A Kentucky man thought it would be a good idea to dress his young son up as Adolf Hitler for Halloween — and to match the look, he dressed himself as a Nazi soldier. Yes, really.
According to local news, the man “says he originally did it for historical purposes but admits he didn’t think through his idea.” Apparently, he did not see the backlash coming.
In light of the recent, terrible, heartbreaking news, this astonishingly bad idea seems even more horrifying. After all the murder of Jews simply for being Jewish isn’t something that can be relegated to “history” — it happened on Saturday, the deadliest attack on Jews in the U.S. history.
The man, Bryant Goldbach, and his son were attending a “Trail of Treats” event in Owensboro, Kentucky. (Which, as a sidenote, seems like a terrible name that appropriates the terrible “Trail of Tears” the Cherokee Native Americans were forced to march, leaving their ancestral lands to reservations in Oklahoma.) Goldbach’s Facebook page — before being taken down — had featured slogans like, “White pride doesn’t mean hate.”
Before apologizing for his poor taste in costumes, Goldbach wrote, “We saw people dressed as murderers, devils, serial killers, blood and gore of all sorts. Nobody batted an eye. But my little boy and I, dress as historical figures, and it merits people not only making snide remarks, but approaching us and threatening my little 5 year old boy… How dare you threaten a child. Me, its one thing, but my child? You are messing with fire…Yes, liberalism is alive and well. And we had the displeasure of dealing with the fruits of the so called ‘Tolerant Left.'”
Way to turn the tables there, Goldbach! Clearly, this charming person hasn’t learned from past mistakes — last year he apparently dressed as a Confederate solider for Halloween. And his wife, MaryAnne, who seems equally charming, made a series of anti-Semitic posts following the backlash, such as, “The Jewish community want us all to feel sorry for them to get more money and power,” and referred to the Holocaust as “the Holohoax.”
Even though may seem a relatively small infraction to dress up as Hitler or a Nazi, the costume is yet another harbinger of a troubling rise in white nationalism. Also in Kentucky, the day before Goldbach and son donned their costumes, a white man shot and killed two African Americans at a grocery store parking lot, after unsuccessfully trying to gain entrance into a predominantly black church. The shooting is now being investigated as a hate crime.
Hate has no place on Halloween — or any other day. Still, in a statement, local rabbi Gary Mazo, of Temple Adath B’nai Israel, provided some valuable tips: “A good rule of thumb would be: ‘if your costume calls to mind an event where millions were killed, choose another costume.'” He continued, “If the purpose of Halloween is to have fun — bigotry, anti-Semitism and racism are not fun. That should be common sense. This is not being ‘politically correct’ this is simply being respectful, understanding, and kind.”
Amen.
