Do As I Say, Not As I Do
by David Thomas
A COLUMN in the June 16, 1996 edition of the Orange County (California)
Register, recounted details of the desecration of a grave. It's an oddly
common crime (or so some say) but this one had a twist. You might even
say a warp.
Across a busy thoroughfare from a little unincorporated area called
Midway City, there's a large mortuary and cemetery that, in true Southern
California style, also serves as a wedding chapel and "family picnic"
facility. Plant the ex, marry the replacement and have a party, all
in one convenient location. Plenty of parking, 7-11 store just across
the street. Midway City is an anachronism, an old neighborhood surrounded
completely by incorporated cities, stubbornly hanging on to its gritty
past. It lies at the edge of a burgeoning Vietnamese community called
Little Saigon.
A week earlier, a woman who lives in Midway City finally gave in to
an uncontrollable impulse of hate, entered the cemetery grounds, and
destroyed an offending grave marker there. She had seen it several times
through the fence while walking by. A swastika, right in plain sight,
an intolerable affront to the sensibilities any decent person.
After she committed this crime, it was initially written up by columnist
Bill Johnson in a manner that struck some as sympathetic to the act.
Then the twist came to light. Quoting from his column of June 16:
"Van. Van. Van. Van. ...
I have been up at the blackboard for more than 24 hours now, and
I can't go back to my desk until I write it another hundred times.
It's to teach me, once and for all, the difference between the hated
symbol of the National Socialist Party of Germany and the ancient
Buddhist religious sign meaning "enlightenment."
Van. Van. Van. Van. ...
Of course, I am not serving out a sentence at a blackboard. It just
has felt that way the past few days since I wrote here of a Midway
City woman who spotted a Buddhist swastika in a Westminster cemetery,
mistook it for a Nazi swastika, and destroyed it.
Scores of people have written and telephoned to say it likely was
a van that was destroyed, and not the German swastika. Some said
the column condoned grave desecration. That is nonsense. Others
called to point out the woman's likely mistake. And that's what
I truly think it was. ..."
A mistake. Well, of course! Glad we got that settled right off the
bat. For a minute there you'd think it was a crime of malicious vandalism
fueled by hate. It would have been perfectly OK to desecrate a grave
with a German swastika on it, but this was a mistake. Thank God it wasn't
a German Buddhist who was buried there, else we might never have gotten
the moral points sorted out.
..........
About 5 years ago, a mentally disturbed transient in the L.A. area
made a mistake too. His mistake was in painting a swastika on the door
of a synagogue and getting caught. Hauled up before a righteously indignant
judge, he pled guilty and wanted to make a pre-sentencing statement,
but the judge literally wasn't hearing it. This sad sack of cheap wine
and schizoid neural connections was handed a twenty month sentence in
state prison. Not a local country club county facility, but the Big
House.
You wonder if it would have affected his sentence if the unallowed
statement revealed that maybe he was painting a van on the door in order
to offer the congregation enlightenment?
You wonder too how many other cases of mistaken identity have led to
irreparable desecrations of people's lives? People like British historian
David Irving, a best selling author many times over; lionized by the
academic community for his prodigious research of original sources,
uncovering material that might have eluded our store of knowledge forever
had he not possessed the dogged determination and keen insight which
are his trademarks. But Mr. Irving had the misfortune of drawing the
wrath of the ADL who, like the bigoted woman in Midway City, were certain
that they had spotted a Nazi swastika on his head and know exactly how
to handle such things. Smash them, by God! The vicious campaign of belittlement,
character assassination and boycotting that they mounted has left the
future of Irving's latest work (seven years in the writing) and indeed
perhaps his career as a bestselling author, in ruins, exactly like the
shattered van. The van can be replaced, an act of atonement that Mr.
Johnson participated in for his part in this excused "hate crime." But
how do you restore a man's tarnished reputation after he's been held
up as a "hater" to millions of people around the world? You don't, and
therein lies the real crime of these sorry exercises in bigotry masquerading
as righteousness.
  
At left, funeral for Gen. Hans Schubert. Right, burial in Camp Robinson,
Arkansas, 1944.
Source: Nazi Prisoners of War in America,Kammer, ISBN 0-8128-8526-0
Over a half-million German prisoners of war were held in labor
camps across the United States in World War II. As the photographs
show, they were allowed to display political symbols of their country
(including the swastika) not only at burials but on a regular basis.
This was not a sign of tender feelings about the prisoners either--there
was great animosity toward them on the part of many of the American
guards and the clearly xenophobic American public. At that time
their symbols had not yet acquired the taboo status which decades
of relentless demonization by the media would impart, and this simple
recognition of a basic human need (to identify with one's group)
was accorded to them as readily as other givens, such as decent
food and shelter. It did not seem odd at the time to acknowledge
the validity of patriotism on the part of an enemy, regardless of
the level of disagreement with political philosophy (while symbols
were allowed, political discussions were not). [These domestic POWs
were far more fortunate than their European counterparts, who were
kept in open fenced compounds without shelter through a brutal winter,
on a literal starvation diet. (Other Losses, James Bacque)]
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