Is That Legal?

I'd encourage you to collect these posts on your Uncle Leo, and perhaps link back to your prior entries (sort of the way Volokh does). There's probably a decent Moveable Type tag system that can help you with this.

I'd imagine some readers might come upon these posts in isolation and want to read more.

as awful as it is, it was the nazi's obsession with recordkeeping that brought leopold's kennkarte into your hands.

i felt both angered and overwhelmed with love when i found my great-grandparents' passports, also stamped with J, among my grandmother's papers. it is a difficult thing to process.

Interesting that you mention fingerprints.

My German wife, upon entering America last summer, was fingerprinted and photographed before being allowed to enter the U.S. from the airport immigration area (10 fingers is now mandaotry - previously it was only 2 as the system was being ramped up). As American citizens, neither our children nor I were forced to do this - though it is notable to mention that every single counter is now equipped with a fingerprint scanner and camera, not merely those which handle non-American travellers.

However, I am fairly certain that the fingerprints of all the people involved in that process, from the person at the counter to the contractors who installed the system, to the various Homeland Security individuals involved, have their fingerprints on file. Along with their pictures, and I would certainly expect blood/urine samples due to drug testing.

Also interestingly, in the last few weeks, there has been a debate in Germany about allowing the police to access the fingerprint database which is being created in connection with the new biometric requirements, which seem to be now mandatory due to American pressure. Just today, the radio news at 6:30am reported that these databases will not be linked into police databases - for whatever it is worth. (As Germans know, it is the collection of data that is the problem, not the ostensible reason it is collected - Germany is not a slippery slope case, after all.) Apparently, defending a democracy by treating every citizen as a potential criminal is still unacceptable in the politial arena of today's Germany.

However, in America I don't think you will have to worry about the fingerprints, pictures, and likely the DNA information of both the victims and their tormentors being available in the future.

Our progress in these areas remain impressive - and as citizens of a democracy who pay taxes, I'm sure we can all find someone else to blame than ourselves. Starting to notice some parallels here? It is easy to judge evil - opposing it almost always seems to be work better left for someone else, while we go along our daily lives.

Quite honestly, though America is not a monolith, and the future is always open, all the tools and most of the attitudes are in place for the growth of something which most people think impossible in the United States of America. It is the unwillingness to accept the possibility which makes preventing it so hard. Germans, who merely have to ask their parents or grandparents about the past (or in the case of most East Germans, simply remember what life was like before 1989), are at least able to recognize what is going on.

Perhaps not so surprisingly, they too expect America to pull back, as it is inconceivable that a land with centuries of tradition of being a beacon of freedom, will plunge into darkness.

As a sidenote - the Bush League is so utterly and truly incompetent, I can't see them actually using the tools they have put into place, and quite honestly, I have no idea who will. But that someone will seems a certainty - after all, who opposed their creation? Nothing like better being safe than sorry, after all - and these days, keeping your head down is a smart move, especially when a retired Marine colonel presenting information about the Constitution finds himself on a no-fly list, apparently for actually believing that the First Amendment still means something in his daily life.

"Our progress in these areas remain impressive - and as citizens of a democracy who pay taxes, I'm sure we can all find someone else to blame than ourselves. Starting to notice some parallels here? It is easy to judge evil - opposing it almost always seems to be work better left for someone else, while we go along our daily lives."

It's borderline repulsive to try to equate fingerprinting foreign nationals who enter the U.S. (BTW, You and your American children would have to be photographed and fingerprinted if you wanted to leave the U.S.) with fingerprinting German Jews by the Nazis for the purpose of cataloging their disgusting mission. The analogy isn't even remotely on point.

Hmmm.

As a sidenote - the Bush League is so utterly and truly incompetent

Frankly you're a schmeckle for interjecting this sort of nonsense.

I remember finding the baptismal records of my mother's grandparents who came from Eckleshausen in 1863 to Baltimore. They must have been aware that the Civil War was going on, and not so far from the city they chose to settle in. I wonder what conditions were like where they lived that coming to a country in the midst of a civil war seemed like a good idea.

Sad though your Uncle Leo's story is, are you glad to know these details? I imagine I would be, in your place. I hope you are.

It is an irony that many of the victims have had their names researched and preserved for coming generations, while the perpetrators' names are vanishing into oblivion. Small victory perhaps, but worth noting.

As a sidenote - the Bush League is so utterly and truly incompetent

Yeah, our burgeoning bureaucracy was operating flawlessly before, and I'm sure it will be right back to 100% efficiency the day after GWB is out of office.

Give me a break...

cya

When one attempts to score a cheap shot, as you attempted to do, in the context of something as horrific as the Holocaust, it speaks far more of you and your character than I think you realize...

Again, while I disagree with you politically I have throughly enjoyed these updates and your talents in sharing your family story. I hope you'll write a feature for a some publication on the whole matter. I think many non-blog readers would find it just as compelling as I have. Thank you for continuning to share this story.

I second mrshl's comment. Perhaps you could just have one static page which linked to all the relevant posts that you updated as you added to this. I'd like to be able to point people to one URL that links to all the posts.

For some reason, meticulous, almost compulsive, record keeping of their crimes is common among despotic regimes, especially those engaging in wide-scale repression and genocide. Look at the volumes of horrors recorded by the Ba'athists in Iraq.

I remember the shock of poking around my grandmother's house when I was a teenager and coming across some of my late grandfather's stationery from his medical practice, address Adolf Hitler Strasse.

The banality of evil lives on in German bureaucracy, though. My family has been wrangling with the German government for years over properties left behind in 1936. The German functionaries still require that all forms be submitted under the Nazified version of the claimants' names -- that is, with the mandatory "Israel" inserted as a middle name for men, "Sarah" for women.

'As a sidenote - the Bush League is so utterly and truly incompetent'

Perhaps, but at least they are not so sinister as to seek to disarm you. Since they accept that the Second Amendment has meaning in daily life.

I think the obsessive bureaucracy revealed by the files is an outgrowth of the tyranny and fear imposed from Hitler on down. Records are needed to show that YOU are doing your job, that if any wrong (in the eyes of the evil regime) things happen, blame, the wrath of the Gestapo, falls on somebody else. Without records, the informer in the office, the guy trying to toady up to his handlers to get a bonus, may try to pin a false accusation on you. With thorough documentation, however, you can prove that you did your part, and cannot be accused of sympathizing or aiding the "enemies of the Fatherland."

Eric,

thank you again for these posts which go so far towards putting a personal face on the cataclysm of the last century.

I do not know whether you find this personally difficult, or uplifting, or whether it simply overwhelms you with many emotions. I only know how much I appreciate your willingness to share this private family matter with all of us.

Best wishes for you and yours. Es lebt Onkel Leo!

ELM: Never uplifting. Very often difficult, though almost never in the moment.

Assistant Village Idiot said, "It is an irony that many of the victims have had their names researched and preserved for coming generations, while the perpetrators' names are vanishing into oblivion. Small victory perhaps, but worth noting."

And I am reminded of Proverbs 10:7 which says, "The memory of the righteous is blessed, But the name of the wicked will rot."

Thank you for sharing this story with us.

God bless you for sharing this.

I am looking for Opa in Uncle Leo's photo, and not finding him. I don't know why that makes me sad, but it does. Thank you, Eric.

Fernat- 'You and your American children would have to be photographed and fingerprinted if you wanted to leave the U.S.'

No, hard as it seems for you to imagine, American citizes are not fingerprinted upon leaving the United States of America. At least they weren't in August 2006. However, any person fingerprinted and photographed upon arriving in America is also required to be fingerprinted and photographed upon leaving, so in the grand scheme of things, you are likely right - at some point in the not so distant future, before an American citizen is allowed to leave those area Homeland Security (what a great name - 'Heimatsicherheit') has jurisdiction within, they will be fingerprinted and photographed.

And you think this should a normal, routine, and unremarkable procedure?

Anon-
'...it speaks far more of you and your character than I think you realize.' I know - and my sense of failure at not actually being able to influence fellow citizens into caring about what is happening in America is certainly another part of my character, a fairly bitter one.

Even more intriguing was how many people seemed to think that detailing what is happening in the U.S. is a cheap shot. There are a lot of fingerprints on file, for example - after all, in many states, anyone under the legal drinking age has been fingerprinted and photographed in profile as part of the process of acquiring a driver's license. Generally, evil takes place in slow motion, it doesn't announce itself. The Nazis used Wiemar social welfare files, after all, to locate and eliminate thousands of 'defectives' and 'inferiors.'

Evil relies on no one recognizing its presence, except for those actively engaging in it - always a minority, it seems, as most people can find justification for their actions.

Here is a personal anecdote from this past Saturday in Germany - coming home on the train with my daughter, a group of university age students were going to a local lake, and playing a quiz grame. One question was 'How is the truth determined in America?' and the first answer said laughingly was 'CIA,' and the answer immediately following it by a beat was 'torture.' Can you imagine - Germans jokingly referring to a nation that uses torture? They all laughed, finding it amusing. Such unserious, unthinking young people - don't they know that torture is barbaric? A reliable sign of evil? Something their grandparents may have been involved in, and something to be ashamed of? How could they laugh at a nation that defends torture as a necessary tool in its fight against evil?

The official quiz answer was 'lie detector,' by the way.

You used the word 'niggling'

This proves you are a racist and worse than the Nazis

(Do not doubt that there are those who are thinking this seriously)

The term banality of evil is bandied about pretty freely these days but this example, especially the search of the house to find the card, shows what it really means

It is kind of like the phrase 'man's inhumanity to man'. This what that is really about. George Bush not backing gay marriage is not 'like the Holocaust'. Not even close. Chickens being kept in less than pleasant conditions is not 'like the Holocaust'

Communism's record in the 20th century is 'like the Holocaust'

cya,

Your comments comprise a cheap shot because they are an incoherent case of Bush = Hitler. First you try to show how the Bushies are like Nazis by comparing the increased collection of biometrics with Uncle Leo's fingerprints. Rather superficial. When you're called on that, you observe that "The Nazis used Wiemar social welfare files, after all, to locate and eliminate thousands of 'defectives' and 'inferiors.'" So do records indicate anything or not? It seems as if it is rather what people do with them. And then we're left with nothing but your antipathy, which you could have kept to yourself.

This was a powerful post. It is a sad reminder of what happened once and could happen again.

clazy -
'Your comments comprise a cheap shot because they are an incoherent case of Bush = Hitler.'

No, they are a cheap shot because I don't think Bush is at all competent enough to use the tools which have been put into place in America over the last generation to allow himself to maintain power past his term. But someone will use them - after all, the systems are still being funded, expanded, and improved - and American citizens seem to feel this is a desirable state of affairs.

As for questioning the education which German students receive, which includes visiting a concentration camp, what can I say? Let me put it this way - do you think it was the Nazis that started noting race on official documents, or did they use previous records? It is not a trick question, by the way.

Though not directly answering your doubts, this link http://www.csu.edu.au/learning/eubios/SG12.html should provide some excellent background about why, for example, my Virginia birth certificate has my race listed on it - and do keep in mind, when I was born, my birth certificate's race category still determined who I could legally marry or not.

My antipathy to what I see happening in the U.S. is quite, quite deep, no question. I responded to an earlier poster who seemed to feel that American citizens leaving the United States are routinely fingerprinted and photographed by asking if he felt this should be normal. No one needs to agree with my view of what is happening in the U.S. - after all, I don't live there, so my concerns tend more to the theoretical than the practical at this point, anyways.

CYA: Let's get this straight. People who start two world wars and implement the holocaust - they are the ones who should lecture everyone else on morality and politics. After all, they're the ones who did it! The ones who saved the world from them - they just lack the moral sophistication of the Germans.

Your story about the German teenagers only tells us what we already know: that antiAmericanism is a coverup for guilt and shame.

"after all, I don't live there, so my concerns tend more to the theoretical than the practical at this point, anyways."

how precious.

Why don't you start doing your handwringing about what is going on in Europe? There's a lot more antisemitic violence in europe than there is antimuslim violence in the US. Europe is a deeply sick continent.

nona -
Europe has a dark horrible history - though why anyone would ignore Lenin and Stalin when talking about it escapes me. Which is why at the founding of the United States, the advice to avoid foreign entanglements was based on cold hard pragmatism. It remains my personal conviction that America's entry into World War I was was one the most fateful decisions of the 20th Century - if America had remain uninvolved, Hitler is extremely unlikely to have risen to power. (Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of Stalin.)

The German teenagers weren't being anti-American, unfortunately - they merely found amusement at the reality that the government of the nation I am a citizen of defends torture as a way to find truth when fighting what it defines as evil.

I will remark it continues to amaze me that in every reply, my American birth and citizenship is clearly stated, as is my deep concern, which many seem to scoff at (living as they do in the land of the Patriot Act and Homeland Security), at what is happening in the nation I grew up in.

Germans have committed true evil in the past - unfortunately, that is not some sort of assurance that the United States of America won't in the future.

And my concerns at what is happening have nothing do with any single president, or political parties. It has much more to do with a growing number of secret laws, secret prisons, innocent people being sent to be tortured by other nations (the U.S. has no problem cooperating with Syria in terms of torture, for example), and a callous attitude among many American citizens that such unAmerican and barbaric actions are justifiable or necessary.

But there is no reason to be concerned about the U.S. - Europe is a much uglier place, after all.

cya,

Sorry, but you began this conversation by condemning efforts to identify individuals, not groups.

It's one thing to collect data that definitively identifies me as the unique person clazy--surely you would allow that a government is justified in developing a means to identify you, no? And wouldn't you prefer that it be a means that did not allow someone else to hijack your identity?

It's another thing to collect data on the groups to which you belong. And even then, the state does have an overriding interest in knowing some--isn't nationality an obvious one? Religion, on the other hand, is obviously not, nor "race".

You're sincere, I have no doubt, but that doesn't mean that the fingerprints that began this post and your fears about the future of the US are linked by your experience in the airport, no matter how deeply you feel those fears.

Yeah, Germany might have gotten better terms in WWI - so what? The point here is that you are claiming Germans have credibility and a unique insight due to starting two world wars and committing genocide. That is the vantage point from which you preen and lecture others who are too stupid to truly recognize evil. The idea that the fact of having perpetrated the holocaust gives Germans credibility in preaching is farcical.

You seem oblivious to the fact that even with the Patriot Act, Americans and even foreign nationals have far more freedom and protection here than in most European countries. As an example, reading the British press, one also sees nothing but that the US is creeping toward facism. Yet in reality, the Brits had more far ranging laws in place prior to 9/11 than the patriot act, to protect against Irish terrorism, and post 9/11 they only put more such in place. Are you worried about the UK with their terrible oppressive facistic laws that are much more onerous than those in the US (and which would be unconstitutional here)? Most of the freedoms that are revoked never existed in the first place in Europe (or germany!) And in our country, the most basic protections can't be taken away, because if they rip up the constitution, there is no US. The rise of Nazism couldn't happen here as it happened in germany; Nazis couldn't be elected and act under democratic process, there is no ripping up the constitution by the legislature. Your german (and british and french etc) don't know or understand how much freer America is than the countries they live in, in the sense that there are real limits to which legislature can go. They only know that there is talk in the US about tradeoffs between liberty and security and rights of others, and given that they are both antiAmerican and insecure and guiltridden and they know they are living in dying socialist fantasy states in which the solution to world war is no violence or self protection, they try and "find amusement" in a fantasy that allows them to ignore the downward spirals in their countries.

Do you spare a thought for what is going on in europe when you worry about a renewal of the holocaust? In France recently, a woman was accosted on a subway, her star of david ripped off, and a swastika painted on her stomach. This follows on the heels of an attack on a rabbi a bit earlier. Do the german teenagers read the paper? How about you?:

"Tzvi Amar, president of the Marseilles Jewish community, said that the attorney generals office informed him that he had concluded the attack was indeed anti-Semitic. Yet the police spokesman would only say the case “required further investigation.” This may be because calling the incident an anti-Semitic attack could have far-reaching political ramifications for the final round in the presidential elections, scheduled for May 6."

Antisemitic incidents have become routine in france; there is practically not a synagogue in france that has not been firebombed. Does this worry you or are you too busy with *the Americans* repeating WWII and reintroducing Nazism? AFter all, how many Jews are there already in France to protect, having mostly been shipped off to be gassed in WWII.

Almost nothing you refer to done in the US is not legal in Europe, but much done in Europe is NOT constitutional in the US. And we are not pacifying Muslims and running our politics like cowards, looking away from the violence of "Guest workers" we import to fund our corrupt socialist governments even as we make no steps to have these guest workers integrate. And this idea of introducing "Guest workers" with no rights who live as second class citizens - this is not a cultural sickness you have?

Europe is cracking up, it will be at present demographic trends overtaken by fundamentalist islam in a matter of decades --- but go ahead and worry about facism in the USA.

If Europe had learned the lessons of WWII, they wouldn't be cozying up to Islamics, they would be fighting them. But your precious Germany couldn't even put sanctions on Iran when british - actually European Union - marines were kidnapped by a Holocaust denying maniac, because, as usual, commerce is more important.

Handwringing about the US while ignoring the reality Europe - you and your German teenagers and the rest of those worried about America - you are the people who haven't learned any lessons and have nothing to do but try and justify your historic sins by committing them again.

Oddly enough when folks in Europe spare time from worrying about facism in America, they have time to discuss facism in Israel. Because again, they are in a unique position to recognize true Nazism, and it isn't in the antisemitic ravings of the Muslims and palestinians, oh, no, it's in the Jewish state!

If Germany had learned the lessons of WWII, and if they truly desired to repent, they would not be identifying America and Israel as threats to world peace.

"Europe has a dark horrible history"

It has a compromised present and a Muslim future.

"Germans have committed true evil in the past - unfortunately, that is not some sort of assurance that the United States of America won't in the future."

It is not some guarantee that Europeans won't commit it in the future (or present) either. If Iran doesn't nuke 6 million in Israel, it won't be due to German efforts to see the Holocaust not repeated, that's fer sure.

"And my concerns at what is happening have nothing do with any single president, or political parties."

Of course not! That would be rational. Your concern is to project and deny to justify European self-absorption and cowardice. It is not as though Europeans have military power to use anyway; they have been too busy transferring money to their social welfare programs. Far better to rely on the USA to save them once again, while kvetching about anything the USA might actually do. European foreign policy consists of Whine, whine, whine, whine, tut tut tut tut about anything America does. During the cold war, you guys at least provided some defense on the ground, while we provided the nuclear shield, but since then you rely almost exclusively on America to do what needs to be done, and have only the role of moral conscience (Europeans, as perpetrators of the HOlocaust, are naturally suited to this job). The EU has a gross GDP greater than the US, and larger total population, but has made itself utterly dependent on the USA to protect its way of life - that same capitalistic fascistic USA that every right thinking European knows is on the slippery slope to evil . Whiny brats sitting in the back of the car complaining about their nasty parents, with no responsibility and no accountability and immature selfish interests.

"But there is no reason to be concerned about the U.S. - Europe is a much uglier place, after all."

Yes it is. I spent months at a time in my childhood in Europe. I will not travel there now, because there are many places where it is unsafe for an identifiably Jewish person to travel in Europe nowadays. How about that, eh. A continent that murders 6 million Jews and can't be troubled to keep it safe for the occasional tourist. Worry about the USA, why don't you.

clazy -
'...surely you would allow that a government is justified in developing a means to identify you?' Actually, no I wouldn't, but then, that is based on American history, not European. The United States of America didn't even bother to worry who was entering the country for more than a century - when European principalities (I love constitutional language) would never have considered it. Americans only started to worry about keeping track of individuals roughly around the time debt and income tax became commonplace (not counting slaves and Asians - more ugly American history, so we won't discuss it here) - that is, sometime between 1900 and 1920. Even then, it took Social Security to create the basis for an ID number in later generations, which was a major concern at the time it was first introduced, due to its potential to allow Americans to be treated like Europeans. As for hijacking my identity - strangely, that is a crime that seems to have arisen since my leaving the U.S. - no one seemed to worry about it in the 1970s or 1980s, before ID became so important in American society.

I realize that my views are quite out of step in today's America, and likely to grow more so as time goes on.

"I realize that my views are quite out of step in today's America, and likely to grow more so as time goes on."

Lots of people don't like ID-ing and social security numbers for similar reasons. Where you are out of step - and also living in a fantasy - is in your claims that the USA is becoming fascistic, relative to, say, Germany, and in drawing a parallel between German perpetration of and acquiescence to the Holocaust and American acquiescence to security measures that implies that Germans possess unique moral vision (and not incidentally excusing all but a minority of active complicity in anything but distant and apparently unrelated government edicts that couldn't have predictably led to the Holocaust any more than Social security numbers can.) It is myopic to assume that the next Holocaust would happen exactly as the last one did and to misidentify the threat as from the American government as europeans keep doing, while neglecting to take appropriate measures against those who aim to repeat last century's evils: Islamic fundamentalism.