Katie Klok - Junior
January 5, 2008
So far, I have thoroughly enjoyed the reading for this class, it has prompted a lot of thinking. I have started to think about what causes genocide, what the root of it is. And I came to the conclusion that Genocide originates from fear and the inability to see others as humans. Once we're afraid of people, we forget that they are humans. We forget that they too are parents, children, and siblings. We forget that they, like us, love, hate, dream, cry, fear. Our fear blinds us from spotting this humanity.
Everyone always looks at the Holocaust as something so evil that it would be impossible to ever recreate. We distance ourselves from genocide -- it is something only evil men and barbarians are capable of. But I wonder how true that belief really is.
I think that the birth of Genocide takes place when normal citizens stop identifying with one another, when we begin to fear and hate each other. I think today of the US's "War on Terror" and how it has begun to demonize people of the Muslim faith. And though we are nowhere near committing genocide against them, we have planted seeds that lead to it. The government, the media, airports, and movies all add to our fear of the Muslim people. Are we forgetting to look at them as people?
January 7, 2008
I think the biggest thing that this class has done for me is make me aware of how easy it is to disassociate ourselves with the "enemy." Though it is deeply important to hear the stories of the victims, I think we also need to hear the stories of the perpetrators. For when we listen to the victims, we unite with them, and thus share their fear of "the enemy." But I think we need to be much more afraid of being the enemy than being terrorized by the enemy. We need to unite ourselves with the humanity of the enemy in order to ensure that we don't slip into becoming one.
Jan 10 2008
I have just finished reading Primo Levi's "The Drowned and the Saved" and we have also spent today's class discussing perpetrators. I originally went in with the idea that we need to understand the "enemy" for we can so often turn into one. But then I started wondering if I want to have too much compassion on these people. Understanding is great, but what sort of punishment and justice do they deserve? How to I respect these people, yet how much anger is appropriate for them? I find it hard to make any decisions because I am so far removed from this situation. Torture, rape, starvation, mass killings are all foreign subjects to me. I can't comprehend it. I can't comprehend this kind of evil and therefore I feel incapable of judging or forgiving someone who commits a crime like genocide.
I think most of all I have begun to realize the depths to which the topic of the Holocaust reaches. I wonder if I will ever be able to grasp this subject. People are right when they say that this is so far removed from humanity. To me, it seems so unimaginable, that I am silenced.
January 11, 2008
I find it interesting at how attracted I am to these "Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust." As much as it is important to learn about the horrors of the Holocaust, what I most desperately cling to are these stories of hope. For some reason, they seem to have more power over me than all the stories of death. In class we have been talking about perpetrators and the ways in which they (normal citizens) slid into the role of murderers. Throughout these discussions I felt overwhelmed by the darkness of the human soul. I was (and still am) utterly perplexed by the depths of evil that we can descend to. Yet, on the other hand, I read these Hasidic tales and feel a sense of awe at the life people can possess even in the Valley of the Shadow of death. One story, "The First Hanukkah Light in Bergen Belsen" illustrated this for me. The Rabbi is leading a ceremony for Hanukkah and even in the depths of hell (with a pile of mutilated bodies behind him) he thanks God for keeping them alive. He says:
"But just as I was turning my head, I noticed that behind me a throng was standing, a large crowd of living Jews, their faces expressing faith, devotion, and concentration as they were listening to the rite of the kindling of the Hanukkah lights. I said to myself, if God, blessed be He, has such a nation that at times like these, when during the lighting of the Hanukkah lights they see in front of them the heaps of bodies of their beloved fathers, brothers, and sons, and death is looking from every corner, if despite all that, they stand in throngs and with devotion listening to the Hanukkah blessing [...]; if indeed, i was blessed to see such a people with so much faith and fervor, then I am under a special obligation to recite the third blessing" (15).
It is an utter mystery how some people rise to excellence and others fall to inhumane depths in response to suffering. I am troubled, for I want to know that I would be one of the ones would rise.
I think that I need stories like these Hasidic Tales because without them I think I would lose faith in myself. They somehow give back humanity its dignity; these stories pull the human race up from the depths of hell and give us back some light, truth, and hope.
