Reading the Oct. 28 PDN, I was appalled to see on Page 2, two smiling Nazis glad-handing under the banner of “Nazi Celebrations” with zero context given to who these individuals were or what they had done.
Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda chief, and Hermann Goering, creator of the Gestapo and Hitler’s right hand, were architects of the Holocaust that killed 6 million Jews during World War II.
Around 11 million allied soldiers died, including many from the Olympic Peninsula, to defeat the Nazis and their kind.
Both war criminals killed themselves rather than face the consequences of their crimes against humanity.
I am astonished that for its “This Day in History” photo, the PDN could come up with no other photo and caption than one with the apparent intent to normalize some of the worst monsters that humanity has produced.
Unprompted, my 11 year old daughter immediately was horrified by the glorifying photo of men with swastika armbands who killed her great-great aunt.
Surely a professional newspaper editor should have caught this.
It was particularly tone-deaf that this photo appeared next to the obituary of the Jewish comedian Mort Sahl.
Photojournalism like this enables Holocaust-deniers by portraying Nazis as normal politicians, thus paving the way for future genocides.
There are 17 million reasons why we should never forget who these men were and what they did.
Steven Fradkin
Port Angeles
EDITOR’S NOTE: This Day in History is a feature in which the Peninsula Daily News publishes a photograph from the Associated Press files of an event that happened on that day. It is a snapshot, not an article, and so never goes into detail. Publishing any news, historical or current, does not constitute glorifying it. We report what happens. Our publishing a story or photograph does not mean that we approve of the actions it portrays. There was no intent to “normalize” the Nazis pictured. Historical photos are repeated so that we do not repeat history, so that we, in fact, never forget.