A recent trip to Germany left me mulling German history lessons and their current relevance.
Berlin highlighted the East/West divide embedded in German psyches 47 years after the Berlin Wall fell and 81 years after the war ended. A painted line memorializes its path, demarcating East from West as we crossed the street. Germany still struggles to integrate two distinct countries, reimagining governance, economies, and cultural institutions in the process. History’s scars are not easily erased. Is it any wonder that our Mason-Dixon Line lives on in ways too numerous to count?
Dresden taught lessons in the horrors of war and resilience. Allied bombing at the war’s end killed nearly 25,000 civilians and destroyed centuries-old structures. Many believe that the goal was simply German humiliation. Our guide’s comment, laced with anger and sadness, was “It was war, but was it really necessary?” Yet, rebuilding continues stone by stone, allowing one gorgeous church, the Frauenkirche, to reopen in 2005. What will resilience and rebuilding look like for Gaza, Iran, and US democracy?
Dachau, the first of 44,000 detention centers, was framed as a “work camp”—Arbeit Macht Frei. In reality, brutal, meaningless work aimed to kill dissidents, the regime’s first target. Cremation ovens still memorialize the 28,000 who died there. By the war’s end, Nazis killed 17,000,000 persons, including 6,000,000 Jews. Here, ICE has become a paramilitary mass deportation force, bypassing due process and immigration law; in 2025, it detained 310,000 persons and 50,000 last month. Most lack criminal records and often have legal status and established lives. Detention center conditions are often profoundly inhumane. Are we better than the Nazis?
Berlin’s Memorial to Murdered Reichstag Members honors 96 politicians who resisted. Today Trump has prioritized retribution, with 470 identified targets. Will we need a similar monument?
Stop while possible. Vote.
Below are 3 images from Dachau-- inside a reconstructed "model" dormitory, and a view of the grounds with the foundation outlines of the many barracks, and the cremation ovens.
