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Lessons we should have learned from the liberation of Auschwitz and other Nazi camps

It's been more than 75 years since the last prisoners were freed from Auschwitz. The farther we get from that chapter, the more important it is to focus on the lessons it taught us, lest we ignore the signs of history repeating itself.

Photo by Jean Carlo Emer on Unsplash

From 1940 to 1945, an estimated 1.3 million people were deported to Auschwitz, the largest complex of Nazi concentration camps. More than four out of five of those people—at least 1.1 million people—were murdered there.

On January 27, 1945, Soviet forces liberated the final prisoners from these camps—7,000 people, most of whom were sick or dying. Those of us with a decent public education are familiar with at least a few names of Nazi extermination facilities—Auschwitz, Dachau, Bergen-Belsen—but these are merely a few of the thousands (yes, thousands) of concentration camps, sub camps, and ghettos spread across Europe where Jews and other targets of Hitler's regime were persecuted, tortured, and killed by the millions.

The scale of the atrocity is unfathomable. Like slavery, the Holocaust is a piece of history where the more you learn the more horrifying it becomes. The inhumane depravity of the perpetrators and the gut-wrenching suffering of the victims defies description. It almost becomes too much for the mind and heart to take in, but it's vital that we push through that resistance.

The liberation of the Nazi camps marked the end of Hitler's attempt at ethnic cleansing, and the beginning of humanity's awareness about how such a heinous chapter in human history took place. The farther we get from that chapter, the more important it is to focus on the lessons it taught us, lest we ignore the signs of history repeating itself.

Lesson 1: Unspeakable evil can be institutionalized on a massive scale

Perhaps the most jarring thing about the Holocaust is how systematized it was. We're not talking about humans slaying other humans in a fit of rage or a small number of twisted individuals torturing people in a basement someplace—this was a structured, calculated, disciplined, and meticulously planned and carried out effort to exterminate masses of people. The Nazi regime built a well-oiled killing machine the size of half a continent, and it worked exactly as intended. We often cite the number of people killed, but the number of people who partook in the systematic torture and destruction of millions of people is just as harrowing.

It has now come out that Allied forces knew about the mass killing of Jews as early as 1942—three years before the end of the war. And obviously, there were reports from individuals of what was happening from the very beginning. People often ask why more wasn't done earlier on if people knew, and there are undoubtedly political reasons for that. But we also have the benefit of hindsight in asking that question. I can imagine most people simply disbelieving what was actually taking place because it sounds so utterly unbelievable.

The lesson here is that we have to question our tendency to disbelieve things that sound too horrible to be true. We have evidence that the worst things imaginable on a scale that seems unfathomable are totally plausible.

Lesson 2: Atrocity can happen right under our noses as we go about our daily lives

One thing that struck me as I was reading about the liberation of Auschwitz is that it was a mere 37 miles from Krakow, one of the largest cities in Poland. This camp where an average of 500 people a day were killed, where bodies were piled up like corded wood, where men, women, and children were herded into gas chambers—and it was not that far from a major population center.

And that was just one set of camps. We now know that there were thousands of locations where the Nazis carried out their "final solution," and it's not like they always did it way out in the middle of nowhere. A New York Times report on how many more camps there were than scholars originally thought describes what was happening to Jews and marginalized people as the average person went about their daily lives:

"The documented camps include not only 'killing centers' but also thousands of forced labor camps, where prisoners manufactured war supplies; prisoner-of-war camps; sites euphemistically named 'care' centers, where pregnant women were forced to have abortions or their babies were killed after birth; and brothels, where women were coerced into having sex with German military personnel."

Whether or not the average person knew the full extent of what was happening is unclear. But surely there were reports. And we know how the average person responds to reports, even today in our own country.

How many news stories have we seen of abuses and inhumane conditions inside U.S. immigrant detention camps? What is our reaction when the United Nations human rights chief visits our detention facilities and comes away "appalled"? It's a natural tendency to assume things simply can't be that bad—that's undoubtedly what millions of Germans thought as well when stories leaked through the propaganda.

Lesson 3: Propaganda works incredibly well

Propaganda has always been a part of governance, as leaders try to sway the general populace to support whatever they are doing. But the Nazis perfected the art and science of propaganda, shamelessly playing on people's prejudices and fears and flooding the public with mountains of it.

Hermann Goering, one of Hitler's top political and military figures, explained in an interview late in his life that such manipulation of the masses isn't even that hard.

"The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders," he said. "That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

Terrifyingly true, isn't it? This is why we have to stay vigilant in the face of fear-mongering rhetoric coming from our leaders. When an entire religion or nationality or ethnic group is painted as "dangerous" or "criminal" or "terrorists," we have to recognize that we are being exposed to the same propaganda used to convince Germans that the Nazis were just trying to protect them. Safety and security are powerful human desires that make it easy to justify horrible acts.

Hitler was also great at playing the victim. While marching through Europe, conquering countries and rounding up millions of innocent people to exterminate, he claimed that Germany was the one under attack. Blatant anti-Semitic rhetoric surely fired up Hitler's core supporters, but the message to the average German was that this was all being done in the name of protecting the homeland, rather than a quest for a world-dominating master race.

Lesson 4: Most of us are in greater danger of committing a holocaust than being a victim of one

I had to pause when this realization hit me one day. As fairly average white American, I am in the majority in my country. And as strange as it is to say, that means I have more in common with the Germans who either committed heinous acts or capitulated to the Nazis than I do with the Jews and other targets of the Nazi party. That isn't to say that I would easily go along with mass genocide, but who's to say that I could fully resist the combination of systematic dehumanization, propaganda, and terrorism that led to the Holocaust? We all like to think we'd be the brave heroes hiding the Anne Franks of the world in our secret cupboards, but the truth is we don't really know what we would have done.

Check out what this Army Captain who helped liberate a Nazi camp said about his bafflement at what the Germans, "a cultured people" allowed to happen:

"I had studied German literature while an undergraduate at Harvard College. I knew about the culture of the German people and I could not, could not really believe that this was happening in this day and age; that in the twentieth century a cultured people like the Germans would undertake something like this. It was just beyond our imagination... – Captain (Dr.) Philip Leif - 3rd Auxiliary Surgical Group, First Army

Some say that we can gauge what we would have done by examining what we're doing right now, and perhaps they are right. Are we speaking out against our government's cruel family separations that traumatize innocent children? Do we justify travel bans from entire countries because we trust that it's simply our leadership trying to keep us safe? Do we buy into the "Muslims are terrorists" and "undocumented immigrants are criminals" rhetoric?

While it's wise to be wary of comparing current events to the Holocaust, it's also wise to recognize that the Holocaust didn't start with gas chambers. It started with "othering," scapegoating, and fear-mongering. We have to be watchful not only for signs of atrocity, but for the signs leading up to it.

Lesson 5: Teaching full and accurate history matters

There are people who deny that the Holocaust even happened, which is mind-boggling. But there are far more people who are ignorant to the true horrors of it. Reading first-hand accounts of both the people who survived the camps and those who liberated them is perhaps the best way to begin to grasp the scope of what happened.

One small example is Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower's attempt to describe what he saw when he visited Ohrdruf, a sub-camp of Buchenwald:

And of course, the most important narratives to read and try to digest are the accounts of those who survived the camps. Today, 200 survivors of Auschwitz gathered to commemorate the 75th anniversary of its liberation. They warned about the rise in anti-Semitism in the world and how we must not let prejudice and hatred fester. Imagine having to make such a warning seven decades after watching family and friends being slaughtered in front of you.

Let's use this anniversary as an opportunity to dive deeper into what circumstances and environment enabled millions of people to be killed by one country's leadership. Let's learn the lessons the Holocaust has to teach us about human nature and our place in the creation of history. And let's make darn sure we do everything in our power to fend off the forces that threaten to lead us down a similarly perilous path.

This article originally appeared on 01.27.20

From Your Site Articles

Equality

A little-known 'Japanese Schindler' risked everything to help 6,000 Jews escape the Nazis

Israel's Foreign Affairs Min./YouTube

In the autumn of 1939, Chiune Sugihara was sent to Lithuania to open the first Japanese consulate there. His job was to keep tabs on and gather information about Japan's ally, Germany. Meanwhile, in neighboring Poland, Nazi tanks had already begun to roll in, causing Jewish refugees to flee into the small country.

When the Soviet Union invaded Lithuania in June of 1940, scores of Jews flooded the Japanese consulate, seeking transit visas to be able to escape to a safety through Japan. Overwhelmed by the requests, Sugihara reached out to the foreign ministry in Tokyo for guidance and was told that no one without proper paperwork should be issued a visa—a limitation that would have ruled out nearly all of the refugees seeking his help.

Sugihara faced a life-changing choice. He could obey the government and leave the Jews in Lithuania to their fate, or he could disobey orders and face disgrace and the loss of his job, if not more severe punishments from his superiors.

According to the Jewish Virtual Library, Sugihara was fond of saying, "I may have to disobey my government, but if I don't, I would be disobeying God." Sugihara decided it was worth it to risk his livelihood and good standing with the Japanese government to give the Jews at his doorstep a fighting chance, so he started issuing Japanese transit visas to any refugee who needed one, regardless of their eligibility.

What started as 10 or 20 refugees asking for help soon grew to the hundreds. For six weeks in the summer of 1940, Sugihara issued and signed as many visas as he could before he was reassigned, sometimes working 18-hour days. The final tally totaled more than 2139, but experts estimate that 6,000 to 10,000 Jewish lives may have been saved by Sugihara when accounting for children and spouses traveling with the visa-holders.

The problem of the refugees safely making it to Japan was also taken care of by Sugihara. He spoke fluent Russian and managed to negotiate with Moscow for Polish Jews to be granted safe passage through the Soviet Union.

The visas issued by Sugihara would eventually become known as "visas for life," and according to the Washington Post, an estimated 40,000 to 100,000 people living today can trace their own lives back to those visas. One survivor has dubbed Sugihara the "Japanese Schindler." (German factory owner Oskar Shindler, of "Schindler's List" fame, saved the lives of an estimated 1,200 Jews.)

Sugihara's son, Nobuki, told The Guardian last year that several myths have crept into his father's story, including that he was signing visas and throwing them off the train as he left and that his wife would massage his hands after long days of signing visas. There's no evidence that those stories are true, but there's a lot about his father's story that was left untold for much of his life.

Nobuki said that he had no idea when he was younger that his father was a WWII hero at all. Sugihara had been unceremoniously dismissed from government work after the war, and through the 1950s and 60s, he'd worked as a trader in a small coastal town in Japan. He didn't talk about how many lives he had saved with his visas.

It wasn't until an Israeli diplomat contacted the family in 1969 that Sugihara's sacrifice and courage came to light, but even then, the significance of it wasn't clear to Nobuki. But in 1984, two years before he died, Sugihara was declared "righteous among the nations" by Yad Vashem, the Israeli state organization that commemorates the Holocaust—an title that honors non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews from extermination during the Holocaust. Since then, books and films have been made to share Sugihara's story.

Chiune Sugihara - Righteous Among the Nationswww.youtube.com

Though the Holocaust is filled with stories of heinousness and horror, there are also gems of humanity that shine out from that darkness and offer hope. Sugihara's story reminds us that human beings always have a choice to do what's right over what's easy or expected. According to the Jewish Virtual Library, when asked why he signed the visas decades after the fact, Sugihara gave two reasons: "They were human beings and they needed help," he said, adding, "I'm glad I found the strength to make the decision to give it to them."

From Your Site Articles

91-yr-old Holocaust survivor Ben Lesser is sharing his story. It's one we all need to hear.

ZACHOR Foundation

"What's 'the Holocaust'?" my 11-year-old son asks me. I take a deep breath as I gauge how much to tell him. He's old enough to understand that prejudice can lead to hatred, but I can't help but feel he's too young to hear about the full spectrum of human horror that hatred can lead to.

I wrestle with that thought, considering the conversation I recently had with Ben Lesser, a 91-year-old Holocaust survivor who was just a little younger than my son when he witnessed his first Nazi atrocity.

It was September of 1939 and the Blitzkrieg occupation of Poland had just begun. Ben, his parents, and his siblings were awakened in their Krakow apartment by Nazi soldiers who pistol-whipped them out of bed and ransacked their home. As the men with the shiny black boots filled burlap sacks with the Jewish family's valuables, a scream came from the apartment across the hall. Ben and his sister ran toward the cry.

They found a Nazi swinging their neighbors' baby upside down by its legs, demanding that the baby's mother make it stop crying. As the parents screamed, "My baby! My baby!" the Nazi smirked—then swung the baby's head full force into the door frame, killing it instantly.

This story and others like it feel too terrible to tell my young son, too out of context from his life of relative safety and security. And yet Ben Lesser lived it at my son's age. And it was too terrible—for anyone, much less a 10-year-old. And it was also completely out of context from the life of relative safety and security Ben and his family had known before the Nazi tanks rolled in.

ZACHOR Foundation

Before I spoke with Ben, I had prepared myself for what I was going to hear. The baby story was brutal, but I'd read enough Holocaust stories to expect all manner of horror. The Jews being rounded up and taken to the woods to dig their own graves before being shot and thrown into them. The cattle cars crammed with bodies so tightly no one could move—where men, women, and children languished in hunger and thirst, standing in their own excrement for days. The Nazi commandant who made every 10th prisoner in line hold their body over a sawhorse and take 25 lashes, shooting in the head anyone whose body touched the sawhorse through the beating.

The concentration camps, the death camps, the gas chambers. I was prepared for all of that.

What I wasn't prepared for was the fact that Ben Lesser's dad was a chocolate maker. He was one of the first, Ben explained to me proudly, to make chocolate-covered wafer cookies, like a Kit-Kat, only he made his in the shape of animals.

Hearing Ben describe the way he and his siblings would excitedly run to their father when he got home from work, knowing he'd have pockets full of chocolate for them—that was the detail that did me in. The simple sweetness of it. The fact that their life was so delightfully normal before it turned into a nightmare. That backdrop made hearing about the horrors Ben witnessed and experienced from age 10 to 16 all the more heinous.

ZACHOR Foundation

Ben was 15 when he and two of his siblings were shoved into a cattle car and transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration camp complex where Nazis systematically murdered 1.1 million people in five years. When they exited the car, a man was directing people to go left or right. Ben, a strong young man, was sent to the right with his uncle and cousin—they were going to work. His sister Goldie and younger brother Tuli were sent to the left.

Ben only learned that his sister and brother had gone straight to the gas chambers when a guard later explained, with a twisted sense of satisfaction, that the ash gently falling from the sky was made up of the bodies of the workers' loved ones.

By the time the war ended, Ben would lose his parents, three of his four siblings, and countless extended family members and friends to Hitler and his followers' hatred. His older sister, Lola, was the only member of his immediate family to survive.

The stories Ben shared from Auschwitz-Birkenau, from the "Death March" to Buchenwald, and from Dachau—where he would ultimately be liberated when the war ended—are every bit as horrific as everything I've described so far. It would take far more space than I have here to share it all, but Ben has written it all down—the tragedy and suffering as well as the miracles that occurred both during and after the war—in his autobiography.

But simply putting it all down in writing wasn't enough.

ZACHOR Foundation

"In my mind there are questions that have never been answered," Ben writes in the opening of his memoir. "You might be surprised to learn that my first unanswered question is not, Why did that insane Hitler try to destroy the Jewish People? Instead, my first unanswered question is, Why did the so-called sane world stand by and let this Genocide happen?

"Having experienced the savagery of genocide first-hand as a child, while living in a supposedly modern, cultured, European country, I also have two additional questions: One, What are the circumstances and choices that led up to this and other genocides? And two: What must we do to prevent it from happening again? Anywhere. Because, sadly, as the old saying tells us, 'The more things change, the more they stay the same.'"

These are the questions Ben seeks to help all of us answer as time takes us further and further away from the Holocaust. Ben is one of a handful of survivors who are able to share first-hand experiences as Jews under Nazi terror—a fact he was keenly aware of when he founded the ZACHOR Holocaust Remembrance Foundation in 2009. "ZACHOR" means "REMEMBER," and the purpose of the foundation is to make sure the world never forgets the lessons of the Holocaust or the millions of individual lives that were taken there.

The story of the Holocaust isn't just in the masses of humanity killed, but in the individual stories of those who survived. For years, Ben spoke at schools, sharing his story with young people. At 91, Ben has retired from the school circuit, but he's not slowing down in his efforts to teach the lesson of what hate can lead to.

ZACHOR has just launched an online Holocaust curriculum—the first to be created and facilitated by and through the firsthand testimonial of a survivor. Ben told Upworthy that he wanted to create a curriculum that would be free and easy for teachers to access so there would be no excuse for schools not to teach about the Holocaust.

Considering the study findings that came out today, Ben's curriculum could not be more timely.

The 50-state survey of young adults in the U.S. found that nearly two-thirds were unaware that 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, nearly 1 in 4 say they think the Holocaust is a myth or that it's exaggerated, and approximately 1 in 10 had either had never heard of it, didn't think it happened at all, or—perhaps most alarmingly—think Jews were responsible for it.

Clearly, we need to be doing a better job of educating our kids about the Holocaust. If we don't, the online disinformation machine will lead them to believe it was all a hoax.

The Zachor Holocaust Curriculum consists of eight lessons, which interweave Ben's personal story with facts about the Eastern European part of the war, how Hitler and the Nazis operated, and the Holocaust in general. It includes written content, fact inserts, photographs, and videos. It is free to register to use, and available to anyone with internet.

Perhaps the most unique element of the ZACHOR curriculum is the interactive component. Ben has created a Storyfile—a mix of artificial intelligence and hologram technology that will enable people to ask Ben questions and get answers long after he's no longer here. He spent hours answering thousands of questions, all of which was recorded from various angles and put into the Storyfile program, so people will always be able to hear Ben's answers to their questions from his own mouth.

Ben's foundation has also launched an anti-bullying campaign called "I SHOUT OUT." Anyone can go to the website i-shout-out.org and share what they shout out for—equality, peace, human rights, etc.—to let the world they stand against hatred.

I asked Ben what is the main message he wants people to take from the horrors of the Holocaust. He said, "It's very simple. Stop the hatred."

We all need to listen and heed Ben's words. Even just this five-minute video in which he shares how the Holocaust got started is worth viewing and sharing with our kids.

3 - Ben's Testimony. It all started with hatred.youtu.be

It may be a few more years before I share the full scope of Nazi cruelty with my son. But I will absolutely make sure that he knows what happened during WWII, about the millions of lives destroyed by hatred, and how, as Ben says, "One person with the gift of gab could turn the minds of millions."

Zachor indeed. We will remember.

From Your Site Articles

Incidents of anti-Semitism have been on the rise in Germany.

Things have gotten so bad that — after a recent crime targeting two men because of their religious clothing — the head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany warned Jewish people against wearing a kippa (skullcap).

Far-right groups have tried to shift the blame for these crimes to Muslim immigrants.

The tensions between Muslim and Jewish peoples is a story nearly as old as time itself. Far-right groups in Germany have tried to capitalize on this stereotype by blaming the rise in anti-Semitic hate crimes on Muslims.

But these crimes are not being carried out by Muslims against Jews.

A report from Germany's Interior Ministry shows that the exact opposite is true: 1,381 of the 1,468 reported anti-Semitic crimes in 2016 were in fact carried out by the same far-right groups trying to stir tension between the two communities of faith.

"They try to use the 'We stand with the Jews so we can't be racist, we're not anti-Semitic' line, which is of course what they are." said Dalia Grinfeld, president of the Jewish Student Union of Germany.

Instead of living in fear, people in Germany organized "Kippa March" rallies to show their support for Jewish people.

Thousands of people turned out in Berlin for the event. And among those marching were many Muslims, including women who bravely donned kippa in a stunning display of solidarity.

The display of unity was inspiring and potentially transformative.

This wasn't even the first recent unity act between the Muslim and Jewish communities, who held a bike ride in March to show their support and solidarity.

Photo by Adam Berry/Getty Images

One recent attack showed how horrific and indiscriminate hate crimes can be. A young man attacked in Germany wasn't even Jewish. An Israeli of Arab descent, he'd worn the kippa to highlight the risks Jewish people are currently facing in Germany.

The responses from people of all different backgrounds in Germany has been a loving display of unity. One German newspaper even made a cut out kippa for people to wear to the marches.

Tension between people of different faiths seems to grab all the attention. But it's good to be reminded that there's love in the world .

With far-right groups getting more attention in America and across Europe, it's easy to focus on what's wrong in the world today.

And the very real threat of violence against marginalized groups should never be ignored.

But in moments of fear and hate, we're reminded that compassion and solidarity are a far greater force for good that easily eclipses whatever challenges we face.

For as long as there have been Nazis, people have been fighting Nazis.

Kicking Nazi ass is not only American as apple pie, it is the basis of our greatest foreign policy triumph, the subject of our most satisfying movies, and the reason the History Channel still exists.

From 1939 until 1945, the United States, British, and Soviet militaries tried to solve the Nazi problem by dropping bombs on them from various airplanes.

[rebelmouse-image 19530681 dam="1" original_size="700x441" caption="The OG Antifa. Photo by U.S. Air Force/Wikimedia Commons." expand=1]The OG Antifa. Photo by U.S. Air Force/Wikimedia Commons.

Sending explosives plummeting from way high up directly onto Nazis down below worked pretty well for a while. Nearly 2 million tons of bombs were dropped on Germany and German-occupied territories during World War II, killing hundreds of thousands of Nazis.

Unfortunately, this method also wound up killing a lot of civilians, prisoners of war, resistance fighters, house cats, and random guys named Gerhard who happened to be standing near Nazis at the time. It also turns out to be super inappropriate for peacetime. Not to mention, it didn't totally work because here we are in 2017: There are still Nazis. And we're still arguing about how to fight them.

When tiki torch-wielding fascists come to town, are "many sides" to blame when fists start to fly? How free is free speech when one side is calling for the extermination of the other? Should violence be answered with more violence? Nazis aren't known to respond to reason, but vigilantism icks most of us out. And who gets to define who is and is not a Nazi anyway? Is there some kind of Google form?

If history teaches us anything, it's that Nazis don't go away unless someone fights back. And violence isn't the only way (although, reviewing the record, it turns out to be one of the main ways) to resist them.

Here are 20 alternate, yet no less effective, ways people have fought against, and mostly defeated, Nazis throughout history:

1. A town in Germany refused to let neo-Nazis win by turning their marches into involuntary walkathons.

Every year for decades, neo-Nazis marched through the German town of Wunsiedel. Every year, residents tried to ignore them or counter-march, neither of which worked. In 2014, however, the town's anti-fascist majority finally got to the Nazis by raising some serious money off their parade. For every kilometer the Nazis walked, business owners and donors in the town pledged cash to the EXIT Germany Initiative, an NGO that de-Nazifies Nazis.

Hundreds turned out to cheer the Nazis on as they subverted their own agenda step by step. The approach was so successful that it spread to other be-Nazi'd communities around the world. More importantly, it made about 200 Nazis feel really (and appropriately) dumb.

Of course, when it comes to confronting fascists, not everyone has the wit of a poet and the patience of a saint. Which is why...

2. An unknown activist straight-up punched prominent white supremacist Richard Spencer in the face.

Perhaps the most famous of all the methods of anti-Nazi combat was famously deployed by an anonymous Black Bloc protester against white nationalist icon Richard Spencer on the day of Donald Trump's inauguration. While Spencer denies being a Nazi, he has been known to throw off a suspiciously Nuremberg Rally-esque speech every now and again, complete with shouty paeans to ethnic solidarity and athletic audience heils.

The masked anarchist in question decided to punch him just to be safe.

It is important to note that, as repellant as modern-day Nazis (whether full-on or pseudo-) may be, this writer in no way endorses violence, which is Not The Answer and Never Funny. Indeed, no part of Richard Bertrand Spencer getting decked in the temple is remotely amusing. Not the fact that the punch lands just as Spencer is about to launch into a serious analysis of the symbolism of his cartoon frog lapel pin. Not one of the dozens of remixes showing the protester's fist connecting with Spencer's face at the exact moment the beat drops in a popular song. Not Spencer whining about being humiliated online forever.

Not one bit.

3. In 2015, a guy in South Carolina made KKK marchers look silly by playing a jaunty tuba song while they marched down the street.

When it comes to giving Nazism that down-home spin, no one beats the Ku Klux Klan, a group that takes fascism, smothers it in white gravy, and serves it with a side of cheesy grits and a red-white-and-blue garnish. Back when South Carolina was debating removing the Confederate flag from its state capitol grounds in 2015, a group of klansmen tried to dissuade them by spending the morning of July 18 marching menacingly down the streets of Columbia.

Menacingly, that is, until a man named Matt Buck decided to follow them with a tuba and make them look ridiculous.

"I didn't really know how to show my opposition," Buck told Charleston City Paper following his savage sousaphone-ing of the group. "So that was my way of doing it."

4. A Jewish partisan in the Polish backcountry inconvenienced a group of Nazis by burning down a bridge they were using during WWII.

For many of the brutalized, pissed-off civilians trapped behind German lines during World War II, nothing beat skulking around the woods making life difficult for as many Nazis as possible. One such skulker, Gertrude Boyarski, recalled in a 2013 interview with the Jewish Partisan Education Fund how she gleefully set a bridge — used heavily by the local Nazis — on fire as a holiday present to the Russian government.

Illustration by Tom Eichacker.

The Nazis shot at her for her trouble, (Nazis basically have two settings: off and shooting) but thankfully missed and proceeded to not have a bridge.

5. A group of Czech musicians drowned out neo-Nazi protesters with an impromptu concert.

At a rally in Brno, Czech Republic, in May 2017, 150 marching neo-Nazis were upstaged by nearly twice the number of counter-protesters holding a spontaneous open-air open mic at the same time.

Fun fact: An impromptu anti-Nazi music festival is the one situation where it's OK to root for a guy in a fedora playing acoustic guitar.

6. A band of concentration camp prisoners blew up one of Hitler's death factories.

On Oct. 7, 1944, a group of prisoners at Auschwitz revolted against the camp's guards, killing several by detonating a pile of gunpowder (which they'd been smuggling for months) in one of the camp's crematoria, destroying it.

The Nazis ultimately shot and hanged them all, as Nazis are wont to do, but eternal respect for a group of fighters willing to sacrifice their lives under the most inhuman conditions to inconvenience Nazis, even for a moment.

7. After WWII, Germany fought Nazis with bureaucracy, fining them for their political views.

Here in the land of the free, separated from the most dangerous Nazi stuff by two very large oceans, we mostly let Nazis say what they want. Being a Nazi — so long as you don't round up and kill anyone (hard for Nazis!) — is more or less protected by the First Amendment.

In other countries, particularly those that have had a more up close and personal relationship with Nazis, things are a little different.

The Reichstag building in Berlin. Photo by Tobias Schwarz/Getty Images.

Take Germany, for instance. Nazis have been a bit of an issue in Germany in the past — so the country up and made saying Nazi things illegal. Penalties can include an arrest and a fine, which two Chinese tourists found out the hard way this summer, after deploying "heil Hitler" salutes in front of the historic Reichstag building in Germany.

It's not very free speech-y. It's also only enforced sometimes. To that end...

8. A gang of German counter-protesters formed a blockade, preventing neo-Nazi marchers from getting where they were trying to go.

In August 2017, a group of about 500 German neo-Nazis attempted to march to the former site of Spandau prison, where former mega-Nazi Rudolph Hess died by suicide 30 years earlier. They got about half a mile in before they were "forced to turn back" by counter-protesters blockading their route.

While it may seem surprising that a group of violence-extollin' Nazis let a few civilians stand between them and the ultimate triumph of the Aryan master race, it does make a certain sense. Historically speaking, other than perpetrating the mass murder of millions, giving up is what Nazis do best.

9. During the war, a secret cadre of German communists sabotaged Nazi warships.

Nazis on land are bad. Put Nazis on the high seas and you're asking for a swift torpedo to the national welfare. That's why, despite incredible risk and over the likely objections of everyone who wanted their heads to remain bullet-free, Bernhard Bästlein and Franz Jacob spent the early years of World War II organizing Hamburg shipyard workers to resist Nazi rule and slow down production.

Most members of the group were arrested and executed before they could accomplish much, but the principle they died for — never letting a Nazi get on a boat with guns — lives on.

10. A Swedish woman became an icon when she hit a group of skinheads with her handbag.

In 1985, a group of skinheads set out to terrorize the Swedish town of Vaxjo. They hoped to cow the locals into silence. Instead, a local woman, Danuta Danielsson, whose mother had survived Auschwitz decades earlier, ran up to one of the demonstrators and smacked him with her purse.

The photo of Danielsson's pocketbook strike became so legendary that, in 2014, a Swedish artist proposed building a monument to the swatting. The town, however, declined, fearing such a statue would glorify violence.

[rebelmouse-image 19530684 dam="1" original_size="700x441" caption="Thwack. Photo by Hans Runesson/Wikimedia Commons." expand=1]Thwack. Photo by Hans Runesson/Wikimedia Commons.

Thus, the debate over who is worse, Nazis or the people who hit them with soft household objects continued to infinity.

11. A team of Israeli secret agents tackled Adolf Eichmann when he got off the bus from work and extradited him to face trial for war crimes.

The practical downside to committing a bunch of crimes against humanity means somebody might sneak up on you when you least expect it and make you pay for them. That's what happened to Eichmann one evening in May 1960. The infamous Nazi functionary had facilitated the mass deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz, resulting in the murder of up to 400,000 people. Since the war, he'd been living in Argentina under the name Ricardo Klement.

Or at least he was until Mossad, the national intelligence agency of Israel, pulled up in front of his house, stuffed him in a car, tied his hands and feet, and snuck him onto a commercial flight back to Israel, where he was, unsurprisingly, found guilty of crimes against humanity and eventually hanged.

The world is complicated, however, and most Nazis aren't as notorious as Eichmann. To try to push past that...

12. A relentless Nazi hunter tracked down a most-wanted Nazi war criminal in his retirement community.

Consider the case of Gerhard Sommer. The top man on the Wiesenthal Center's 2015 "Most Wanted Nazi War Criminals" list, the former SS officer allegedly helped murder over 500 men, women, and children in the Italian village of Sant'Anna di Stazzema as the Germans retreated through the area in August 1944. Despite overwhelming evidence placing Sommer at the scene, prosecutors in Germany recently declared the 93-year-old unfit for trial, citing advanced dementia.

Soon after, Nazi hunter Jurgen Kolb decided to track him down in his nursing home.

Thankfully, Kolb took a few reporters from Cracked — a magazine known for its sneakily ambitious journalism — along for the ride. He told them he believes that Sommer is faking his dementia. The group followed a string of clues, ultimately locating the aged accused war criminal in a senior citizens facility.

"All we can do now is update where he is living and that he's still alive," Jurgen told the reporters in an interview. Still, in the grand scheme of making Nazis' lives bad, ensuring one spends the rest of his life looking over his shoulder ain't a terrible consolation prize.

13. A ballet dancer brought to Auschwitz reportedly killed a Nazi officer after distracting him by stripping.

On Oct. 23, 1943, a group of female prisoners, including Polish Jewish dancer Franceska Mann, were brought to a room adjacent to the Auschwitz gas chambers and ordered to disrobe.

What happened next is unclear. Some accounts claim that Mann stripped off her clothes "provocatively," distracting the guards. Most accounts claim that Mann proceeded to grab an officer's gun, shooting him dead and wounding another guard before the Nazis were able to regroup and return fire, killing the prisoners.

Regardless of how it happened, some of the Nazis who were trying to murder them got dead first.

Of course, over the next two years, Nazis continued to try to kill people all over Europe. Which is why it turned out great that...

14. A British spy stole Nazi military secrets, delaying production of dangerous weapons.

Jeannie Rousseau de Clarens had two things going for her when the Nazis invaded France: She spoke fluent German and she was a tiny lady. After leveraging her size and gender to convince a bunch of Nazi officers she couldn't possibly be a threat, she managed to convince them to tell her where they were building their cool new rocket weapon, and she relayed that information to British intelligence. The Brits proceeded to drop bombs on those places, delaying production of the V-1 and V-2 rockets and saving countless lives.

Unlike many of the Nazis she hoodwinked, Rousseau de Clarens lived to the ripe old age of 98, being small and rejoicing in humiliating Nazis till the end.

15. A 70-year-old German woman denies neo-Nazis a public platform by scratching out and painting over their graffiti.

Since the 1980s, Berlin resident Irmela Schramm has been waging a one-woman battle against swastikas, far-right propaganda, and fascist slogans scrawled on public property.

Her weapons? Nail polish remover, a scraper, and spray paint. The goal? To shut neo-Nazis the hell up.

Photo by John MacDougall/Getty Images.

"People tell me I am intolerant, that I don't respect the far-right's freedom of speech," she told CNN. "But I say: Freedom of speech has limits. It ends where hatred and contempt for humanity begins."

Nazis, however, don't always express their "hatred and contempt for humanity" in passive-aggressive artwork, which is why...

16. Vidal Sassoon and a group of Jewish war veterans engaged post-WWII Nazis in guerilla-style street fights.

Late-1940s England had a problem. Despite suffering through a six-year-long, knock-down drag-out brawl with Hitler and co., the country was somehow, against all odds, still full of Nazis. For obvious reasons, British Nazi leader Oswald Mosley (in Britain, even Nazis are named like third-tier Harry Potter villains) spent the later war years hiding out in Ireland. The year after it wrapped, however, a group of Mosley's followers began begging him to return to London to get the old civilian-threatening, Jew-slandering, immigrant-hating band back together.

In response, a band of British Jewish ex-servicemen, who had fought tooth and nail through Europe only to return to this baby fascist BS, began organizing to disrupt their rallies and shout down their propaganda — but mostly to beat the living crap out of them in the middle of the road.

One of those enthusiastically participating in the crap-beating was the group's most WTF member, Vidal Sassoon. Before he became famous for that bottle of two-in-one conditioner that's been sitting, three-quarters empty, in your mom's shower stall since 1993, the Jewish-British Sassoon was infamous for putting the hurt on British Nazis. The world-renowned hairdresser described the aftermath of one such brawl in a 2008 interview with the BBC.

"I'll never forget one morning I walked in and I had a hell of a bruise — it had been a difficult night the night before — and a client said to me, 'Good God, Vidal, what happened to your face?'" Sassoon recalled. "And I said, 'Oh, nothing, madam, I just fell over a hairpin.'"

Apparently, "I kicked some Nazis teeth in. Your move, Pert Plus," would have been a tad gauche for the polite stylist. Nonetheless, credit where due.

17. A world-famous comedian literally danced on Hitler's grave.

Illustration by Tom Eichacker.

In 1958, Groucho Marx decided to spend a little bit of that sweet founding-father-of-modern-film-comedy cash to take his friend, daughter, and family babysitter Judith Dwan Hallet to Dornum, Germany, to visit the graves of his grandparents. The group arrived at the cemetery only to discover that the area where they were buried, the Jewish section, had been destroyed.

A few days later, Marx asked his chauffeur to drive the travelers to the ruins of the bunker where Hitler had died.

Hallet described what happened next in a 2012 interview with MentalFloss:

"The fun was gone," Hallet concluded, bafflingly denying the obvious reality that nothing, not bingo, not Yahtzee, not an indoor water slide, not a three week Disney World vacation, not a marathon of every single Marx Brothers movie ever made could be more fun than doing the jaybird step on the smoldering remains of the guy who basically invented Nazis.

18. An American suburb used Nazi rallies to gin up public support for anti-Nazi monuments.

The infamous 1977 neo-Nazi march through the predominately Jewish town of Skokie, Illinois, did not only inspire a fierce debate over the scope of the First Amendment. It also inspired an iconic "Blues Brothers" scene.

It also also inspired residents to make sure as many people as possible were as informed as possible about who Nazis really are. Fallout from the march led members of the community to band together to form the Holocaust Memorial Foundation of Illinois, which helped complete the town's Holocaust Museum and Education Center in 2011.

19. Thousands of Holocaust survivors shame and resist Nazi ideology every day just by continuing to exist.

In the course of a half-decade, Nazis managed to systematically murder 12 million human beings. And yet, thanks to a timely military defeat, helped along by many of the acts listed above, many of the people Nazis tried to kill not only survived, but kept on surviving for decades after the fact. As of 2016, there were only about 100,000 Holocaust survivors left living. Still, that's 100,000 more than Nazis hoped there would be nearly 70 years after their extermination plan failed.

[rebelmouse-image 19530687 dam="1" original_size="700x476" caption="Students participate in the March of the Living in Poland. Photo by Yossi Zeliger/Wikimedia Commons." expand=1]Students participate in the March of the Living in Poland. Photo by Yossi Zeliger/Wikimedia Commons.

These survivors wound up becoming the key adopters of perhaps the most crucial Nazi fighting method of all:

20. Survivors and their descendants keep telling the truth about who Nazis really are and why it's important to stop them before it's too late.

Being a Nazi in 2017 requires believing, against all evidence, that the Nazis weren't all bad. For modern-day aspiring Goebbles, Hesses, and Goerings to accomplish that, minimizing the Holocaust or pretending it never happened, is plan A, B, and Z. With each passing of a survivor, that becomes easier.

With each person who lived through the horrors of the Holocaust telling their story or person teaching in their memory, it becomes harder to deny.

"It puts the responsibility on us, the next generation, the children of survivors, the grandchildren of survivors, to become as articulate as we can be in maintaining this memory and the mandate that comes with it," Michael Zank, 58, the director of the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies at Boston University, told Time in 2016.

Thankfully, you don't have to look very hard to find folks maintaining the memory. There's the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which has an extensive, thorough education program on its website. Or the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation, which chronicles the activities of the Jewish guerillas who fought Nazis behind enemy lines and teaches tactics for resisting fascism. Or the annual March of the Living or Classrooms Without Borders, which takes educators and students to Poland to meet with survivors and learn about Nazi atrocities firsthand.

It's not as flashy as an outdoor concert, a street brawl, or a handbag slap, but it's necessary. Because, inevitably...

Sooner or later, everyone who witnessed the atrocities the Nazis unleashed on the world will be gone.

Whether their ideology dies first or becomes human history's most ill-conceived reboot, that's up to the rest of us.

When it comes to fighting Nazis, you rarely get to pick the time and place.

For those of us alive in 2017, it's becoming clearer that's here and now.

Who's got a tuba?

Illustration by Tom Eichacker.

From Your Site Articles

Stark and brazen in the face of history, these faces shine out and remind the world of its darkest moment but also its brightest future.

"Survivor"is a photo series that tells the story of over 200 people who survived an important and painful episode in history.

Every person featured in the series is a survivor of the Holocaust. Each portrait is accompanied by a caption, written in their own handwriting. The messages range from feelings of unquenched anger, to peaceful resolution, to hope for the future.

Photographer Harry Borden, a seasoned celebrity photographer, started the project 10 years ago and spent five years traveling the globe to meet and photograph his subjects. He photographed the survivors in their own homes using natural light to create a sense of intimacy.

“I wanted to do something that would have a lasting ... impact,” Borden told ABC News Australia. The series is both incredibly moving and a way of preserving the voices of those who lived through one of the darkest moments in recent human history — voices that should not be forgotten.

1. Felix Fibich

[rebelmouse-image 19530779 dam="1" original_size="1349x1012" caption=""In my dancing I was trying to express a full range of human emotions from the joy of life to deep sorrow of pain and suffering of tragic life." Photo by Harry Borden." expand=1]"In my dancing I was trying to express a full range of human emotions from the joy of life to deep sorrow of pain and suffering of tragic life." Photo by Harry Borden.

2. Agi Muller

"As a Hungarian Jew, I ran from the Germans, I ran from the Soviets. I’ve stopped running. Beauty and love surround me!" Photo by Harry Borden.

3. Leon Jedwab

"I believe I’m the last Holocaust survivor out of the 70 or so Jewish families including my mother, sister and brother who lived in my birthplace of Zagórów in Poland. I still live with the nightmares." Photo by Harry Borden.

4. Mary Elias

[rebelmouse-image 19530782 dam="1" original_size="1349x1012" caption=""The last time I saw my parents was when we arrived at Auschwitz. My father came back to get his prayer book. He kissed us and said, 'We will never see each other again.'" Photo by Harry Borden." expand=1]"The last time I saw my parents was when we arrived at Auschwitz. My father came back to get his prayer book. He kissed us and said, 'We will never see each other again.'" Photo by Harry Borden.

5. Dan Vaintraub

[rebelmouse-image 19530783 dam="1" original_size="1349x1012" caption=""The day of my birth tells all the story. 10.11.1938." Photo by Harry Borden." expand=1]"The day of my birth tells all the story. 10.11.1938." Photo by Harry Borden.

6. Lidia Vago

[rebelmouse-image 19530784 dam="1" original_size="1349x1012" caption=""In Limbo: In the black hole of our Planet Earth / Auschwitz / They drove me out / When it ceased to be; / Yet who will drive it out of me? / It still exists. / Only death will be my exorcist." Photo by Harry Borden." expand=1]"In Limbo: In the black hole of our Planet Earth / Auschwitz / They drove me out / When it ceased to be; / Yet who will drive it out of me? / It still exists. / Only death will be my exorcist." Photo by Harry Borden.

7. Tuvia Lipson

[rebelmouse-image 19530785 dam="1" original_size="1349x1012" caption=""Little did I know that I would find the strength to survive those insufferable circumstances that are still far beyond human understanding. I am proud to say that I am here, but many of those who are part of our life are not. And so my heart silently weeps." Photo by Harry Borden." expand=1]"Little did I know that I would find the strength to survive those insufferable circumstances that are still far beyond human understanding. I am proud to say that I am here, but many of those who are part of our life are not. And so my heart silently weeps." Photo by Harry Borden.

8. Kitia Altmann

[rebelmouse-image 19530786 dam="1" original_size="1349x1012" caption=""At the end of the day, Holocaust was all about people!! Good people, bad people, and the ones who were indifferent. For me survival is an on-going process." Photo by Harry Borden." expand=1]"At the end of the day, Holocaust was all about people!! Good people, bad people, and the ones who were indifferent. For me survival is an on-going process." Photo by Harry Borden.

9. Leon Rosenzweig

[rebelmouse-image 19530787 dam="1" original_size="1349x1012" caption=""The best time of my life is when I am with my family." Photo by Harry Borden." expand=1]"The best time of my life is when I am with my family." Photo by Harry Borden.

10. Relli Robinson

"It is our moral and conscientious obligation of the survivors of The Holocaust, and of Jews all over the world, to carry the torch of remembrance of The Holocaust and The Heroism of this Human Earthquake in 'Cultural Europe' (1939–1945), from generation to generation, to those generations — when none of us — survivors of the flames of hell will be alive anymore." Photo by Harry Borden.

11. Janek (Yona) Fuchs

[rebelmouse-image 19530789 dam="1" original_size="1349x1012" caption=""Having today 3 children and 14 grandchildren, I think I won the war against Hitler!" Photo by Harry Borden." expand=1]"Having today 3 children and 14 grandchildren, I think I won the war against Hitler!" Photo by Harry Borden.

12. Eve Kugler

[rebelmouse-image 19530790 dam="1" original_size="1349x1012" caption=""I am a child survivor. Those of us who survived were not more worthy than those who perished. Nor were we braver, richer, smarter or more resourceful. We were not. We were just luckier." Photo by Harry Borden." expand=1]"I am a child survivor. Those of us who survived were not more worthy than those who perished. Nor were we braver, richer, smarter or more resourceful. We were not. We were just luckier." Photo by Harry Borden.

13. John Balan

"As a hidden child I frequently lecture to children about my experiences. My great concern is who will continue to tell our stories when we’re gone in not too many years?" Photo by Harry Borden.

14. Mirjam Finkelstein

[rebelmouse-image 19530792 dam="1" original_size="1349x1012" caption=""I think of myself as a person, a wife and mother first and a survivor last." Photo by Harry Borden." expand=1]"I think of myself as a person, a wife and mother first and a survivor last." Photo by Harry Borden.

As each year passes, fewer and fewer survivors are left to share their stories.

Borden's book features portraits and written statements from 200 survivors, as well as biographies, preserving their stories forever.

Each photo and message is a reminder of our collective responsibility to never forget the horrors of the past, to honor those who did not survive, and to ensure this never happens again.

Watch the video below for a behind the scenes look at the making of the book:

From Your Site Articles

Roman Kent was stunned to hear what press secretary Sean Spicer had to say about the Holocaust on April 11, 2017.

Speaking with reporters, Spicer suggested Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was an even greater threat to humanity than Adolf Hitler because the former Nazi leader "didn't even sink to using chemical weapons" on his own people.

Hitler, of course, did use chemical weapons on his own people, as the Third Reich murdered millions of Jews and members of other groups deemed "unworthy of life" using poisonous gas. Many of them were, in fact, German citizens.

Kent, a survivor of the Holocaust himself, told Mic that Spicer's comments were simply "incomprehensible," as Spicer was speaking on behalf of the president of the United States.

Kent, speaking at an event in Poland, in 2015. Photo by Odd Andersen/AFP/Getty Images.

“That’s not a mistake — that’s an ignorance," Kent explained. "A complete, total ignorance of the most important issue that prevailed during that last war, from which so many people died.”

Kent spent time in Auschwitz and lost both his parents to the Holocaust before immigrating to the U.S. after the war. He eventually married, started a family, and went on to become a successful trader.

But the 87-year-old — now the president of the International Auschwitz Committee — has spent much of his later years reflecting on his own experiences during World War II and the dangers of hate speech, hoping our memory of the past will prevent a future atrocity.

“Of course, a word is not a gun," he once explained to UNESCO — but they can create conditions where unconscionable violence is accepted: "In the end, words can do far greater damage than a bullet.”

Spicer apologized for his insensitive comparison of Assad and Hitler the day after making the statement. But to Kent, the damage may already be done.

“To have a person ignorant like this at the helm of our government — because press secretary is very important — it’s tragic," Kent noted to Mic. "It’s not a mistake. It’s a tragedy.”

Watch Kent's interview with Mic below: