Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. So goes the familiar statement attributed to George Santayana. 

The events last week in Charlottesville, Va., were horrific.  Violent neo-Nazis, white supremacists and their hateful allies, who staged a demonstration to protest that city’s decision to remove a Confederate monument from public property, were confronted by counter-demonstrators, most of them peaceful and a smaller number who were militant and violent — with no law enforcement officers on scene to keep the two groups apart.

In the ensuing melee, Heather Heyer, 32, was tragically killed when a car was driven into a crowed of anti-Nazi activists. Police identified James Alex Fields Jr., 20, of Ohio, as the driver and have charged him with second-degree murder and five other felony charges. 

Two state police officers were killed when their helicopter crashed on its way to the scene. 

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And scores of people on both sides were injured.

One question for the leaders of Charlottesville needs to be asked during the investigations into the tragedy: Where was the strong police presence needed to keep the two groups apart?

A similar neo-Nazi “rally” held in St. Louis on April 3, 1976, offers the example of how Breckenridge Hills, a small north St. Louis County community adjacent to Overland, managed to keep neo-Nazis and counter-demonstrators safely apart, preventing the kind of chaos that took place in Charlottesville.

Along with photographer David Henschel, I covered the rally in Breckinridge Hills, which was organized by Michael Allen, then 24, secretary of the National Socialist White People’s Party. Allen, who had filed to run for the position of trustee of the city, also applied for a permit to hold a campaign rally in the postage stamp-size Roy Ferguson Park, which is located behind the community’s village hall at 3120 Woodson Road.

At the appointed time, the only people on hand for the event were reporters, photographers and the 15-member Breckenridge Hills Police Department.  A freelance photographer quipped, “Suppose they gave a rally and nobody came?” And it began to look like the event would fizzle.

One police officer told me: “We catch it both ways on this one. If we prevent the rally, we violate free speech. If we let it go on, we’re giving a forum to a hate group.”

As he spoke someone said, “Here they come now.” 

A small group, with a central figure carrying a red flag,  approached the park.  

“Where’s  the swastika?” someone asked.

As it turned out, the group that first arrived was not the neo-Nazi unit at all, but members of two organizations, the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and the CommitteeAgainst Racism, which were there to protest the neo-Nazi rally.

Paul Gomberg, who identified himself as a member of the PLP, a radical leftist movement that broke away from the Communist Party USA in the 1960s, told methat the two groups decided to join forces to confront the neo-Nazis in order to drown out their hateful rhetoric. Gomberg at the time taught philosophy at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

“We are here to nip this in the bud so that the Nazis will not be able to build a fascist movement here,” Gomberg said.

As Gomberg spoke, Allen and about 15 of his followers, six of them in brownshirts and swastika armbands, entered the park area, carrying a speakers podium and a Nazi flag.  

Allen’s “platform” was to promise that if elected he would “stop all communist activity in the village” and would launch a “National Socialist systematic program of repaving all streets in the village and free trash pick-up.”

The Breckenridge Hills police officers quietly interposed themselves as a thin blue line to keep the two groups apart. No physical confrontations occurred, and no arrests were made. 

The gathering then became a slogan-shouting contest between the PLP-CAR group and the neo-Nazis.

The neo-Nazis would occasionally shout “Communism is Jewish” or “White power!” and “Six million more.”

When Allen began to speak from the podium, the counter-demonstrators began to chant, “Hitler rose, Hitler fell. Racist Nazis go to hell.” 

There was only a brief moment of tension when things could have exploded, but the calm presence of the small police force kept the event violence-free.

One petite woman in a Nazi-themed outfit was asked why she was there. 

“For one thing, he’s right on all the issues,” she said, referring to Allen.  “For another, he’s my husband.” 

A small boy wore a T-shirt with a picture of Adolf Hitler and the slogan, “The world will know that I was right.”

I found myself viscerally cheering on the PLP-CAR anti-Nazis who shouted their slogans directly at the neo-Nazis; I admired their courage.

The police felt they had succeeded in permitting the rally to proceed and keeping the two groups from injuring each other. It was all over in less than an hour.

The Breckenridge Hills Police Department, 15 officers strong, provided a template for much larger police departments to prevent or reduce violence at such events.