Posted on 01/29/2006 9:29:29 AM PST by Salem
It's a wonder I haven't abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.Every school child learns that "people are truly good at heart," and just yesterday I heard an ultraliberal acquaintance opine the same thing, in virtually those words. I did not get a warm, cuddly feeling. Instead, I actually started thinking about those words.
It's utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death. I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more.
Margot and Anne Frank were transported from Auschwitz at the end of October and brought to Bergen-Belsen,concentrationton camp neHanoverver (Germany). The typhus epidemic that broke out in the winter of 1944-1945, as a result of the horrendohygienicnic conditions, killed thousands of prisoners, including Margot and, a few days later, Anne. She must have died in late February or early March. The bodies of both girls were probably dumped in Bergen-Belsen's mass graves. (From the Afterward to The Diary of a Young Girl : The Definitive Edition, published by Anchor Books Doubleday in 1996)Anne Frank did not die peacefully or gracefully. Instead, her last days on earth were a nightmare of cold, hunger, loneliness and fear:
Anne was briefly reunited with two friends, Hanneli Goslar (named "Lies" in the diary) and Nanette Blitz, who both survived the war. They said that Anne, naked but for a piece of blanket, explained she was infested with lice and had thrown her clothes away. They described her as bald, emaciated and shivering but although ill herself, she told them that she was more concerned about Margot, whose illness seemed to be more severe. Goslar and Blitz did not see Margot who remained in her bunk, too weak to walk. Anne said they were alone as both of their parents were dead.Why am I emphasizing all this? Because I want to make it clear that Anne Frank was wrong. People are not innately good. Her words were whistling in the dark, written to give herself faith and courage under terrible circumstances. They cannot and should not be used as a yardstick for measuring humans' natural state.
We Jews have reasons to worry because the West ignores this Jew-hatred. One reason is that Third World evil is rarely taken seriously among Western elites. A second reason is the psychological and political need of Westerners to believe that Islamic societies are, with the exception of "a few extremists," tolerant societies. And the third reason is that Arab/Muslim anti-Semitism is dismissed as a temporary phenomenon that will disappear when Israelis and Palestinians make peace. But this belief inverts reality. The lack of peace between the Jewish state and its neighbors is not the cause of Arab anti-Semitism, it is the result of that anti-Semitism. Since 1948, there has been one reason for the Arab-Israeli conflict - the Arab/Muslim world rejects the concept of a Jewish (or any non-Muslim) state in its midst.For this update, a tip of the hat to the wonderful American Future.
My sympathies to you, FRiend, as you recall the extermination of your great-grandparents.
You are so right!
I've always felt that we should always be prepared to defend what is right, because true peace is most often found on the other side of a catastrophic war that totally and completely defeats whatever evil is trying to take over the world in each generation.
After it is beaten, evil regroups and tries again. It repeats every generation.
Thats what my grandparents taught me.
Archy:
God bless you and yours man!
thanks for the ping Salem.
This is yet another reminder that we must all remain committed to preventing genocide in the future.
Never again!!!
Thank you, but your sympathy is misdirected. The poster comes from the talent of my netpal Oleg Volk, and it was his family who suffered the loss.
mark
Off to check out the link to Oleg Volk.
Yes, we must remain forever vigilant to the monstrous forms of evil that appear (with distressing regularity and frequency) in this fallen world.
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