The Final Solution

 

It's a kind of anxiety, I suppose, something akin to unease. What is visible on the faces of these mothers and children is their troubledness, not because they fear death but because they have no idea of they ma well be on their way. They have no sense at all of what will happen. Even the faces of the children register how uneasy they are, how scared. Perhaps it's better that they didn't know.

On the far side is an imperial proclamation signed by Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I in 1551 that ordered all Jewish people to wear a circle on their clothing. The document on the left indicates that the document on the right was a gift to Hermann Goring, who with Reinhard Heydrich had come up with the idea of requiring all the Jews in Germany and throughout occupied Europe to wear stars on their clothing, so there could be no mistaking the truth. There was, after all, precedent, historical precedent.

If you need a story to go with the plan, you make one up or refashion it from fear that's already in the air, a story that takes advantage of a man or woman's sense of victimhood or powerlessness or lack of achievement, a story that will, at once, locate an enemy and an answer to why on earth your not getting what you deserve. For some, that story began here in a Jewish cemetery in Poland where Jewish people entered late in the night to make final plans on taking over the world. 

Imagine this. You spot this post card for sale somewhere on the street and tell yourself you really should say hello to cousin Egbert. The action of the drawing tells all, but the visage of the Jewish cross-dresser manages to convey in a single, grotesque image the total ugliness of the enemy, his (or her) danger to German patriots, his overwhelming power (look at that arm) and the malignant sexuality of, you know, those inferior beings. "Greetings," the writer might say on the other side.  

Here's the sign my Dutch cousins would have seen, a proclamation from the occupying Nazi forces making clear to the nation's Jewish citizenry that the law going presently into effect mandates their wearing a yellow star. And from the yellow star, the Nazis moved to this

and this

and this

Not so long ago. Not so far away.