Opinions

Shakespeare and jokes aside, it's only the Hitlers who want to kill the lawyers

While some may recognize the source of the quote, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers" as one of Shakespeare's plays, few can identify the context in which it was spoken. In point of fact, the statement is made by Dick the Butcher, one who supported a challenge to the throne in Shakespeare's "Henry VI."

Whether the context of the remark was that to establish a totalitarian dictatorship it would be necessary to get rid of the lawyers and the laws they protected, or if it was the speaker's suggestion the supposed utopian society that would follow the overthrow of the government would only be a true utopia without lawyers, remains a matter of some debate and much interpretation.

Regardless of what Shakespeare's character meant or intended, the fact is history has provided us with a real life character who acted to kill the lawyers in establishment of a totalitarian dictatorship. His name was Adolf Hitler.

Before elaborating on Hitler's actions, allow me to digress by projecting ahead to our day. As an attorney, I am from time to time asked to speak to individual Boy Scouts and their troops about the subject of citizenship as they pursue Citizenship in the Community and Citizenship in the Nation merit badges. One of their requirements is to discuss with me the rights, duties, and obligations of a responsible American citizen. They usually don't have too much difficulty identifying their various rights, especially if they have come prepared by reviewing the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.

However, when it comes to their duties and obligations, after telling me it is important for a citizen to vote, there is usually difficulty in expanding beyond that initial response.

At that point, I usually suggest they consider their personal daily interactions with others. I ask if there is a student at school who is different, and if so whether they join in with the group in shunning him or teasing him or do they stand up for the rights of such an individual?

Let us reflect upon a quote from the Rev. Martin Niemoller who found himself imprisoned in one of Hitler's concentration camps:

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"First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out -- because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out -- because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out -- because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me -- and by then there was no one left to speak for me."

Returning to the subject of Adolf Hitler's actions with regard to laws and lawyers, here is what Hitler said: "I shall not rest until every German sees that it is a shameful thing to be a lawyer." I now offer the following chronology of events that took place within a six-month time span:

Jan. 30, 1933: Hitler became chancellor of Germany.

Feb. 28, 1933: Hitler suspended the constitution for "protection of the people."

March 3, 1933: Hitler's deputy Hermann Goering declared, "I don't have to worry about justice."

March 5, 1933: The last Democratic election was held during Hitler's lifetime.

March 9, 1933: The first of the Nazi concentration camps was established at Dachau with the camp receiving the first of 1,000 critics of the Third Reich.

March 13, 1933: An enabling act made Hitler a dictator.

April 26, 1933: The Nazis took over the state secret police as the Gestapo.

May 10, 1933: There was a countrywide burning of books by banned authors.

May 15, 1933: Dr. Alfred Stauss, a Jewish lawyer was killed in Dachau.

May 25, 1933: Louis Schloss, a Jewish lawyer was killed in Dachau.

May 29, 1933: Willi Aron, a lawyer, was killed in Dachau.

Dachau concentration camp as it exists today is surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers along with several partly reconstructed barracks and other buildings, including the nearby crematorium with its ovens used to incinerate the many who died during the camp's tenure from March of 1933 to its liberation in 1944.

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In recent years I had the opportunity to travel to Dachau, located just outside of Munich. As I stood there looking at those buildings and ovens I could not help but reflect upon the verbal account by my own uncle, Paul Walther, a U.S. soldier in World War II, who helped liberate another of Hitler's concentration camps just north of Dachau at Buchenwald.

He recalled as he entered the camp the ovens were still burning and there were piles of bodies with little other than flesh and bones stacked near the ovens. He told of the bunks in the barracks with individuals laying on them so weak, they could not move. He talked about the stench and deplorable conditions. He mentioned his efforts to give water to the survivors from his canteen and offer them morsels of food. He said the look of appreciation in their eyes made it all worth it despite how horrible the experience was otherwise. He described finding the mallet-like club used to knock teeth out of the bodies at the crematorium, the pile of ashes and nearby, the lampshades made from human skin that Ilse Koch, wife of one of the camp's commanders and known as "The Witch of Buchenwald" had made. (On a separate occasion, when I was visiting with him in Elko, Nevada where he recently lived, Uncle Paul told me he still had nightmares of the suffering he saw at Buchenwald.)

After driving the 7 miles from Dachau to downtown Munich's pedestrian walkway in Marenplatz I encountered a group of street musicians -- a five-man group who billed themselves as "the smallest orchestra in the world." While listening to them I sensed the irony that these musicians, who were of Eastern European origin, were the type of persons who would have been selected as different from the Aryan Nazis and sent for banishment into the camp at Dachau during Hitler's rule. The upbeat and skillfully played classical pieces provided a measure of relief from the somber views and reminders of the atrocities at Dachau and Buchenwald.

I then reflected upon another song that I had just learned of from one of the exhibits at Dachau. It was known as the "Dachau Song" as it was sung by those held as prisoners at Dachau. Written and sung to boost morale, it mocked the sign at the camp's entrance which read, "Arbeit macht frei" (Work makes free).

At the Dachau concentration camp today there is a memorial, which is inscribed with words in multiple languages stating "Never Again." One wonders, however, how soon can we forget? In the case of Dachau, a war crimes tribunal was set up there to try German soldiers who allegedly had violated the Geneva Conventions in their treatment of American soldiers. However, the proceedings were so blatantly in violation of justice, that the death sentences handed out were later commuted.

In the case of Buchenwald, just months after its liberation the Soviets took control of the camp and used it as a prison for those who opposed communism. Reportedly some 7,000 additional persons died there during Stalin's reign.

With close to a million persons having been killed by their fellow countrymen of a different ethnic background in Rwanda just a few decades ago, along with the horrors of the killing fields in Cambodia preceding that, it is evident the world needs constant reminding.

Hitler's killing of the lawyers was followed by the elimination of others who were different and who then no longer had advocates to speak for them. May we recognize our duties and obligations as citizens to embrace and foster just laws so that "Never Again" will similar atrocities be allowed to follow from the absence of lawyers to champion those laws and the persons they protect.

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Dale Walther is an attorney and president-elect of the Anchorage Midtown Rotary Club. This is a written version of a presentation he made to the Midtown Rotary Club. He sought a wider audience for it after reading about the late Dan Cuddy's wartime military experience at Buchenwald concentration camp.

The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)alaskadispatch.com

Dale Walther

Dale Walther is an attorney and president-elect of the Anchorage Midtown Rotary Club.

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