Nazis and the Limits of Human Evil

A travel journal from Berlin

Preface

In December, as it became increasingly apparent that Nazi sympathizers would be released from our federal prisons, and that some Nazi super-fans would be welcomed into the corridors of power in Washington, DC, I flew to Germany to trace my own family’s history with the Nazi party. I traveled to the sites where my great-grandfather’s cousin, Henri, was ripped from his home, placed inside cattle cars, and shipped off to camps—where he was held for months in vicious confinement, punished with forced labor, and driven to an early death at the age of forty-one.

When I stood on the site of his detention in Dachau in December, I, too, was forty-one years old.

I haven’t yet published anything formal about my experiences in Germany. I’m not sure I have found the right words. Below I share some excerpts from my travel journal—on the challenges of confronting, and comprehending, the extreme limits of human evil.