The Military Religious Freedom Foundation has made a significant fundraising push over the past several months.\u00a0 In a July fundraising email, the MRFF used a letter\u00a0from a Holocaust survivor who “pled” for financial support for Michael Weinstein’s organization.<\/p>\n
In the letter, the author,\u00a0Walter 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<\/a> in the past.\u00a0 Plywaski says that Christians are using methods similar to those instigated by the Nazis:<\/p>\n I applaud\u00a0Mikey\u2019s…efforts to expose the stealthy fundamentalist takeover<\/strong> attempt of our armed forces, a strategy all too reminiscent of what brought the end of my family\u2019s life<\/strong> in pre-war Poland.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Plywaski has said that anger helped him survive in Germany.\u00a0 This\u00a0same anger–against those who “annihilated [his] people”–motivates him to fight against “fundamentalist Christians.”\u00a0<\/p>\n 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<\/em>, or stormtroops; a paramilitary adjunct of the Nazi party].\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Apparently, Plywaski sees\u00a0the MRFF as the\u00a0means to prevent another\u00a0Holocaust (imagery Weinstein has also used<\/a>).\u00a0 He calls on others to\u00a0oppose “fundamentalist Christians” so that no one else will have to experience “death and concentration camps:”<\/p>\n It is my determined hope that when you help MRFF\u2019s cause<\/strong>, neither my children nor grandchildren will ever have to experience the things I went through<\/strong> 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Plywaski’s final solution is to deal with Christians,\u00a0whose “evangelism” betrays a “Crusader agenda,”\u00a0like “fleas on a dog:”<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n 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…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In that statement, Plywaski repeats a popular Weinstein\u00a0canard–that the\u00a0MRFF is only\u00a0“at war” with one brand<\/em> of Christianity.\u00a0 However, these words are contradicted by Weinstein’s louder actions.\u00a0\u00a0The 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<\/a> accuses the military of collusion with the Christian faith as a whole<\/em>, not with any specific sect thereof.\u00a0 Clearly, despite any insistent qualifiers, Weinstein is<\/em> “at war” with Christianity.<\/p>\n Plywaski\u00a0appears convinced by the MRFF’s claim that there is an effort to\u00a0create a “Christian Army:”<\/p>\n 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\u2019s Christian fundamentalist fanatics<\/strong> who want to turn it into a Christian Army and therefore their own tool.<\/p>\n 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…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n 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.”\u00a0 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.”\u00a0 Plywaski appears to have been persuaded by Weinstein’s\u00a0melodramatic and\u00a0inflammatory accusations that have yet to\u00a0be proven anything more than conjecture or conspiracy theory.\u00a0<\/p>\n Much of the letter relates Mr. Plywaski’s experiences as it details the horrors<\/a> he suffered at the hands of the Nazi regime;\u00a0few people living in America today can even comprehend the magnitude of the horror he experienced.\u00a0 It is unfortunate that Mr. Plywaski feels that Christians today are representative of the fascist regime of Hitler.\u00a0 Beyond the unfounded and hyperbolic accusations of advocacy organizations, it is unclear on what basis he draws this conclusion.<\/p>\n Notably, however, Plywaski is a\u00a0self-described atheist:<\/p>\n 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n His opposition to religion is so strong he feels the holocaust is a reminder<\/a> of “what happens when individuals start thinking of themselves as a group, when they become true believers in a cause.”<\/p>\n