The Military Religious Freedom Foundation has made a significant fundraising push over the past several months.  In a July fundraising email, the MRFF used a letter from a Holocaust survivor who “pled” for financial support for Michael Weinstein’s organization.

In the letter, the author, Walter Plywaski (who notes he is “previously Wladyslaw Plywacki”), appears to associate “fundamentalist Christianity” in the United States with his Nazi tormentors, a moral equivalency that has also been implied by Weinstein in the past.  Plywaski says that Christians are using methods similar to those instigated by the Nazis:

I applaud Mikey’s…efforts to expose the stealthy fundamentalist takeover attempt of our armed forces, a strategy all too reminiscent of what brought the end of my family’s life in pre-war Poland.

Plywaski has said that anger helped him survive in Germany.  This same anger–against those who “annihilated [his] people”–motivates him to fight against “fundamentalist Christians.” 

My words are motivated…by a lifelong anger towards the perpetrators who annihilated my family and my people… If things continue to proceed as now, our military will all too easily begin its descent into the American equivalent of the brown-shirted SA [Sturmabteilung, or stormtroops; a paramilitary adjunct of the Nazi party]. 

Apparently, Plywaski sees the MRFF as the means to prevent another Holocaust (imagery Weinstein has also used).  He calls on others to oppose “fundamentalist Christians” so that no one else will have to experience “death and concentration camps:”

It is my determined hope that when you help MRFF’s cause, neither my children nor grandchildren will ever have to experience the things I went through during my youth in the Nazi death and concentration camps…If my words have convinced even one of you to stand up and take note…then perhaps what I had to endure in my youth will not have been in vain.

Plywaski’s final solution is to deal with Christians, whose “evangelism” betrays a “Crusader agenda,” like “fleas on a dog:”

Like every society, the United States has its own extreme fundamentalists and bigots, just as some dogs have fleas…There has been a concerted drive to infiltrate the military by these very fundamentalists who believe in the superiority of their very dangerous brand of Christianity.  It is a brand that, in its evangelism, telegraphs a Crusader agenda abroad while attempting to coerce the rank and file to adhere literally to their Bible.

Just as in caring for your pet you would immediately deal with the fleas, so too must we, as a society, stand firmly behind the Constitution in ferreting out those who wish to eradicate the wall of separation between Church and State…

In that statement, Plywaski repeats a popular Weinstein canard–that the MRFF is only “at war” with one brand of Christianity.  However, these words are contradicted by Weinstein’s louder actions.  The MRFF has never once cited an instance of anyone in the military “coerc[ing] the rank and file to adhere literally to their Bible,” and the MRFF’s current lawsuit accuses the military of collusion with the Christian faith as a whole, not with any specific sect thereof.  Clearly, despite any insistent qualifiers, Weinstein is “at war” with Christianity.

Plywaski appears convinced by the MRFF’s claim that there is an effort to create a “Christian Army:”

I…can only hope that Americans will awaken to this danger and put an end to the usurpation of power in our military by today’s Christian fundamentalist fanatics who want to turn it into a Christian Army and therefore their own tool.

It matters not if those who would take over our military call themselves Christian, Jew, Muslim, or Devil worshipers; what matters is that a democratic society cannot possibly hold onto its freedoms under the guns of a militarized theocracy…

While the hostile takeover of a Christian “Taliban” is frequently trumpeted by Weinstein’s MRFF, there is no mainstream evidence of an effort to create a “Christian Army.”  Again, the MRFF has never cited an example of any Christian in the military who has “usurped” power or wanted to turn the US military into a “Christian Army [as] their own tool.”  Plywaski appears to have been persuaded by Weinstein’s melodramatic and inflammatory accusations that have yet to be proven anything more than conjecture or conspiracy theory. 

Much of the letter relates Mr. Plywaski’s experiences as it details the horrors he suffered at the hands of the Nazi regime; few people living in America today can even comprehend the magnitude of the horror he experienced.  It is unfortunate that Mr. Plywaski feels that Christians today are representative of the fascist regime of Hitler.  Beyond the unfounded and hyperbolic accusations of advocacy organizations, it is unclear on what basis he draws this conclusion.

Notably, however, Plywaski is a self-described atheist:

I am an ex “native” of the Lodz ghetto, Auschwitz and Dachau and an atheist during an experience in Auschwitz, my “road from Damascus,” when the voice of God there was the screaming out very young children being burned alive through the night.

His opposition to religion is so strong he feels the holocaust is a reminder of “what happens when individuals start thinking of themselves as a group, when they become true believers in a cause.”

Plywaski is also a prolific commentator on current events.  Much of the letter is a modification of his earlier writings.