I received this letter to the editor and wanted to share it with you here:

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Dear editor at Durham Skywriter,

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I remember learning about the rise of Nazism in Germany in the 1930s when I was in high school in the early ’80s. Seeing photos of the horrors of concentration camps, reading and learning about the absolute and utter carnage that the Nazi regime perpetrated all throughout Europe, just 40 years earlier, in my grandparents’ lives. The death, the abject cruelty, the inhuman actions taken against anyone the Nazi party deemed a “threat” to their warped view of Aryan supremacy. The erosion of personal and civil freedoms, the dehumanizing of entire groups of citizens. The injustice, the destruction seemed unimaginable to me. I remember thinking to myself, “HOW could people have let that happen?” Surely, we’ve evolved and nothing like that would ever happen again.

Like most young people my age, growing up in the ’80s, all of that seemed so far back in history. Surely now that we’ve seen what fascism can do, we won't ever allow that kind of cruelty to gain traction again. Surely it couldn’t happen again.

After all, I was of the generation who watched the Berlin Wall fall. We danced, we celebrated, we felt hopeful, like we had finally finished the battle that our grandparents had fought and died for 40 years earlier. 

Now, in 2025, here we are, just a few generations later, watching in horror the return of what my grandparents’ generation fought AND DIED to defeat. Seeing political leaders welcome fascism into our own beautiful country. A country FOUNDED on revolting against authoritarian rule is now run by people who are welcoming it back with open arms. 

It’s obscene. It spits on the graves of every WW2 serviceman who fought and died in order to defeat fascism at home and abroad. It dishonors the lives, both lost or forever altered by war, of every service man and woman sent abroad to fight authoritarian rule in other countries, under the guises of creating and securing democracy and freedom worldwide … only to see what they fought against be welcomed through the doors here at home. 

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This is unacceptable. We must not let this continue. 

 

Sincerely,
Katie Maxki