Ce récit donne une description impressionnante de la situation dans les prisons US et du rôle des groupes ethniques et politiques dans la vie des prisonniers. Pour nous qui ne sommes pas derrière les barreaux l’observation sur le rôle de l’état dans la protection contre les nazis est au moins aussi intéressant.
David Arenberg Reflects on Being Jewish in State Prison | Southern Poverty Law Center
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2009/winter/a-jew-in-prison
I grew up in a Chicago suburb, Evanston, Ill., next door to Skokie, the infamous site of an attempted march by Nazis in the late 1970s through a city with a large Jewish population, including a high number of concentration camp survivors. Because Evanston and Skokie shared a high school, I knew many of these survivors, whose children were friends of mine. When the Nazis threatened to march, these were the people who were prepared to take their places on the front lines, baseball bats in hand, ready to meet the fascists. There is no question in my mind that the Nazis ultimately backed down at the last minute not because they were put off by the Skokie City Council when it hastily enacted an ordinance preventing the march, nor because the Anti-Defamation League made the Nazis “irrelevant” by advising people to ignore them, nor because the ACLU helped the Nazis “make their point” that free speech is allowed and this made the march moot. Rather, it was because they were afraid of the Jewish and other anti-fascist demonstrators who organized against them and made it clear that they were going to offer armed resistance. The Nazis knew that if they came to Skokie, no amount of police protection could keep them safe.
