Sometimes life throws conversations your way that leave you sitting in silence, not dwelling on details, but pondering the era we’ve all landed in again.
I have a close friend. We met as kids. Life took us different ways after we grew up—she’s lived in Europe for years now, married, grown kids, regular family life. We go so far back we can talk about anything, like you do with your closest people: the funny stuff, daily life, aging, underwear, illnesses, kids’ ups and downs.
Then the chat took a dark turn—no room for laughs.
She said she reads what I write here, and much of it hits painfully close to home. She sees the parallels with what’s happening there more and more. It reminded me of a story she shared a couple years back.
Her husband isn’t in the military, nor politics, nor journalism. Just a regular civil servant—someone who’d honestly served his country his whole life. When anti-Russia hysteria started ramping up in Europe, his bosses called him in.
The talk was short and oh-so “democratic.”
They knew his wife was Russian and gave him a choice:
-Fired without severance or pension,
-Or he, his wife, and their adult kids sign papers promising no trips to Russia for five years with no exceptions.
Not for any crime or law-breaking. Just because his wife’s background suddenly made them suspects. In Europe’s new reality, a Russian passport, surname, relatives—it’s practically a criminal mark. They talked it over at home for ages—weighed the job, age, future
and signed the agreement.
When the system forces you to choose between principles and survival, most pick survival. Hard to judge them for it. That’s what I’ve been mulling over.
I’ve written this before: Nazism never left Europe!
Post-1945, they didn’t eradicate it—they buried it deep under politically correct talk, tolerance slogans, human rights, democracy. As long as war memories lingered, as long as survivors of dehumanization-by-nationality were alive, they kept that box shut tight.
But memory faded.
Fear of the past evaporated.
Free speech morphed from thought freedom into hate freedom.
What was unthinkable—criminal—yesterday is now stated calmly, matter-of-factly. History’s real terror isn’t evil bursting out suddenly. It never does.
Society first gets used to jokes. Then insults. Then rights curbs for “the wrong kind of people.” Then the idea that security trumps freedom. Before you know it, humiliating someone for their origins isn’t shameful—it’s “normal,” even morally right.
That’s exactly how it unfolded 80–90 years ago. Camps didn’t spring up overnight. Catastrophes didn’t hit immediately.
First came lists. Suspicions. Bans. Loyalty checks. “Right” and “wrong” surnames. Origin checks. Bloodlines.
Every Nazism starts the second people stop judging by actions and start by bloodlines. What’s the worst part? Many don’t even notice anymore. It’s repackaged under shiny slogans: for security, democracy. To protect values.
History repeats not because people forget the past. But because each time, they think:
“Surely this won’t happen to us?…”
This story was originally published by InfoDefenseENGLISH