John

“Even so, the advance of the far right in Europe and the United States reveals the need to rethink memory work, to adapt it to new generations for whom the Second World War feels like a long-ago crisis. It's important to tell a story people can identify with, a story of ordinary people, the Mitlaufer, and not only of heroes, victims, or monsters. To raise awareness that, if history as such does not repeat itself, sociological and psychological mechanisms do, which push individuals and societies to make irrational choices by supporting regimes and leaders who are opposed to their interests, by becoming complicit in criminal ideas and actions. The most dangerous monster is not a megalomaniacal and violent leader, but us, the people who make him possible, who give him the power to lead. By our opportunism, by our conformity to all-powerful capitalism, which places money and consumption over education, intelligence, and culture, we are in danger of losing the democracy, peace, and freedom that so many of our predecessors have fought to preserve.”
― Géraldine Schwarz, Those Who Forget: My Family's Story in Nazi Europe – A Memoir, A History, A Warning