It is the position of the volunteer human rights group Responsible for Equality And Liberty (R.E.A.L) that the growing national commitment to eliminate symbols of white supremacist hatred in public areas, must include the Confederate Flag and monument, as well as the racist symbols of Nazism and Adolf Hitler.

While patriotic Americans across this nation are turning their back on the white supremacy symbol of hatred, racism, and slavery of the Confederate flag, you would imagine more of the American people have developed a determination to stand up against such symbols of hate.   The “normalization” of the racist image of that universal monster against humanity, Adolf Hitler, is a disgrace and a racist attack on the human rights of all human beings  – of every religion, every race, and every identity group.  We must Never Forget.

You would think that the message “Take It Down” is being heard by many of the white Americans in this nation.

Yet less than 20 miles from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC, a Maryland suburb’s theater group has decided that this is the best time to do a production of the musical “The Producers,” described by the Washington Post with a headline “Hitler musical caper rides again in the ‘The Producers’ at Olney.”

Hitler… musical… caper….?
The obscenity of the words together is beyond description.
But that’s the Washington Post entertainment section, even in 2015.  The argument rationalizing such obscenity as entertainment cannot outweigh our concerns for the future and our responsibility to defy the legacy of racist hatred that Adolf Hitler has left.

While our nation is under attack by white supremacist terrorists from Confederates and their Nazi allies, the Olney Theatre Center (OTC) in Olney, Maryland suburbs of Washington DC has decided now is a good time to have a “satire” with the hate symbol of Adolf Hitler, and a musical number to Adolf Hitler. The Olney Theatre Center board president, attorney Jennifer Kneeland, defends this “Hitler musical caper,” because she states to us that this is “a satire,” which “has been well-received by our community and praised.”

The concept that the hate image of Adolf Hitler and his swastika is somehow less offensive than the despicable Confederate flag demonstrates the failure of Americans to understand the history behind the monster Hitler and his disciples’ twisted involvement with the white supremacy movement around the world and (as we have seen from recent terrorist attacks) within the United States.

It is a repugnant idea that we should need to remind any Americans of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi “racially superior” crimes against humanity in the olocaust murder of 6 million Jews, 2 million non-Jewish Ukrainians, another 9 million Russian soldiers killed, 11.7 non-Jewish Russian and Russian territory citizens, (a total estimated 26 million killed in former Soviet nations), the Nazi killing of many others: non-Jewish women, other Europeans, gays, disabled, children, people of African descent, and numerous others. Within the United States of America, 400,000 soldiers died fighting Hitler and his Axis powers.  In the former Soviet countries, He stands alone as one of the most notorious symbols of racial hatred not only in the past century, but in all of human history, as truly an ENEMY OF MANKIND.  But the most important fact remains, Nazi murders continue in the United States of America and around the world today.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights created in December 10, 1948, after the atrocities of Hitler and his Nazi acknowledges to the WORLD that”disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind.”

Americans would certainly like to believe that the violence and crimes of the Nazi ideology died with the Mass Murderer Hitler and the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, a war where over 400,000 American soldiers gave their lives – nearly the same amount of American patriotic soldiers who died in the fight a century earlier against the Confederate forces of slavery.  Many from American families fought and died to fight against the mass-murderer Adolf Hitler as well as the criminal Confederate forces of slavery.

These Americans were not just inconvenienced.  They did not just lose some money.  They paid the ultimate sacrifice – willing and knowingly –  to defy such forces and symbols of racist hatred, mass-murder, and violence.  Is our weakness how we honor their sacrifices?

The cruel reality has been for many years, that the Nazi ideology continues to attack and spread in this and other nations, and its criminals of hatred continue to take the lives of Americans. In league with their Confederate white supremacist brethren, it now takes on a heightened threat to African-Americans in this nation.

Nazi terrorism in the United States and around the world has grown as “normalization” of such Nazi images of racist hate continue to grow and become “acceptable.” Unlike 1968, this is not a few Nazi extremist, but using the Internet, Nazi extremist gangs are becoming a growing global network of Nazi hatred and racist violence, including regular murder and torture. “The Producers” fails to recognize that while audiences laugh at the idea of past Nazis, present day Nazi commit regular acts of terrorism: synagogues are attacked, churches are attacked, African-Americans are killed, children are murdered, women are killed, and gay men are being kidnapped, raped, and killed by Nazi terrorists. These Nazi terrorists are enabled to recruit others in such ideologies of hate, aided in part by the “normalization” of such symbols of hatred.

Our nation saw such a terrorist attack on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in June 2009. I know that this particularly well, because I had been assisted by the only victim of that terrorist attack, an African-American man from Maryland named Stephen Tyrone Johns.

I had the opportunity to assist in April 2009 at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) reading of the names of those who were killed in Adolf Hitler’s crimes against humanity. This is done on Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah) in the Hall of Remembrance with an eternal flame which flickers to remember those who Adolf Hitler had murdered. On the wall is a quote from Deuteronomy, which I have mentioned before, “I call heaven and Earth to witness this day; I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse, choose life – that you and your offspring shall live.”

When we choose racism and when we decide that it is not “our responsibility” to challenge racism that we WITNESS, we don’t “choose life,” but we abandon our moral accountability for life not just for others, but also for ourselves.

As I am not Jewish, I thought I might felt awkward in my role to help in the reading of the names, but it was clear that the readers shared our conviction that such CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY should never be forgotten, and people read the names from all races, religions, ethnic groups. I could see the compassion in the hearts of a young Asian girl who teared, and an African-American girl whose tears ran down her face as she REMEMBERED – NEVER AGAIN.

Genocide is an open wound on the human soul, and only our joint determination to defy such criminals and those who would trivialize their crimes will allow the wound to begin to heal.

Leaving the museum, I was helped out by a young African-American man who was a security guard, Maryland’s Stephen Tyrone Johns.

I recognized his photograph in the news, two months later, when a white supremacist with the twisted hybrid of Confederate and Nazi ideologies named James Von Brunn attacked this USHMM in our nation’s capital. The terrorist Von Brunn murdered African-American security guard Stephen Tyrone Johns, whose only crime was to try to open the door for the man. His death managed to slow the terrorist enough to alert the other guards to stop the terrorist Von Brunn.

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum was FULL of young schoolchildren, during Nazi white supremacist James Von Brunn’s terrorist attack. If he had not been stopped…

The whitestream media failed to call this the “terrorist attack” that it was. It is a source of never-ending shame to these great United States of America that when an African-American is killed, somehow our media can’t find its way to call that a “terrorist attack.” Days after the attack, Nazis and white supremacists were openly praising Von Brunn’s terrorism, and the story was readily forgotten by the local press. R.E.A.L. continued to report on this, while the local media moved on.

Maryland’s Stephen Tyrone Johns was buried in Maryland.  His funeral was held at the Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church in Fort Washington. Prior to the funeral, the church received threats from white supremacists, but Pastor Grainger Browning Jr. stood his ground in his eulogy to Stephen Johns.

Ebenezer AME Pastor Browning said that “the same hate that created slavery was the same hate that caused the Holocaust.”

It is the same hate and the same common enemy to the human race of every color and religion.

We have seen such Nazi-led and inspired terrorism in the United States over the past 20 years. In recent time, this included the Oklahoma City terrorist attack on April 19, 1995 (the day before Hitler’s birthday celebrated by such Nazi terrorists) on the Oklahoma City federal building by terrorist Timothy McVeigh. The terrorist was inspired by the Nazi Turner Diaries and his Nazi terrorist co-conspirators, who murdered 169 Americans including 19 babies and children killed in the day care center there.

Nor would it be the last Nazi-inspired terror attack we would witness. R.E.A.L. reported that Stormfront member Daniel Cowart shot the windows out of a Tennessee church and with his Confederate terror co-conspirator Paul Schlesselman, he plotted the terrorist attack on another African-American church, planning to kill over 100 as well as assassinate Barack Obama. Their initial target was to kill 88 African-Americans. Why 88? The number “88” in white supremacist world stands for “HH,” or “Heil Hitler.”

The terrorist was part of a combined Nazi-Confederate organization called the “Supreme White Alliance” (SWA), holding birthday parties and celebrations for Adolf Hitler, singing for Hitler. The number 88 is typically seen along with a reference to 14, or 14 words in the slogan of white supremacists, which was inspired by Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

We have seen other connections to terrorist attacks by Nazis in this country, linked to the white supremacist Stormfront group, including Wade Michael Page, and Stormfront members’ support for terrorist attacks on the U.S. Pentagon and an IRS building in Texas, as well as praise by Stormfront members for the terrorist attack by Dylann Roof. (The FBI is finally beginning to investigate this Stormfront organization.)

In June 2015, we saw the terrorist attack by Dylann Roof killing 9 African-American Christian worshipers during a Bible Study meeting at the Emmanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina. The whitestream media refers to it as a “shooting,” rather than a terrorist attack, but those with a conscience know exactly what it was.

An analysis of the terrorist Dylann Roof’s “manifesto” by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) shows that it is likely that the white supremacist terrorist Dylann Roof was a regular user named “Aryanblood1488” on the Nazi forum “The Daily Stormer.” Dylann Roof’s terrorist attack on the Emmanuel AME church left 9 dead during a prayer session; the killer murdered them simply because they were African-Americans.

The folly of tolerating or dismissing Adolf Hitler’s legacy of “racial purity” hate has led to yet more American deaths.

Once again, Maryland’s Ebenezer AME Pastor Grainger Browning Jr. was at a funeral for victims of a terrorist attack at the Charleston Emmanuel AME church, but this time it was for a fellow pastor and eight other African-American worshipers.

Just as Nazi Daniel Cowart attacked African-American churches and Dylann Roof’s recent terrorist attack on the Charleston African-American churches, so we have seen numerous other attacks on African-American churches, as well as synagogues, mosques, and diverse houses of worship.   The same racist hatred follows in these attacks including a reported three arson attacks on African-American churches in Tennessee, Georgia, and North Carolina, and suspected in South Carolina. 180 uncontrolled deliberate arson fires are set to destroy American houses of worship every year.  The attacks on African-American churches may officially be viewed as “isolated incidents,” but we know better.  We don’t need a court of law to know the truth.

No, racist hate is not “history.” It remains a near and present danger to the American people, their freedoms, and their lives.

Adolf Hitler is and has been a symbol of hatred not just to the Jews he targeted in his twisted Holocaust, but also to African-Americans and anyone who failed to meet his white supremacist “racial purity” terrorist model of seeking  a twisted cause of “racial hygiene,” which continues today.  Adolf Hitler, the swastika, and the Nazi ideology remains a symbol of global racist terrorism, in cases that we have repeatedly seen in the United States of America.

These despicable figures and symbols of Nazi racist hatred in public facilities is just as much a symbol of racist hatred as the Confederate flag in defense of white supremacy. The United States Department of Justice is responsible for enforcing the law to prevent racist from using methods of intimidation to people due to their race, religion, etc. in public facilities under the 1968 Civil Rights Act. This is described in federal law 18 U.S.C. § 245(b)(2), which includes public theaters and places of entertainment, as described in 18 U.S.C. § 245(b)(2)(f). We will actively call upon the Department of Justice to enforce this law.

We know too well here in Maryland about the terrorist hate and violence spawned Adolf Hitler’s Nazi ideology.  Maryland citizens have paid the price with their lives by those inspired by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi ideology, such as Maryland terrorist James Von Brunn.  Our citizens’ blood is on the mass-murdering hands of Adolf Hitler and his disciples of hate. Americans in Olney have faced threats from such Nazi racist disciples of the mass-murderer Adolf Hitler.

Maryland’s Stephen Johns will not be remembered by enough people as a courageous hero in African-American history; like all of us, he will be too quickly forgotten, even by his neighbors in Maryland, and those who should know better. But his sacrifice will not be forgotten here by those who are Responsible for Equality And Liberty. He will never be forgotten in our hearts and our prayers. The lesson to defy white supremacist Nazi terror in our midst will also never be forgotten.

After the attack on the Washington DC USHMM, the white supremacist hate group VDARE organization held a rally with Patrick Buchanan in McLean, Virginia. VDARE’s Peter Brimelow had praised Nazi terrorist James Von Brunn as an “intelligent man.” R.E.A.L. was there to protest VDARE in McLean, in Baltimore, and other locations. White supremacists then sought to have massive recruitment campaigns in our nation’s capital, and as history shows that did not happen. We challenge and defy such white supremacist across the nation and the world, as nothing less than an ideology of terrorism.

Responsible for Equality And Liberty also makes this promise. We will defend every city and every nation from these racist monsters, to the best of our volunteers’ ability.  Patriotic Americans will defy racists and symbols of racism wherever they go.

But to those promoting racism and with the symbols of racist hatred, know this. You will not succeed in the Washington DC area without our DEFIANT PROTEST. There has been more than enough racist filth smeared on our nation’s capital in our life times. From Freedom Plaza outward, we will defy those with the ideology and symbols of racist hatred. The blood of Stephen Johns and the bullet holes in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum was the moment we had to say ENOUGH.

Not here.

We will continue to defy white supremacist organizations and their ideology of racist hatred, and their enablers. Those promoting the symbols of racial hatred and violence will find the defenders of human rights and dignity are stubborn and persistent. After all, it is the least we can do.

In protection of Americans at the Holocaust Memorial Museum, Stephen Johns gave his LIFE. Surely we can be inconvenienced. Surely we can find the time and the energy to defy Nazi white supremacist hatred. Surely we can find the room in our lives to tell those who think Adolf Hitler is a joke, how WRONG THEY ARE.

So to my fellow patriotic Americans and friends in human rights, Responsible for Equality And Liberty is inviting to join us in Maryland to protest the Nazi symbols which represent racist hatred.  We contacted the Olney Theatre Center first; we pleaded with them to reconsider.  They stand by their “comedy satire” on the racist mass-murderer Adolf Hitler, while the victims of the latest terror attack have just been buried, and burned down houses of worship are in ashes.

We urge you to contact the Olney Theatre Center and let them know you don’t think Adolf Hitler is “funny.”  You can let them know on Twitter at @OlneyTheatre.   You can see their postings of how they think Adolf Hitler is “funny,” and one actor thinks it is a joke to “see what the fuhrer is about.”  This normalization of a racist, mass-murderer and a SYMBOL of Racism is what we must REJECT.

Some of those publicly “favoriting” such mocking comments like “see what all the fuhrer is about” are conservative “Ace of Spades” blog writer Gabriel Malor (screenshot) and Brandon Ambrosino (screenshot).  Baltimore dancer (who apparently works on this show) Brandon Ambrosino claims to write for the New York Times, Atlantic, Time, etc., but really does VOX blog articles.  Brandon Ambrosino spent 30 minutes arguing with me at the July 11 protest claiming that when theater goers enjoy Racist Hate symbols like Hitler, we shouldn’t protest Hitler events.  After all, he argued – if there are more people singing for Hitler than those protesting, shouldn’t those singing for Hitler be right? The efforts to “normalize” racist symbol Adolf Hitler are in direct contradiction to America’s rejection of the racist symbol of the Confederate Flag.  Americans respecting human rights know the difference between RIGHT and WRONG.

We need you to urge them to end the scenes in the Olney Theatre presentation about Adolf Hitler and the twisted “comedy” of “Springtime for Hitler.” They will tell you it is a satire. They will tell you it is their artistic freedom. They will get Mel Brooks and theater reviewers to defend how “funny” it is. Mr. Brooks, actors, and comedians have a right to their personal twisted sense of humor. But when symbols of racist hatred are displayed in public areas, mocking the tragedies the world has suffered, they need to take their sense of “humor” elsewhere.

TELL THEM “ENOUGH.”

Adolf Hitler and the Nazi swastika belong in the same trash can of history with the Confederate Flag and Confederate monuments.

Maryland, our nation, and the world has paid with enough blood, enough tears, and enough misery that we have a right to defend the human dignity of all those who have suffered in American and around the world from these racist mass-murderers and monsters, should not be trivialized and made into “comedy.”  Enough.

TELL THEM “TAKE IT DOWN.”

R.E.A.L. urges you to contact the Olney Theatre Center’s Board President Jennifer Kneeland, Managing Director Deborah Ellinghaus, Artistic Director Jason Loewith, Director of Production Dennis A. Blackledge, and Public Relations Manager Heather Andrews, and let them know you reject symbols of racist hatred as “comedy.” Let them know you don’t find Adolf Hitler to be “entertaining.”

The Olney Theatre Center is located at: 2001 Olney-Sandy Spring Road, Olney, MD 20832. It’s telephone number is: 301-924-4485, and the fax number is: 301-924-2654

Let actors Jason Graee and Michael Kostroff know that you just don’t think that the racist monster Adolf Hitler is “funny.”

To those of you in the Washington DC area, we will be holding public protests on the public street outside the Olney Theatre Center.  For more information, contact us at usa@realcourage.org.  We will keep the local police informed to ensure safety and protection.  We held protests on July 11 and July 12.  At our July 12 protest, theater goers screamed curse words from their automobiles.  One theater goer came up to me and told me that he thought that the Holocaust “was funny.”  I urge those who cannot protest to pray for these individuals.

As we MUST defy the Confederate Flag of white supremacy, racism, slavery, and hate, so we MUST also defy the symbols of racist Nazi ideology and the monster who inspired the death of so many Jews, so many people, so many children, so many families, and also certainly so many Americans – even in the Washington DC area, and continuing today.

We MUST DEFY this…. EVIL to all of humanity.

Behind the Eternal Flame in the Hall of Remembrance, it reads: “Only guard yourself and guard your soul carefully, lest you forget the thing your eyes saw, and lest these things depart your heart all the days of your life, and you shall make them known to your children to your children’s children.”

We will Never Forget, Maryland.

America, we must continue to work together for all people of all religions, all races, and all identity groups.

NEVER AGAIN.

That is why we MUST be Responsible for Equality And Liberty.