In the process of overcoming post-traumatic stress syndrome, survivors of the Holocaust have reflected in their creative work, their experience and insights on what can be learned to prevent a repetition of such cataclysm and, fifty years later, Nazi symbols continue to appear in popular culture.
One of the classics (1962), this treatise is central to Frankl's system of psychotherapy. Viktor Frankl, a physician and psychotherapist, is a Holocaust survivor, an inmate of Auschwitz-Birkenau. The title speaks for itself.
The contemporary heavy metal band, Kiss uses knowingly or unknowingly, the symbolic insignia of a highly destructive force.
Philip of Pokanoket : an Indian Memoir Leipzig, Bernh. Tauchnitz, Jun. 1843. These quotes from this venerable book, authored by Washington Irving, document that genocide not only could happen here, but in fact took place. He writes:
"These reflections arose on casually looking through a volume of early colonial history, wherein are recorded, with great bitterness, the outrages of the Indians, and their wars with the settlers of New England. It is painful to perceive, even from these partial narratives, how the footsteps of civilization may be traced in the blood of the aborigines; how easily the colonists were moved to hostility by the lust of conquest; how merciless and exterminating was their warfare. The imagination shrinks at the idea, how many intellectual beings were hunted from the earth! how many brave and noble hearts, of nature's sterling coinage, were broken down and trampled in the dust!
...
"The victors set fire to the wigwams and the fort; the whole was soon in a blaze; many of the old men, the women, and the children perished in the flames. The last outrage overcame even the stoicism of the savage. The neighbouring woods resounded with the yells of rage and despair, uttered by the fugitive warriors as they beheld the destruction of their dwellings, and heard the agonizing cries of their wives and offspring. 'The burning of the wigwams,' says a contemporary writer, 'the shrieks and cries of the women and children, and the yelling of the warriors, exhibited a most horrible and affecting scene, so that it greatly moved some of the soldiers.' The same writer cautiously adds, 'they were in much doubt then, and afterwards seriously enquired, whether burning their enemies alive could be consistent with humanity, and the benevolent principles of the Gospel.'"
Note that Leipzig is the place of publication.
Philip of Pokanoket: an Indian Memoir p. 260, 269.
Finally, it should not be forgotten that in May, 1942, thousands of Japanese Americans were interned in American Detention camps and virtually no-one rose to their defense. Some young Japanese Americans were permitted to enlist in the American armed forces and fought valiantly for America while their parents, older friends and relatives were deprived of their freedom in internment camps. Many years after World War II, they received an embarrassingly minimal compensation for their loss of freedom and possessions.