Columbia Then and Now: Lessons for Today’s Jewish Protesters from Nazi Germany’s Notorious Columbia Concentration Camp

I spent the last several months as a teaching fellow at the University of Southern California and its Center for the Political Future. I had a great group of students – interested in helping shape a better political and civic future. Yet with what we all see exploding on campuses nationwide, I’m more concerned than ever about our political future – as Jews and as Americans. The hatred of Israel and of Jews is now on full display – some of it coming from our own people. As I have watched and listened to what has been brewing at Columbia University, I can’t help but recall the cautionary history of another Columbia — in the 1930s: the Columbia prison/concentration camp (also known as Columbia-Haus). That Columbia was a Nazi concentration camp situated in the Tempelhof area of Berlin – and one of the first such camps established by the regime.

Alas, our people have always had our very own antisemites – or what we might more accurately call Jew-haters.

Adding to the tragic story of the Nazi Columbia camp is the fact that some of its very first prisoners were Jews who had actually supported Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party. Alas, our people have always had our very own antisemites – or what we might more accurately call Jew-haters. Exhibit A: Max Naumann, a Jew born in Berlin and educated as a lawyer. In 1921, he founded the Verband Nationaldeutscher Juden (alternately referred to as the League — or Association — of National German Jews).  The Association’s stated goals were the total assimilation of Jews into the German volk, eradication of Jewish identity and expulsion of Eastern European Jewish immigrants from Germany. He was also an ardent opponent of Zionism. He published a magazine that in 1927 had 6,000 subscribers. 

Naumann’s organization supported both Hitler and the Nazi party – and for a brief while served as a useful pawn for the party. Naumann even issued a manifesto claiming Jews were being “fairly treated” by the Nazis. Having outlived its propaganda value for the Nazis, however, the Gestapo outlawed the League/Association in 1935. Max Naumann was sent by the Gestapo, along with others of his ilk, to Columbia. He was later released and managed to live until 1939, but unfortunately for many of Jews who supported the Verband, their support did not spare them from the deadly fate of much of the rest of European Jewry. In fact, members of the Verband were among the very first to get rounded up.

What’s happening on our campuses is tragic, enraging, sad, disheartening and, frankly, scary. Not every criticism of Israel is de facto antisemitic or anti-Jewish. If that was the case, about half of Israel might be labeled as such. But much of the hatred against Israel and the Jewish people that has exploded on campuses – and elsewhere – is textbook antisemitism. Terms such as colonialist, genocidal, racist and apartheid have been coopted to label Israel as a pariah. Moreover, the oft-chanted “from the river to the sea” is a clear call for the elimination of the State of Israel and its Jews. Shouts at Columbia University to burn down Tel Aviv are a clear call to genocide – if only people would really listen.

Most painful and upsetting is seeing members of our own Jewish community chanting this call to genocide, calling for boycotts, divestments and sanctions and calling for an end to the Jewish state. As a Jew, I’m mortified and horrified.

But most painful and upsetting is seeing members of our own Jewish community chanting this call to genocide, calling for boycotts, divestments and sanctions and calling for an end to the Jewish state. As a Jew, I’m mortified and horrified. And as a member of the LGBTQ community, I’m also dumbfounded by groups like Queers for Palestine. Just trying being a queer in Palestine: It’s often a death sentence in Gaza, the West Bank and, of course, Iran.

Much has been written and discussed recently trying to understand the antipathy that a certain number of vocal Jews have developed to Israel. Not to mention that they are cover for a growing chorus of antisemites and pawns of those who would gladly eradicate us if they had the chance. Free speech is a bedrock of our American democracy and social and political activism is very much a part of the university experience – but we have a generation of young Jews who don’t know the history of our people – people like my father of blessed memory, who escaped Romania during the Holocaust and survived thanks to his migration to Israel. Or my mother, also of blessed memory, whose parents escaped pogroms in Russia and Ukraine and lived to raise a family only because they found refuge in Eretz Yisrael.

History is replete with Jews, and persons of Jewish ancestry, being our own worst enemies. Jewish members of groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace or Not in Our Name will emphatically deny that they represent even a whiff of antisemitism. For them, opposing Israel is often even an expression of their Judaism. But make no mistake, they are serving as foils for terrorists, misogynists, homophobes and those who would perpetrate a real genocide that would inevitably ensue if the perverted dream of “from the river to the sea” was, heaven forbid, to be realized.

In 1905, the Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana famously said: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” In 1948, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill repeated Santayana’s message. How right they were. As we witness what burst into view at schools such as Columbia University, we would all do well to remember the Columbia of 1934 – and the anti-Jew Jews who came to painfully learn that nothing good can come of aiding, abetting, and supporting those who would seek to destroy us.

Ron Galperin served as the Los Angeles City Controller from 2013 to 2022.