“From a metaphysical point of view, Hitler won this war”

A letter my grandfather wrote in 1945 plays on a loop in my head

On August 11, 1945, my grandfather Hugo Weisgall wrote my grandmother Nathalie a letter from Prague, where he was stationed as military attache at the end of World War II. He was born in a small town called Ivancice, about two hours southeast of Prague, but came to the United States with his family in 1920 when he was eight years old.

They settled in Baltimore and became US citizens in 1926. They were immigrants. They were Americans. Hugo joined US army intelligence and was stationed in London during The Blitz.

Hugo was involved in liberating concentration camps. My mother, Deborah Weisgall, wrote a beautiful memoir called A Joyful Noise; in it, she tells a story about being thirteen years old in Baltimore, and finding a box marked “Secret. Property US Army.” Inside were photographs; piles of dead bodies tossed in trucks and the barely living standing beside them, naked and emaciated, starved beyond recognition.

While in Prague, Hugo returned to Ivancice. Before he got there, he knew that Hitler and his allies had murdered all of Hugo’s mother’s (my great-grandmother’s) remaining family. After he visited, he wrote to my grandmother, “From the Goldmans I got the oft repeated story—everybody was dead. Each died in a different way.”

Here is what Hugo wrote my grandmother Nathalie in that letter from August 11th:

“I believe that I have said this to you before, but from a metaphysical point of view, Hitler won this war. He succeeded in convincing our generation, or at least a sizable portion of it, that human life, human dignity and the human spirit is totally valueless. And that any indignities committed against it for any reason at all, are permitted and alright.

The burning of the books which the civilized world decried in 1933 is going on now again. Only this time German books are being stupidly destroyed — but not only the Nazis, but Heine, Schiller, Goethe and the rest of the anti-Nazis. And so it goes. In spite of the fact that the Czechs have built no Buchenwalds, they have some other installations which would not fare too badly in any comparison.

And on the other side of the picture you have the spectacle of the German Sudenten population, which, according to German anti-Nazi witnesses, are behaving as outrageously now, under the protection of the Americans, as they did before under Hitler. Add to all this the new atomic bomb — and what do we face. I dread to think.”

I’m telling you this because Hugo’s letter reminds me that the kind of cruelty we’re witnessing in the world right now — and, just as importantly, the kind of hypocrisy — has always existed. I’m also telling you this because I think about this letter every day.

This line plays on loop in my head: “From a metaphysical point of view, Hitler won this war.”

I think about it as Israel commits its own genocide in Gaza, murdering at least 50,000 children and destroying 92% of Palestinian homes, not to mention hospitals and schools. I feel deep shame, as a Jew myself, that the very people targeted in a genocide 80 years ago have been, for a long time, committing atrocities against people who are not in their tribe. It’s reprehensible that this American administration has succeeded in equating “Anti-Semitism” with “opposing genocide.” As Hugo wrote, “under the protection of the Americans.”

I think of this line of Hugo’s in particular: “[Hitler] succeeded in convincing our generation, or at least a sizable portion of it, that human life, human dignity and the human spirit is totally valueless. And that any indignities committed against it for any reason at all, are permitted and alright.”

I think about it as ICE abducts immigrants and citizens alike in America.

There’s a reason that so many people are bringing up Germany’s descent into fascism right now. Because history is really just, “What happened?” Knowing what happened means you can recognize patterns when it starts to happen again. It means you can imagine a different outcome and fight for that future.

Trump and his cronies are currently targeting immigrants (and who’s to say who will be next). The state is kidnapping people who came here looking for a better life, who are seeking asylum, who are working to support their families. It’s ripping parents away from their children, even when those parents and children came to the country legally. ICE can legally go into schools, hospitals, and houses of worship. The agency is abducting people at their workplaces and conducting raids near graduations to fill its inhumane quota of 3,000 arrests a day. The Trump administration is completely ignoring due process and kidnapping people off the street and at their immigration hearings. It doesn’t matter what anyone on American soil does or doesn’t do, legally or illegally. This isn’t about policy, it’s about a show of terrorizing force.

There’s a poem by Martin Niemöller that you’ve probably read, but it truly is the most concise way to sum up the role that everyday citizens play in allowing authoritarianism to flourish. It hung on the wall of my high school history classroom. I stared at it so often that I can still remember the font it was printed in.

First they came for the Communists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me

And there was no one left

To speak out for me

Currently, many people are speaking out. Tens of thousands of people aren’t looking the other way when their neighbors are abducted. They are marching in the streets, posting on social media, and making as much noise as they can. The Trump administration is now using the military against US citizens who are exercising their First Amendment right to protest.

Many public individuals are speaking out, too. Alberto Carvalho, the superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), has directed the school’s police force (bleak phrase in and of itself) to make graduations a safe space where people cannot be snatched from their seats. Who knows if that will work, but he’s trying.

In March, legal permanent resident Mahmoud Khalil was arrested and detained because he advocated for Palestinian rights at Columbia University — he wrote powerful letters from the ICE detention center in Louisiana. Greta Thunberg, the Swedish activist, tried to take a boat to Gaza to deliver aid with eight other people.

Thunberg said: “We are doing this because, no matter what odds we are against, we have to keep trying. Because the moment we stop trying is when we lose our humanity. And no matter how dangerous this mission is, it’s not even near as dangerous as the silence of the entire world in the face of the livestreamed genocide.”

Gavin Newsom, Governor of California, delivered a forceful speech against Trump. Regardless of how you feel about him (maybe men just shouldn’t have podcasts), he is meeting the moment when it matters. Harvard University is fighting back against Trump in the courts instead of rolling over.

People gain power when you give it to them. Fear is one of the most effective ways to get citizens to shut up and hand over their power. The fact that I am even a little bit scared to publish this — that the chill has reached my cozy apartment in Brooklyn — means it is absolutely critical that I do. As Thunberg said, the only thing more dangerous than any kind of physical, emotional, or political risk to the individual is collective silence.

In other letters that my grandfather sent my grandmother in late 1945, Hugo told her about over 57,000 Jews who were stuck at the border between Poland and what was then called the Czechoslovak Republic.

Nov. 16 1945

“The refugees have never ceased coming in, yet I have allowed them to pass by without much concern — usually, I have done the only possible thing, rarely I have kicked them out. Today, however, Berlin finally realized our plight and sent us an officer whose sole task it is to deal with these people. Now I know what efficiency is and how efficiency can cause misery and despair and perhaps even death. I promptly retaliated by signing and predating papers sufficient to take at least 300 people out of this hell — and perhaps send them to another less burning one.”

Hugo didn’t have any real power to deal with this situation, so he broke rules to save lives. Sometimes the only thing we can do is try to help people get from one hell to “another less burning one.”

The only thing we can’t do is become hopeless. It’s easy to feel silly for being hopeful, but being hopeful is the only way anything has ever changed.

I know you’re used to hearing about sports from me, and I know you’re used to jokes. That will continue, but I would be a coward if I didn’t speak up when I want to. It’s not that I think any newsletter I publish will change any of these crises, or that I know how to fix our fractured media landscape contributing to the spread of lies.

But together, if many people do something, maybe any hopefulness won’t be in vain. Hugo was right to “dread to think” what we face. And yet, I’m still praying that someday we’ll see Hitler — and everyone who emulates him — lose, from a metaphysical point of view.

Until then, we have to keep doing whatever we can. To be honest, I don’t really know what that is. Maybe you call your representatives every day. Maybe you go to protests. Maybe you deliver aid to families who’ve been torn apart. Maybe you confront people in your life when you hear them say cruel, bigoted things. Maybe you have enough power that you can break some rules to do what is right. Maybe you write.

Whatever it is, don’t let up. When other people see you being brave, it makes it that much easier for them to have courage, too. If we stop trying, there’s no chance of a better future. And I desperately want to believe in one.