The Cost of Free Land Quotes

“Hitler’s studies of American Indian reservations influenced his creation of concentration camps. America’s westward expansion, justified by Manifest Destiny, served as Hitler’s template for what he called Lebensraum, “living space,” his justification for invading the countries east of Germany and murdering millions of Slavs living there.”
― Rebecca Clarren, The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota, and an American Inheritance

“Indian Problem” would inspire none other than Adolf Hitler. In a 1928 speech, he applauded the way Americans had “gunned down the millions of Redskins to a few hundred thousand, and now keep the modest remnant under observation in a cage.” Hitler “often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America’s extermination—by starvation and uneven combat—of the red savages who could not be tamed by captivity,” wrote John Toland in Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography.”
― Rebecca Clarren, The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota, and an American Inheritance

“There’s a debate, described in the Talmud, between two rabbis, over what should be done if it’s discovered that a house, or even a palace, was built using a stolen beam as part of its foundation. One rabbi says the entire building must be demolished so that the beam can be returned to its original owners. The other rabbi, the far more pragmatic, says the building can remain standing if the full value of the beam is repaid. Both rabbis make clear that, as soon as it is known that the beam was stolen, those living in the house must do something, they must make amends.”
― Rebecca Clarren, The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota, and an American Inheritance

“My family felt more American because they owned a swath of American soil. How does it change our sense of ourselves to learn that our land had been take from the Lakota at gunpoint or threat of starvation? What does it mean to survive oppression only to perpetuate and benefit from the oppression of others?”
― Rebecca Clarren, The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota, and an American Inheritance

“one way that my family and other recent immigrant Jews managed this central anxiety was to distance themselves from Native Americans. Whiteness in America is graded on a curve. Adopting the stereotypical and racist ideas about Lakota and other Indigenous peoples could only help Jews appear a little more white, a little more American.”
― Rebecca Clarren, The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota, and an American Inheritance