But, as yesterday's march showed, this time the vast majority of decent Germans will not stand idly by.
"The thing that shocked me was this horrible, barbaric movement and that most of the decent Germans joined in," he said.
"There can be decent Germans," Solomon Gruver said reluctantly.
Her 1945 novel, Sowing the Wind, described the moral deterioration of decent Germans under Hitler.
Mexicans of German, Lebanese, Jewish, and French decent were not allowed political or economic power and many times had their land or assets seized.
He survived, Mr. Segev writes, thanks to resourcefulness, the relative kindness of some decent Germans and blind luck.
"The embodiment of the decent German who wouldn't be co-opted for anything," The Frankfurter Allgemeine called him.
Any decent German's fighting for his country--not slinking over here to get out of it!