Doris Colmes: ''Papers, please': I smell the long-forgotten rot of fascism'

From Smirking Chimp

By Doris Colmes

Those were the magic words of the time: "Papiere, Bitte." (Translation: "Papers, Please.") Hearing those words, even now, causes dull echoes of sounds akin to bodies hitting dirt, or bullets penetrating flesh to thud into my mind. Because, if those papers weren't correctly in order, or, if you were a Jew sneakily present in any place (including the grocery store) which displayed the usual "NO JEWS OR DOGS ALLOWED" sign, you were dead meat--literally. And, yes, of course I'm talking about my childhood as a little Jewish kid in Nazi Germany.

No one ever forgets stench. Whether it is a long-forgotten encounter with a ripe skunk, or a ripe egg, or a ripe decomposing body, once one of those odors has been brain-documented, then even the slightest tinge of such an aroma pops back up immediately, along with the circumstances under which it first offended the nostrils.

And, that's what's happening now. I smell the long-forgotten skunk, the long-forgotten rot of fascism. What is happening all around can no longer be denied. What I ran away from so desperately in 1938 is coming back full circle. Only the jack-boots have not yet arrived. America quite literally saved my life. The love and gratitude deep in my heart for this country will never go away. But I'm scared now. Haunted by deep fear for the generations to come, who may wind up as I did -- looking over their shoulders, scurrying for cover, mute with terror. And it hurts.

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