Above all I charge the leaders of the nation and those under them to scrupulous observance of the laws of race and to merciless opposition to the universal poisoner of all peoples, International Jewry. —Adolph Hitler’s final words before dying by suicide in his Berlin bunker April 30, 1945

Jailed for eight years: teenager who planned suicide attack on synagogue — London Guardian June 15, 2024

It’s been said that death is a great career move. Today, more than ever, Hitler’s legacy is embraced by a new generation eager to finish the job he started. 

From Putin’s attempt to characterize Ukrainian President Zelensky as a Nazi front man to teenagers hellbent on taking down London synagogues, you never know where or when avatars of the greatest racist in human history will strike next. Ignoring the fact that Jews made Germany a world leader in the sciences, medicine, the arts, education, commerce and munitions manufacturing, he systematically rid the country of the talent he needed to win his war against the Jews.

The exodus of Jewish physicists included Hans Bethe, Felix Bloch, Max Born, Albert Einstein, James Franck, Otto Frisch, Fritz London, Lise Meitner, Erwin Schrödinger, Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, Victor Weisskopf and Eugene Wigner. Three were Nobel prize winners and five would win that honor after leaving the Third Reich behind. In Hitler’s mind, every Jew — no matter how gifted, no matter how much they contributed to the welfare of Germany — was an enemy of the people. Their humanity was sacrificed on the altar of fascism.

Today his disciples are doing their best to intimidate Jews in places like the United Kingdom. In April a London march against antisemitism was cancelled due to safety fears. Here pro-Palestinian marches have cost police over £38 million and there have been 193 arrests for antisemitic offenses including some activists calling for an end to the Israeli state.

This in turn has opened the door to generalized attacks against Jewry, an attempt to force Jews to stay out of Central London on weekends to avoid the latest Palestinian protest against the war. Lone actors such as a 19-year-old student who was just sentenced to six years imprisonment for plotting to blow up a British synagogue are eager to finish the job that Hitler started.

For their own safety, Jews have been urged to avoid central London where these demonstrators call for expulsion of the vast majority of Jews, urge globalization of the Intifada and promise to “decolonise Judaism” to audience applause.

“Few could argue against the necessity for a ceasefire in Gaza, where the humanitarian situation is intolerable, or for the release of the hostages,” declares the Evening Standard. 

“Yet for too many on these pro-Palestinian marches, peaceful coexistence is not the key demand. Rather, it is the destruction of the state of Israel and the thrill of intimidating British Jews.”

I considered this while touring London’s historic Jewish quarter, a refuge from the Imperial Russia pogroms of the late 19th century. More than 150,000 Jews left for sanctuary in the United Kingdom to escape the kind of persecution that Hitler would later leverage with the help of racist accomplices in conquered lands across Europe.

Later visiting the vast Holocaust exhibit at London’s Imperial War Museum, it was clear that Hitler’s determination to create a master race by eliminating a seemingly endless number of minorities fueled his war machine. Some were forced into slave labor. Others were exterminated to help cleanse the nation and make it safe for Hitler’s master race. His power grew from the fact that he institutionalized the kind of racist hysteria Jews have been forced to confront for centuries.

His partners in crime included IBM, which created the databases central to his war crimes. One of his leading advocates was Detroit’s Henry Ford.

Since the Hamas attacks on Israel, hate incidents in the United Kingdom have quadrupled. Jews everywhere are being blamed for everything that has gone wrong in this disastrous war that should have never happened. It’s as if all of the mistakes made by Hamas and the Israel government have opened the door to too many hate crimes.

Attempts to end this conflict — and violence that has taken so many lives — are mired in the kind of racism that poses a threat to us all. In the end, every attempt the Jewish people make to defend themselves in any way is dismissed as Zionist Imperialism. 

There is no question that this war was a calculated gamble on the part of Hamas to draw Israel into a conflict that it was certain to lose. Any attempt to negotiate a settlement would be seen as a sign of weakness for a government struggling to remain in power. Left with no choice, other than to surrender, Israel chose action that would inevitably feed racist reprisals.

By default, British politicians have tapped into a powerful voting bloc. Nigel Farage, the architect of Brexit, has become a major threat to the British Conservatives leadership due to his appeal to nativists who see all immigration as a threat to Great Britain’s future. While he does not voice racist views per se, there is no question that people opposed to minority immigration support his exclusionary rhetoric.

Similarly Donald Trump believes “any Jewish person that votes for Biden does not love Israel and, frankly, should be spoken to.”

This kind of loose talk is a direct attempt to turn people against Jews who refuse to be bullied by Trump. 

Hitler lost his war against the Jews at tremendous cost to his sympathizers, because he tried to plead a case that was impossible to win. The best answer is for all of us to reach out as widely as possible to defeat the pernicious myths at the root of antisemitism. There are plenty of resources available from groups like Anti-Defamation League that can help upend the blood libel myth. Once people are free to access reliable information, it will be possible to counter recent attacks and finally pursue peace.