Friday, January 4, 2013

There has been more than one occasion where I curse humanity for so quickly forgetting about some tragedy that occurred, for our ability to move on so quickly, for my own ability to settle back into old ways after learning something that at one time was paramount. And then I was watching a series of videos on Netflix about WWII, called WWII in Colour or something, that uses actual footage from the war complied with narration, simply because I felt I didn't know enough about it. After recently teaching Orwell's 1984, and having students who were studying WWII at the same time, I felt that I could do little to supplement their knowledge. I was watching it when it inevitably began to discuss the Holocaust. I was prepared for the discussion, but not for the images I was about to witness. They were not still images, but video footage. I watched in horror, frozen, unable to even take my eyes from the events that took place while the droning narration went on. The fifty-minute episode ended abruptly and I felt heavy and sick. And this happened less than 100 years ago. And there were leaders who knew this was going on. And the German people. And the members of the SS. And then I thought about the Jews and their terrible history, and I thought to myself, God, if you really wanted people to doubt your existence and wanted people to turn to science or reason or anything rather than you, that was the way to do it. And why would you curse your own people so? And why would you curse anyone so, regardless? And if God really can see into the future, then how easy could it have been for Hitler to be stillborn? And I thought about the other leaders who did nothing while countries were being invaded because it would benefit their own political plans for the future, and about the German people happily waving the swastika.

The worst image was of this man, still alive, being taken to his death. He just stared into the camera with his huge eyes and skeleton body, directly, into the souls of anyone who was watching. He wasn't screaming or crying, just staring. Maybe he was dead.

And honestly, I wanted to forget. I thought to myself, if human beings did hold on to all of the terrible things they witnessed, and remembered every news story, our hearts would explode within ourselves. The mind has a way of helping us cope, causing blackouts. Even I, with what tiny episodes of what I felt to be traumatic at the time, have experienced vivid memories turning black so that moments cherished simply dissolved somewhere in-between my neural pathways.

I was having a conversation about birds with my sister-in-law once. We noted how birds will land on cows or horses, yet they wouldn't come close to us. We joked about birds talking to each other, when we seriously considered the fact that if a generation of birds was harmed by humans, why wouldn't they signal warnings against us? If birds can learn, we can learn, right? But each generation that is born is like a new slate unless continually warned by the previous generation.

Everything is Meaningless

What do people gain from all their labors
    at which they toil under the sun?
Generations come and generations go,
    but the earth remains forever.
The sun rises and the sun sets,
    and hurries back to where it rises. 
 The wind blows to the south
    and turns to the north;
round and round it goes,
    ever returning on its course. 
 All streams flow into the sea,
    yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from,
    there they return again.
All things are wearisome,
    more than one can say.
The eye never has enough of seeing,
    nor the ear its fill of hearing.
What has been will be again,
    what has been done will be done again;
    there is nothing new under the sun. 
 Is there anything of which one can say,
    “Look! This is something new”?
It was here already, long ago;
    it was here before our time.
No one remembers the former generations,
    and even those yet to come
will not be remembered
    by those who follow them.

Possibly written by Solomon, son of David
3rd century BCE
Ecclesiastes 1:3-11


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