I read with sadness about the “3REICH” and “FUHRER” license plates. It brought back the sorrow I felt two years ago when I visited the Nazi death camps of Treblinka and Auschwitz, where the Third Reich shipped freight trains of people from all across Europe and murdered them in gas chambers. At each of these places, the Third Reich murdered more people than the entire population of Alaska.
Do the people who drove with those license plates not know or care what happened at Treblinka and Auschwitz? Perhaps they might feel differently if they saw the rooms piled to the ceiling with the shoes of the men, women and little children who walked to the gas chambers in those shoes.
Do the people who drove with those license plates not know that the Führer, in addition to unleashing unspeakable misery across Europe, brought utter devastation to his own country — leaving its cities in ruins and millions of its citizens dead? Do they actually admire him?
Whoever drove with those license plates won’t read this letter. But I hope some of their family or neighbors will, and will ask them if they really understand and endorse what those words mean. And I hope that all of us learn about, think about, and teach our children about what the Third Reich did, why it happened, and what we need to do to keep it from happening here. Remember that it happened partly because citizens of a modern country tolerated lies, bigotry, hatred and violence.
— Gunnar Knapp
Anchorage
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