“List of Jews” has an ominous ring


The courts are demanding them, though. I’ve heard of something like this before.

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the University of Pennsylvania to hand over records about Jewish employees on campus to a federal agency as part of an investigation into antisemitic discrimination but said it did not have to reveal any employee’s affiliation with a specific group.

First, you get a list of all the Jews at the university. Then you fire them, imprison them, and kill them. This was the trend in the 1930s and 1940s, when there were sweeping purges of Jewish professors, led by prominent non-Jewish scientists. Here’s a useful word to remember: Rassenhygiene.

The emergence of eugenics as an ‘applied science’ culminated in the horrendous atrocities committed by the Nazis during the Third Reich. Society was to be cleaned of all alien contamination, hence the German phrase ‘Rassenhygiene’ meaning ‘racial hygiene’. Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and people with hereditary diseases were deprived of their human rights, herded into concentration camps, used for scientific experimentation and murdered. And the scientists who provided the scientific backing were respected university professors or researchers of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society (KWS), the predecessor of the Max Planck Society. Many of them remained in renowned positions even after 1945, influential enough to delay an unbiased historical confrontation.

These things sneak up on you. You provide a list for the purposes of “an investigation into antisemitic discrimination,” and next thing you know, Stephen Miller is holding it.

I have another useful word to add to your vocabulary: Lebensborn.

The Lebensborn e.V. (e.V. stands for eingetragener Verein or registered association), meaning “fount of life”, was founded on 12 December 1935,[1] to counteract falling birth rates in Germany, and to promote Nazi eugenics.[2] Located in Munich, the organization was partly an office within the Schutzstaffel (SS) responsible for certain family welfare programs, and partly a society for Nazi leaders.

Sound familiar? This was an organization designed to promote racial purity by determining who was a good Aryan.

The USA doesn’t have an official Lebensborn policy yet, but I note that it is so important to Trump that we end birthright citizenship that he is actually attending Supreme Court hearings today on that subject, an unusual move to use his vast prestige and power to influence a court decision. Let’s hope it backfires on him and that the court decides that the 14th Amendment stands.

Comments

  1. Hemidactylus says

    On the face of it I can’t see such ill intent in asking for a list of Jewish people to contact for investigation into alleged antisemitism on a university campus as to compare this inquiry to what happened in Nazi Germany. That it could be construed that way does indicate how ill thought out the approach is though. And isn’t Stephen Miller of Jewish descent? His Wikipedia page says he attended Hebrew school. So I’m not sure, even as evil as he is, what need he would have for a list of Jews.

    The birthright citizenship issue being brought to SCOTUS with Trump attending is troublesome in itself, especially given what has been happening to immigrants thus far under fascist Trump and his gutstapo thugs. Yet a judge awkwardly asking a university for a list of Jewish people to investigate alleged antisemitism doesn’t seem to me linked to Rassenhygiene, Lebensborn, or the birthright case before SCOTUS.

  2. Hemidactylus says

    If anything, the intent of this inquiry seems to me to be more geared toward stifling criticism of Israel by protestors.

    The EEOC issued its subpoena last summer, aiming to force the university to hand over lists of the school’s Jewish community members as part of an investigation into antisemitism on campus.

    That investigation began after intense campus protests of Israel’s response to the October 7 attacks by Hamas – and amid a wave of scrutiny over the university’s handling of allegations of antisemitism.

    From: https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/31/us/upenn-subpoena-jewish-community-list

    Some protestors against Israeli atrocities in Gaza (and now in Lebanon again) perhaps crossed the line. And chants like “river to the sea” are a bit over the top IMO alongside keffiyeh appropriating cosplay, but neither criticism of Israel nor protest against Israel are inherently antisemitic.

    And I agree that asking for a list of Jews is just a bad idea, plain and simple, but I don’t think the intent is the same as it was in Germany, given it is to investigate alleged antisemitism. Maybe a more passive approach for Jewish employees to voluntarily come forward and offer their takes.

  3. says

    For what it’s worth, Stephen Miller is Jewish. A Jewish Nazi seems like a strange concept, but that’s what he seems to be.

  4. Tethys says

    This sounds like a particularly awful April Fools day joke.

    There is nothing in the article that gives background on the EEOC investigation beyond the claim that Penn is ‘rife with antisemitism’ because of a swastika spray painted in a student space.

    Demanding a list of Jewish people is a strange plan if you are supposedly investigating antisemitism.

    While we acknowledge the important role of the EEOC to investigate discrimination, we also have an obligation to protect the rights of our employees. We continue to believe that requiring Penn to create lists of Jewish faculty and staff, and to provide personal contact information, raises serious privacy and First Amendment concerns. The University does not maintain employee lists by religion,” the university’s statement read.

    Privacy falls under the fourth amendment.

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