Did anyone see this? I DVR'd it and watched it today. I thought it was good, but the commentary by host Aaron Freeman often times seemed oddly flippant. I remember seeing the American Nazi Party Headquarters office on west 71st street as I walked or rode my bike past it to or from a friend's house or Marquette Park. I was the late 70s, I was between seven and nine years old, and knew that "Nazi" definitely had a negative connotation but didn't know anything of substance at that point about Hitler, the Holocaust, etc.

Seeing clips of the marches and protests and the various signs, both hateful and otherwise, I do remember seeing signs stuck on the backboards on the playground at Hurley grammar school at the end of my block on 70th and Pulaski that said "N*GGER BEWARE" with a skull and crossbones underneath.

Anyway, overall I thought the program was good and it was interesting to learn about the involvement of the various Jewish groups and the support the Nazi's received from the ACLU (and their Jewish lawyers).

I did see it. The main thing I was struck by was how skinny most of the people were compared to the fat asses of today.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Yes,but patriotic fat asses!!!

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favrefan said:"Chris Coghlan isn't gonna pay your rent, Jimmy."

Wasn't a proud time of where I grew up.

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Elections have consequences.

not being from here i didn't know about this, so i watched the trailer. i also wasn't a fan of the way aaron freeman narrates and hosts. he treats it like it's an animal planet special about cute koala bears and not something that i would think he could relate to.

there's also a movie called "skokie" which is a dramatization of the events during that time. danny kaye was in it.

When I was a kid you couldn't go outside in Skokie without bumping into someone with a concentration camp tattoo. There aren't many left these days. Still a few in my neighborhood. They must have been pretty young at the time.

One of my neighbors was an old lady named Gina. She passed away last year. She used to give me a lot of unsolicited advice. Before my wife and I got married she took umbrage that we were living together. She called me a bum and compared me to her "bum of a son" who was also living with his girlfriend. One day she asked me my nationality. I told her my great grandparents were German. She said, "GERMAN! You know who else was German????? HITLER!!!!!! And she stuck her arm out and began tapping her tattoo wildly. What could I say to that?

After Gina died her granddaughter moved into her apartment. She introduced herself and I offered my condolences. I said, "I liked you grandmother a lot. She was a very nice lady." The granddaughter sneered at me and replied, "No she wasn't."

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

ha! yeah...i always think of the scene in "the monster squad" when the kids visit "scary german guy" and he translates van helsing's diary and tells them all about the impending apocalypse of evil creatures taking over the earth. one of the kids says, "you sure know a lot about monsters". the german guy says, "Now that you mention it, I suppose I do..." and then it pans to his arm, revealing the CC tattoo. poignant.

Aaron Freeman was the wrong choice to host this. It should have been a somber documentary rather than a comedy.

I grew up near Skokie but I was very young when this was going on. I didn't experience any of it.

The Jewish reaction displayed in the doc seemed strange to me. It was pretty much as right wing as the Nazis which seemed strange for people who would most likely consider themselves liberal.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

I did not see the special but the complaints about Freeman remind me of this douche from NBC Dateline.

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favrefan said:"Chris Coghlan isn't gonna pay your rent, Jimmy."

I was 14 or 15 at the time and lived very close to where the march was originally planned. There were many, many survivors in Skokie at that time. Clearly they and their families found the very idea of these kunckleheads to be abhorrent. They weren't thinking about the Constitution or freedom of speech or free assembly. The Holocaust seemed like ancient history to me at the time, but it was really only a bit more than thirty years earlier.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

If you have been to the Riverview in Roscoe Village, there was a time it was a German drinking hall. 1993? Our group bought it and renovated the place, to turn it into the Damen Ave Bar and Grill (Yeah, real creative I know, but I was the Jr Partner and was voted down)

Knocked through some old wood doors in the basement and I find some books, diaries, etc from the early 1900's about the American Nazi movement. Same dated 1918. Basically notes from the weekly meetings of how they planned to bring the Nazi party into America. None of it was about hate, it was essentially about building a utopian society via higher educational standards, quality of life via better jobs and community projects to enrich others lives.

Everyone was obligated to provide community time to help elderly and this who might not be able to help themselves, creating playgrounds, etc.

It was before Hitler even became leader of the workers union, but still interesting to see how someone could join the Nazi party based on the good that could be done, then once the loyalty is pledged and solid, Hitler went for the jugular. Always wondered before that how so many people could be so bad, and they probably didnt join for any bd reasons, they had some good intentions, but couldnt get done what they wanted and things went bad from there.

P.S. I wanted to name the place CHAOS (Can't Hardly Agree On Shit)

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"That's what the internet is for. Slandering others anonymously." Banky
“Been that way since one monkey looked at the sun and told the other monkey ‘He said for you to give me your fuckin’ share.’”

That was a heavy German neighborhood. In the late 30s there was a German joint on either Southport or Ashland between Addison and Irving. My grandfather and his drunken Irish friend Pete Kelly were neighborhood rabble rousers. The way the story got handed down the two of them were heroes fucking with Nazis but I suspect they were really just drunks fucking shit up. Anyway, this bar was the headquarters for a Bund. One day my grandfather and Kelly went in to the bar separately and sat at opposite ends as if they didn't know each other. They ordered beer and at some point they gave each other a high sign and picked up the bar (which wasn't attached to the floor) and flipped it over. All hell broke loose. These two goofs were kicking hell out of about six or seven krauts. If you ever saw my grandfather in his prime, you wouldn't doubt that. Eventually the bartender cracked gramps over the head with a blackjack. He and Kelly stumbled out into the street laughing their asses off. Pete looked over and said, "Bob, your head is bleeding." When he got home grandma was appalled and wanted him to go to the hospital. He told her to wrap a towel around it. I was always fascinated by the scar when I was a little kid.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Even in early 1990's Roscoe Village was still full of German immigrants. The butcher would shut down for the summer and 'cottage' back in Austria for 2 months.

the concept of owning a business and "CLOSED FOR SUMMER" is unknown these days.

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"That's what the internet is for. Slandering others anonymously." Banky
“Been that way since one monkey looked at the sun and told the other monkey ‘He said for you to give me your fuckin’ share.’”

Silver Palm closed for the Winter back in November:

http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20131119 ... for-winter

One of the reason I am totally behind the Living History projects that are around. Lost of them are unfortunately too late. They are starting another one up,basically they sit down and just interview and let the people say everything and anything they want about the subject. They have been doing this for a while with WW2 vets but not enough. They should have been doing this for Holocaust survivors from the end of the war until every single survivor had their story recorded. Lot of things we remember some we forget but this should never ever be forgotten and allowed to be done again to any people for any reason. I know I go off a lot about Islam but if they learned how to get along with other people I would have no ammunition to use on them.I remember my great-grandmother from my moms side who until she died would not believe the Holocaust saying there was no way the German people could be that barbaric

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When I am stuck and need to figure something out I always remember the Immortal words of Socrates when he said:"I just drank what?"

There have been several full fledged genocides since WWII while survivors were around to give history first hand

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Did the mayor of Skokie contribute to this, or was he too busy bailing out Harry?

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are you sure about those dates? the worker's party didn't start til around 1919 and it wasn't known as the nazi party until about 1921, and it was known primarily by germans until the 1930's.

Could have been some prototype of National Socialism before the movement got off the ground. In fact, what bigfan is describing -- educating the masses, a utopian community, aiding the sick and the old -- sounds more like regular old 1910s socialism, perhaps a national party dedicated to it. National Socialism as an ideology, on the other hand, was never not about blaming Jews for what happened to Germany.

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