Letter: History Is Repeating Itself, We Must Speak Up

The following letter was submitted to Greenwich Patch by resident Rachel Khanna

History is repeating itself. We must speak up.

My father was born in Germany and was in his 20s when Hitler came to power. He managed to escape to the Netherlands, where he helped in the Resistance. He and his first wife hid Jews and people who were on the German blacklist in a hole under their living room floor.

90 years later, I am reminded of what my father told me about his experiences, about how at first everything seemed normal: people still went to work and kids still went to school. And yet little by little things were changing. Rights were disappearing, fear was creeping in, and lies were becoming truth.

I’m reminded of sitting in my history class and not understanding why the Allied Powers appeased Hitler when he annexed Sudetenland - which is part of the Czech Republic today - and how the opposition in Germany was so easily subdued. This rollback of our rights and freedoms is what is happening now in our own country. We can’t fool ourselves into believing that history is not repeating itself. It is.

And we can’t fool ourselves into believing that we can sit on the sidelines and things will be ok. To date, the current administration has continued to undermine democratic norms by exerting control over the press including raiding journalists’ homes; they are condoning the shooting of innocent civilians exercising their first amendment rights; they are grabbing up voter rolls and election ballots; and they are threatening to seize a sovereign territory.

This is not a time to turn away. If we want to protect our democracy, we must speak up and we must speak out. We must stay engaged locally and nationally by defending our institutions: our courts, the press, our election system. And we must build community. It’s in our hands.