis murdered them.
They are visible reminders of an extraordinary historical crime. Striking in their simplicity and clarity, I encountered them on this visit to Amsterdam on my way to my favorite museum in town, the Verzetsmuseum Amsterdam, or the Dutch Resistance Museum. So much more than its name suggests, the Verzetsmuseum confronts visitors with the range of choices facing the Dutch after the Nazis occupied their country. Some sought the path of least resistance, and some hoped they might assist in directing the Nazis’ viciousness into less destructive channels, and blunt the sharp point of Nazi genocidal hatred. Others, heroically, resisted. They hid Jews in their homes. They smuggled food to those in hiding. At times, they took up arms.
It is an incredibly powerful and effective presentation, showing how ordinary people did extraordinary things in horrifying circumstances. The cowardice and the courage, hatred and heroism, and complicity and commitment are all present. The Verzetsmuseum asks visitors, “which will you be?” When faced with evil, will you keep your head down or will you resist? You will understand history better when you leave the museum. You will also know yourself better, too.
I visited the museum the Saturday before last. And though I did not follow American news closely while overseas, I remained well aware of the how the Trump Administration, led by a vicious, shallow narcissist and a soulless, creepy zillionaire, has attempted to whitewash the American nation’s history, pull plays out of the Nazi playbook that Americans saw as grounds for rebellion when the King tried them in 1776, and, in the name of an obscene and cynical campaign against Antisemitism, attempted to crush dissent. They made me feel sorry for Harvard, of all things. And for those they dragged off to Salvadoran Concentration Camps. My visit to the Verzetsmuseum left me angry about what I saw back home.
I can remember a time when Elon Musk’s Nazi salute would have ended a person’s public career. Not any more. He was welcome in the White House afterwards. He did not mean it, some of his sycophants said. It was not what it looked like, others argue. I’m being woke, or politically correct, or, somehow, stunningly, anti-Semitic because I consider the life of a Palestinian child as valuable as that of any Jewish child. If I could speak with these people, I would tell them to knock it off. You’ve shamed yourselves.
I see them. I listen to them. I read the words they put down on the page or pound out with angry thumbs in the early hours of the morning. And after visiting the Verzetsmuseum, I feel I owe as much allegiance to Donald Trump and his supporters as the Dutch did to the Nazis who occupied their country. Donald Trump, I know, is not Hitler. The vast majority of his followers, I known, are not Nazis. But I see no reason to believe that they would have stood in the Nazis’ way. They have no courage or moral character. To me, they are different in degree, but not in kind, from the monsters who inflicted so much evil on the world. They are, after all, inflicting evil and suffering on the world right now.
Not too long ago, Donald Trump wondered if there was not some love in the Nazi Death Camps. It was one more absurd statement from an absurd man. Perhaps he knows what he is part of. Perhaps he is trying to convince us that he is not a monster, and that he is not the leader of something monstrous.
The Verzetsmuseum makes clear the formidable forces the Dutch resistance faced. We have luxuries they did not have. If a handful of Republicans in Congress and the Senate could muster the courage to show an ounce of virtue, they might curb the excesses of this terrible and dangerous regime. We have time, but it is running out. This nation’s leaders are failing a test of character, and the opportunities to set things right grow fewer each day.
