An open letter to Sen. John Curtis

Yahoo

12-05-2025

Dear Sen. John Curtis:
You recently asked for input on four places you described as spots 'where American principles aren't just spoken, but also felt.' Those places, you said, are the Holocaust Museum, The National Museum of African American History and Culture, Arlington National Cemetery, and Ensign Peak in Utah.
This open letter to you, in advance of your maiden speech on the Senate floor, is about one of those places: the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.
Twenty years ago, our very large family went on a trip around the country. We visited national sites with historical significance, including the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall in Philadelphia and the Statue of Liberty in New York.
When we arrived in our nation's capital, we had a long list of places to see: Smithsonian Museums, the Washington Monument, the Capitol Building, the White House and the Lincoln Memorial. But, on the very top of my list was the Holocaust Museum.
One of the reasons I felt it was important for my children to see and understand what happened during the Holocaust was that many of the children in our family would not have been spared. You see, in our family, a number of our children have disabilities, are Black, have Jewish heritage or other attributes that would have made them targets during the Holocaust.
People with disabilities were some of the first to be targeted under the Nazi regime, literally beginning the same day the war began. The Holocaust Museum Encyclopedia estimates that some 250,000 people with disabilities were 'euthanized' (murdered) during the regime. At first, doctors and staff in hospitals were encouraged to neglect patients, letting them die of starvation and disease. Infants and small children were also killed by lethal injection. Later, gas chambers were used.
Next, we have children who have Jewish ancestry. Gone. My Black children? Obviously 'inferior' to the 'ideal' race envisioned by Hitler and his goons. Black people in Germany faced discriminatory laws and policies that restricted their economic and social opportunities. They were also harassed, imprisoned, ostracized, unable to find work, involuntarily sterilized and yes, murdered.
In 1935, the Nazi government enacted two Nuremberg Race laws. The first, the Reich Citizenship Law, restricted German citizenship to those 'of German or related blood.' The second outlawed interracial marriage and any sexual relations between Germans and Black or Roma people.
As we moved through the museum and its special exhibit at the time on medical 'experimentation,' several of my older children were indignant. 'That's not right!' they exclaimed. 'That's not fair!' Of course, they were right. They, like many people, wondered how things could have gotten so bad that mass killings became just a job.
That leads me to my second reason for taking my children to the Holocaust Museum. I wanted them to understand that genocide does not start with killing. In fact, Sen. Curtis, when I talked to one of my children about this letter, I asked them what had stood out to them about the visit. My son was 15 at the time and told me that first, the museum had made a deep impact on him and is something that still comes to his mind. Second, what really stuck with him is just what I had hoped: that genocide does not begin with killing. That's where it ends.
Dr. Gregory Stanton, founding president of Genocide Watch, has observed that every genocide has predictable processes, or ten 'stages,' although he is careful to clarify that this is not a linear process. Multiple stages can happen simultaneously.
The first four stages all have to do with 'othering' people. The first stage is classification, when we classify the world into 'us versus them', including separation by race, ethnicity, religion and national origin.
The second is symbolization, when we begin to give names to those classifications: Jew and Aryan, Hutu and Tutsi, Turk and Armenian. Sometimes the symbols are more than just naming, but are physical, like the Nazi yellow star, or the blue scarves the Khmer Rouge forced people from the eastern zone of Cambodia to wear.
The third stage is discrimination, when laws and customs prevent groups of people from exercising their full rights as citizens or as human beings. Groups of people can't work, can't marry, can't send their kids to school and can have citizenship stripped away. They can't get redress in courts, can't vote and can't get passports. The list is extensive on how laws are used to further the othering.
The fourth stage is dehumanization — calling people cockroaches, vermin, animals, a 'cancer' or disease. The dehumanization makes it easier for people to kill those they classified, symbolized and discriminated against. It becomes an act of patriotism to 'cleanse' society rather than seeing it as the murder it is.
The fifth stage is organization, usually by the state, often using militias and armies. Sometimes, hate groups are militarized. The organization can be formal or informal, centralized or decentralized.
The sixth stage is polarization, when 'moderates are targeted who could stop the process of division, especially moderates from the perpetrators' group.'
The seventh stage is preparation, when plans for deportation and eventually killing are made by leaders. Perpetrators who support the leaders plans are usually trained and armed.
The eighth stage is persecution, when victims are 'identified, arrested, transported, and concentrated into prisons, ghettos, or concentration camps, where they are tortured and murdered.'
The ninth stage is extermination, or genocide, the intentional destruction, in whole or in part, of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.
Finally, the tenth stage is denial. Denial continues the genocide, because it is an ongoing attempt to destroy the victim group psychologically and culturally, and to deny its members even the memory of the murders of their relatives.
In my mind, one of the key lessons we should learn as individuals and society is that, believe it or not, actions have consequences. There was a musical a number of years back that had a song with the words: 'When I choose the very first step on the road, I also choose the last.'
I want my children, my grandchildren, my neighbors, friends and fellow residents of planet Earth to deeply internalize that when we say 'never again,' we must start at the beginning of the process and not the end.
The Holocaust Museum is sacred ground, not only because of its deliberate efforts to remember those that some would prefer forgotten, but also because of its hopeful belief that genocide can be averted.
As you pointed out in your letter, you do not want to be a politician that fits Aesop's insight, 'After all is said and done, more is said than done.' The Holocaust Museum should be a stark reminder that action must be taken when society begins to head down the road that leads to destruction of an entire population.
I wish you all the best in your time as a Senator. My plea to you is to please take action and stand for those being 'othered.'