Saturday, January 26, 2013
6 comments:
Thanks, Patti for your comment. I like you espousing on my article. The main reason for remembering is that today people are being murdered because of their nationality, the color of their skin, their thoughts like in Nazism. However, these are not the root of all this crimes.
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Hannah Arendt said "there is an Eichmann in each one of us". Arendt wants to emphasize that the absence of critical thinking is not only the heritage of that character, but of different "Eichmanns" who have aborted and are aborting their ability to judge by themselves. The character becomes a symbol that affects everyone -whether with or without formal or moral education, who is dragged and trapped in a voluntary way by evil.
It seems that some people do learn from history, but to do the worst. There's an American film, "The Judgement at Nuremberg" with Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster and others.. In Spain the title changed to "Winners or Losers". I think that this last title is quite right, so has been the Nazism, its ideology, eradicated? Who has been the real ideologic Winner?
Of course, we must remember all the victims of today. I do think that remembering the victims of the Nazism, we could find the root for all ethnics, religious and ideologic conflicts of nowadays.
A fascinating retrospective.
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Yes, genocide is happening the world over and little is said. It's happening here, too, in America, under the guise of human rights.
We talk little, too, of the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima. When planes were crashed into the Towers, it was rightfully viewed as an act of terrorism, but because America had might on her side, she was right. After all, the winners of any war can write history as they see it.
Furthermore, I recently participated in a forum where the author supports abortion in any and all cases, simply because it's the woman's body and her right to do as she pleases, even use abortion as a method of birth control. The zygote, she claims, isn't a life, and therefore it doesn't deserve to have it's voice heard. Another supporter claimed that "I just know that, if the zygote knew that it would be born to parents not wanting it, to abuse and poverty, that they would wish to be aborted." How's that for an argument?
Others lament God for allowing such evil to exist. But really, the world is what we've made it. Why we allow genocide, well, it's beyond me.
Oh, Ana, I truly agree with you. I saw the film "The Judgement At Nuremberg" with Spencer Tracey and Burt Lancaster, and it is my belief that this win/lose situation stimulated the underground growth of Nazism that we see today in Germany. What is happening here is nothing new. People tend to think that Nazism has started again and has just began to grow but that is not the case, because it never stopped growing. It went underground and hibernated, until it had enough nourishment to stand up again.
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Your words "there is an Eichmann in each of us" also hit a chord of truth. If this is so then man is born with an inherent trait of evil within him. This belief alone challenges the basic core of some psychological foundations which insist that man was born inherently good, meaning at the time of birth.
Again, I come back to your profound sentence that says "there is an Eichmann in each of us." If this is so then mankind can never rid itself of the violence that rocks our world. We have not grown the inner conscience of freedom to accept, respect, and admire mankind as a family with outside differences which make us unique from all over living plants and animals. This inability to see we are more than just a nationality, born in a country with a different language, living in an environment which may or may not supply all of our needs denies us and blinds us from seeing who we are and causes us to define ourselves by the country, family and riches that we were born into.
Therefore, I agree with you wholeheartedly. We dare not forget. We dare not look back. Hopefully the act of remembering will one day jar a mental mechanism in our hearts and minds that will challenge us to move toward change. Otherwise, genocide as we know it today and back then will continue.
Thank you for responding to my espousing on your position that was published in Marta's corner. It was invigorating and to be quite honest with you, I smiled as I got caught up in what you had written, and could not resist espousing along with you.
Ciao,
PattiJ, this is one of the basic reasons that I do not argue with people who are pro abortion. It is an endless road to nowhere. The fact that we have begun to define what is life and what is not life is scary. The irony behind it all is yet and still science is trying to produce life through scientific experiments. So where do we want to life to begin? In a test tube? And is that life produced in a test tube, life or is it as the some pro abortion people would say, only a zygote.
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it is my belief that our world has become vain and selfish. It is the good feeling that we are seeking. It is the me, me, me culture, and everything about me is perfect which is destroying our world, and that has nothing to do with God.
Genocide is generated by feelings of superiority. When we began to think that we are the best then we have lost one of the basic character traits that any human being needs to succeed and that trait is humility. That is what happened in Germany with World War 2 and it is also what happened with Japan. The evil head of superiority, in my opinion, raised its head and no one was able to tell a German or a Japanese that they were not of some kind of special race that was born to be served and not to serve.
What happen in the United States was a wake up call. The U.S. has been living under deception for years. What they didn't see didn't matter until it happened in the U.S. I cannot count the number of countries who have reached out to the U.S. for help because of injustices that were being done within their borders, but the U.S. maintained a isolationist attitude, like the days when James Monroe the fifth president of the USA refused to get involved. With what happened to the twin towers, the U.S. could no longer stand by and pretend that genocide and injustices to people outside of their own borders did not exist. We had to do something. And I say here consciously "we" because I identify as an American with our lack of concern for the injustices done in other nations.
So, I agree with you. The world as we know it today is what we have made it. We make it easy on ourselves by blaming God. It is a pity that since the garden of Eden, we always find someone else to blame instead of looking at the real culprit, ourselves.
Thank you for sharing here. It pleased me to find you here, and I sincerely hope your book is going well.
Ciao,
Patti
Speaking as a Jew, the first time I traveled through Germany I felt sick. I saw older people across from me on the train and I could not help but wonder what they were doing during the Holocaust. I could not escape the thought that if I was here 50 years ago you probably would have killed me.
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On the other hand, I was in Denmark and some young Germans came up to me and started apologizing. I did not know how to respond though felt bad that they had to feel guilty for something their grandparents didHi,
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I understand your feelings very well. One of the first sites that I visited in Germany was Dachau. I experienced emotions that asked why. It hurt and as I walked through the concentration camp and saw the gas chambers, I had a difficult time holding back the tears.
To hear that some young Germans came up to you and apologize is wonderful. Please accept that as it was and I am sure that they realized the guilt that Germany has brought upon itself. The fact is that their leaders brought guilt upon this whole nation. A guilt that many people young and old still refuse to accept.
A similar incident happened to me after one of my concerts about 5 years ago. I am not Jewish ,but African American. The concert has been a success. Afterwards, a Frenchman came up to me and apologize for what his forefathers had done as slave traders, long before the time he was born.
At first, I thought, this cannot be true. Is he sane? Then his wife, who also accompanied him to the concert, told me that he had desired to apologize to me for the sins of his fathers. Over a long conversation, I found out this man was well educated and quite well known in his own country. He studied History and World Politics and therefore had much insight into the plundering of people as products to be sold on the slave market and the guilt of his forefathers rested upon his shoulders. I believe after our intensive conversation and the good meal we had with a nice bottle of Bordeaux wine in the restaurant after my concert, allowed him to go home much lighter because the burden had been lifted.
I cannot explain it, and I don't have any answers, because i don't understand it myself, but I truly believe the sins of the fathers and forefathers can be passed down through generations.
Thank you for sharing incidences that were very personal to you.
Take care.
Shalom,
Patti
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Thank you for your thoughts. As I read them, I thought through my own position on this matter, and I sincerely hope you do not mind me espousing on a little of it with you. I, too, hope that we never forget what happen 67 years ago to humanity. People were murdered because of their nationality, the length of their noses or the color of their skin. However, I believe we have, because that is still happening today.
We see genocide taking place all over the world, and why aren't we crying out? Why aren't we saying enough is enough? I believe it is because we have taken on too much responsibilty. We have taken controlled thinking that man can make everything better, but can we? Have we? I don't think so.
The evil within us demand that we make a decision between what is evil/evil and what is evil/good. The evil/evil says that it is wrong to wipe out a nation of people, but the evil/good in us say it is alright to kill a fetus that is not yet three months old. The failure of taking too much responsibility result in us thinking that we can control everything around and about us. When it doesn't turn out as we would like, we simply get rid of it.
It is my belief that true responsibility can only be taken when we change the way we think. It is out of our hearts that evils like murder, hatred, prejudice, jealousy and all the other evils receive life and play themselves out in our lives. They become a part of our mind, and what we think, is what we do, and what we act out. That is what happened 67 years ago, and that is what is still happening today.
Living here in Germany, I can honestly say that the majority of the German people and that includes the younger generations still have a problem acknowledging their part in the massacre of millions of people. Many still hide under the blanket of 'We didn't know' or 'I didn't do anything. I wasn't born at that time.' It is sad, but it is so.
So in my opinion a part, or a small part of the solution lies in our recognition of the fact that the evil can only be conquered when we realize that we were born with the evil inside of us and that evil must be cleansed. We then began to renew our minds and began to understand that we were born as a family, regardless of what nationality or skin color we have.
When we realize that humanity itself is one race and that when we hurt another member of humanity then the evil in us has taken over, we can then accept responsibility for our own actions , and unlike Cain, we will not run away and hide, and reply as he did when God asked him where is Abel, "Am I my brother's keeper?"
I hope I make sense with my thoughts. Thank you for providing me with an opportunity to think about this topic of responsibilty before i enter into the year 2013.
Your article was extremely inspiring because it cause me to assess my own position.
Shalom,
Patti