I just came across a speech I gave at a campaign event 4 1/2 years ago about the evils of socialism. It needs repeating since it fits the present. I lived through Hitler’s and Stalin’s socialism and often wonder how I sustained myself. Even as a very young girl in the 1930s, I knew my beloved homeland was drastically changing. My memories from that period are chilling especially as I correlate many developments I witnessed to those ongoing in the United States.

During the 1930s, my father was a railroad administrator — a highly-regarded position at the time — and he was being pressured to join the “Party.” Noticing that representatives of the party included thugs in brown shirts smashing windows and vandalizing businesses (Black Lives Matter?), he declined. Eventually, he was ordered to participate for 2 months of “reeducation.” He returned home in an ambulance, never to recover from the beatings and torture he had endured at the hands of party operatives. He died shortly after. His last words to me were, “Do not give in. Never give up.”

In the years that followed, my wonderful homeland fell prey to poisonous socialism that hid under the name of National Socialistische Arbeiter Partei Deutschlands or National Socialism. (Italy called it fascism.) Party members would enter German schools (even private or religious) and tell the teachers that they would adopt a universal national curriculum (Common Core?).

My brother was drafted into the military at the age of 15 years old. I was forced out of college to enter into service to direct and trace munition trains destined for Russia. (They had to use young girls for this task since all men were on the Russian front.) I got to see Russia under the dictatorship of the murderous Stalin and what socialism did to that country. I saw bodies hanging from lampposts along the Dnjepr River’s edges (Ukraine). I saw many, many trainloads of Jews and dissenters being sent to reeducation camps, which devolved into concentration camps in 1940 for the purpose of “population cleansing.”

It is for those poor souls that I share my life story — to always remember and perhaps awaken others to the dangers of Socialism and its derivatives. We had no freedom and neither had the media. They had to publish what they were told.

One day, a frantic neighbor came on his bike to our house announcing that he had an American in his barn and he could not communicate with him; would I please come and help. It turns out his plane was shot down by the German flak. It took 7 weeks to get him back to Great Britain. We stayed in touch, he came back, we were married and here I am! I became an American citizen, embraced my new country, my anthem, my flag, my constitution. When I voted for the first time I wept with joy! I love my country for all its Glory with all its imperfections.

It is for many of these reasons that I am adamant the “silent majority” be silent no longer, and that the younger generations educate themselves, learn from the past and appreciate their God-given country!

MARGARETTE FALLAT

Sandpoint