Imagine the sound of sirens. Corpses in the streets, officers firing bullets into the air. 

The bang of the gun echoes throughout the city, memorized, familiar. 

They demand papers from you. You offer them with a shaking hand, terrified. 

Bam! You’re dead. 

Gone. 

They didn’t even look to read your name.

Some would compare this interaction to slavery, where runaway enslaved people risk everything to make it to freedom. Dystopian America, a history better left in the past. 

And yes, this was the reality for millions of African Americans across the country during the 1800s, living by the skin of their teeth, armed with courage and half-truths. 

However, the gunman was looking for a word instead of a story: Jude. 

Jews also faced this anxiety in Germany in 1943, during the Holocaust. Instead of skin color, they were judged on a belief system and were stereotyped by a fascist government, brainwashed by a single man, drunk on hatred. 

Most of you laugh at his name, make fun of his mustache, and his image. To you, he’s a meme. 

To me, Adolf Hitler is the monster who hides under my bed. 

The Nazi Regime ruled the earth during World War II. From science experiments to torture, their hands were blood–stained, their minds controlled by a single man behind the curtain, his face and voice broadcast across news networks and radio shows. 

Work Camps were built, meant to filter in Jews and filter out bodies. It was a crime, a federal offense to be Jewish. If you’ve ever been to one, maybe you’d think twice about mocking history. 

Now, people hate the Nazis, the Gestapo, the army, a symbol of fascism across the world. The Holocaust is the insignia for modern dystopian governments, a society gone wrong, engulfed with figurative flames. 

Yet, people are not as sympathetic when it comes to the man who made it all happen. People are not sympathetic to the 11 million people who were killed during World War II, never on the front lines. 

Gas chambers have become a joke, the ovens their golden punchline. 

It is socially normal to poke fun at cultures, anything to ostracize our peers. It is popular to laugh or giggle in an uncomfortable situation. It’s banter, racism and homophobia and sexism and antisemitism, and Islamophobia, on and on and on. However, there’s a point when we as a student body, country, world just go too far. 

It goes past a coping mechanism. Goes past light–hearted social interaction. 

Heil Hitler, concentration camps, the very smoke that stung their noses – all sparks for a good time. 

People died, their bodies burned, fuel for the fire. Pollution hung in the air, ash in the rivers. The ash was thought to be snow by children, and their parents allowed that fantasy. 

Are we allowing the fantasy of snow in the river? 

Maybe it’s the youth culture, rebelling against the trend of governmental rot, trying to make the jagged comparison between Hitler and current political figures. 

However, Hitler shouldn’t be funny to you. His salute, his facial hair, his uniform, his army – it all shouldn’t be funny to you. He shouldn’t be a skit on Saturday Night Live, a meme on Instagram, TikTok, or Twitter. 

He should be the monster that lives under your bed, nightmare fuel. Because he would’ve killed you, just as me, 83 years ago. 

Blonde. White. Straight. Blue Eyes. 

History repeats itself. And maybe, just maybe, the Holocaust started as a joke.