Monsters and Those Who Fight Them · 12:38am May 5th, 2016
I am not here to talk about ponies. Today is too important for that.
Today, I went to the historic Lincoln Theater. No, I was not there because I had a need for Ben’s Chili Bowl (though I may have to go there someday for that). Likewise, I didn’t go there because my favorite performer is in town (they’re likely playing at the 9:30 Club anyway and I’ve never been a real big fan of nightclubs, sorry.)
No, what I went there to see today was a Holocaust Remembrance Program, featuring two survivors, people I consider heroes. Yes, we throw that word around a lot – probably too much. I’ve been called that once or twice during my military career. But I’m not a hero. Just a Sailor (and I won’t brag about that right now) who saw a lot and saw things people shouldn’t. But still, not a hero, not as far as I think.
No. Hero should be reserved for people like Ruth Gruber, who was there when it all began to document everything that occurred, and made history herself numerous times; who risked her life and reputation to bring the only group of Jewish WWII refugees to the US, and who extensively documented the plight of those, during and post-war, who were fleeing Germany to try to make a better life for themselves.
Hero should be reserved for men like Rubin Sztajer, who at the age of fourteen was sent to live in a Polish ghetto because of his Jewish faith and ancestry, who tried to smuggle in food and anything he could find to feed his family. Who was taken from home two years later, separated from his family and bounced from one concentration camp to another, participated in death marches and seen too many people he knew executed for numerous reasons.
Hero should be reserved for women like Marione Ingram, whose family was split apart because she was born to a Jewish mother and a non-Jew father. Whose mother attempted suicide because the neighbors happily reported them to the Gestapo and were going to be sent to a concentration camp. Who never made it because they were trapped in the Allied bombings of Hamburg, attacks that flattened the city and created fires that sucked the lifebreath out of those people.
These are people who faced the worst we’ve seen in humanity and still continue on:
* Gruber is still a writer and a journalist; her son is Assistant Secretary of Labor David Michaels. She has written books, and documentaries and films have been made about her life.
* Sztajer came to the US alone, and from there built a life with a wife of sixty-three years, three children and seven grandchildren; he fully intended to retire to a well-deserved life of quiet until his daughter asked him how will the future know what happened in the Holocaust unless someone speaks up? Sztajer decided it would be him to speak.
* Ingram came to the US at the age of twelve and decided she would stand no more injustice. It was this that led her to join the US Civil Rights movement and is even today a tireless campaigner against intolerance.
We talk about monsters with a flair of the dramatic and a use of heavy embellishment. We call Trump, Cruz and the Republicans monsters because their campaign is built on racism and intolerance (Ingram actually voiced this at the event), whether this is true or not. We call Clinton, Sanders, Obama and the Democrats monsters because they’re clearly enabling people to victimize others in the name of some ill-defined issue, again whether true or not. These people, hate to tell you, aren’t monsters. Do I like them? Many of them I don’t, and I’ll be the first to agree with you that they’re abhorrent. But not monsters.
Do you know what a monster really is? A monster is the cute little girl who’s been trained all her life to hate you because you’re different and to report you to the Gestapo because “it’s the right thing to do”. Those monsters don’t know better and can be fixed easily. I recall once reading a story about a German skinhead who loved to mess with the Jews, the foreigners and insert preferred target here. That was until a random event caused him to look at his own history, to find out that some of the folks he oppressed were part of his own ancestry and legacy. This led him on a journey of self-discovery and hard truths. Now? He’s rediscovered his Jewish roots, married a Jewish girl and (at the time of the article) was studying to become a rabbi. These are the kinds of monsters that can be topped easily.
But it’s the harder monsters – the ones who turn the valves to the gas on, spraying Zyklon B down on countless innocents – eleven million of them, including six million Jews and 1.5 million children – until all that is left are corpses and Prussian blue. Monsters are the ones who will lynch you because “your kind don’t belong here.” The ones who say monstrous things without really thinking them through? They’re enablers. The ones without knowing better? They’re tragic, and arguably victims themselves, because they wouldn’t if they knew the truth. But the ones who knew and do it anyway?
Monsters. Ungetüm.
Hell is watching a man in his late eighties and should be living the life of Riley, break down in tears on stage to the point that he has to take several minutes to compose himself, because he’s recounting the crimes of countless monsters who committed them, who butchered eleven million innocents and were indirectly responsible for the deaths of as high as eighty million.
Eighty. Million. That’s not a lottery jackpot, nor is it just tragic statistics. Today, just like every day before it, is the number of dead from World War II. And within that number lies the eleven million of the Holocaust, lives snuffed out because a man with a Charlie Chaplain mustache and a failed career in painting, was reputedly not shot by Walt Disney during World War I (and that’s a whole different story we’re not going to talk about right now) and lead a group of malcontents to cause such an event that not even Godwin’s Law can really account for repercussions still being felt today.
What repercussions? The fact that even today, nearly a century removed from the events, the worldwide number of people of Jewish ethnicity – not those of the Jewish faith, merely with the genetics – has yet to reach the levels before all this madness began.
Think about that. In June of 2015 the Israeli Times reported that the numbers of worldwide Jews is just starting to near that earlier number. The number, had things been different, should be multiples of the pre-1930 count. But it’s just reaching that, seventy-odd years later.
So today there was sadness and remembrance.
But today I also saw bravery and hope.
Hell is watching a man in his late eighties break down on stage. Bravery is knowing he’ll do it again tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that and however long it takes so that his tears wash away the pain and the ignorance so that monsters drown in saline oceans of truth and justice. Courage is watching a young girl barely new to a country after having watched her old one torn up by a war caused by monsters, look at another abused class, say “Oh hell no” and wades directly into the battlefront once more, so that no one would ever suffer what she did as a child – and decades on, she still does that.
Hope is seeing them – and the other 500,000 Holocaust survivors still living – face off against the monsters and state plainly that they won’t take their last breaths until the monsters take theirs first. They fight with tears, they fight with stories, they fight until they have nothing more to give and yet they still continue on.
Because someone must. Because as the Holocaust becomes just another dusty annal of history like the Crimean War, the Crusades and countless other pages we skip in the textbook of time, we still have the new reminders to deal with: Bosnia. Rwanda. The Middle East. Maybe even in a bathroom in North Carolina. New monsters will take the place of the old, and new fighters must rise to take their place amongst the battle-scarred veterans who deserved their peace a long time ago.
Because the battle isn’t just about defeating the monsters – it’s also about making sure that new ones are stopped before they rise and we talk about another astronomical number of innocent lives taken.
There are, according to the lore of a recent videogame I’ve played, two logics to the universe: Sword Logic and Shield Logic. Sword Logic says, “I am powerful because I can wield the sword to rend and destroy you, to lord over you because that is how it must be.” Shield Logic says, “I am powerful because I wield the shield to stop you, because stopping you is how it will be.”
We see Sword Logic all too many times nowadays, whether or not it’s exacerbated. Regardless, it’s everpresent. And, if some reports are true, it’s infectious, like breeding like, and hate breeding hate. And even if Sword Logic is hefted with good intentions, in the end, it’s still a monster-maker.
When will we pick up the shield? When do we realize that it is we who must pick up the shield, stare at the monster with the sword and do a Gandalf, letting them know that they shall not pass? That they don’t get to pass Go and collect $200?
Eleven million-plus – not the dead who must be remembered, but the countless ones in the future who may be preyed upon by monsters – hope you will.
Sztajer and Ingram are center and right in the image.
The six million number is wildly inflated. Blogpost is anviliciously "the holocaust was bad" which is kind of a no-shit thing, but Mao and Stalin were on far higher orders but nobody talks about them.
It's also super cool that like 99.9999999% of lamestream folks that talk about the Holocaust, you've focused on the misinformation that was fed to the world, and only focused on the Jewish impact.
3920393
Inflated? Based on what? The numbers that constantly change, both because nobody really has exact numbers or because they're politicized? Furthermore, I did mention other genocides - I WAS PART OF THE NATO FORCE FOR BOSNIA, so I'm very much aware that there were other genocides.
And this was a general statement on my opinions of what they faced and what we need to do so that we never see anything like this again. If you think that's misinformation, it isn't And God forbid I should focus on the Jewish holocaust on Holocaust Rememberance Day.
The term hero can really be wide in how it is used. The people you mentioned would count but one that always comes to my mind is Joseph L Galloway. For those that don't know he was the civilian journalist that was there during the Ia Drang Valley incident of the Vietnam War. He didn't need to be there, in fact he could have just waited until the end like so many other reporters to get the story of what happened second hand but he went in and saw it all personally. He saw much of what the troops went through and his doing so allowed him to tell the true story of the men who fought that day and the many that lost their lives. His actions made it where the sacrifice of those soldiers was remembered even now though those same soldiers were ridiculed by the country because of the unpopular war.
3920544
Well, when you mention it in terms of military journalism (which is what I presume you're referring to here), I think of Eddie Pyle, personally.
For the past five years, I've lived an hour's drive from Auschwitz. It never stopped being creepy each time I realized it. So choosing the Shield Logic over the Sword Logic was not only inevitable, it made me ashamed of all the times I've blindly chosen to follow Sword Logic in the past.
3920564 I don't remember his name, but looking him up I'd have to agree. His efforts were during a more 'popular' war though as the country supported the soldiers while Galloway was during an 'unpopular' war. Frankly almost all of the civilians that went into combat situations like them could earn the title. Too often people label the ones that take obvious action as the heros yet forget the ones supporting them or take a more subtle role.
3920684
This. Easily this.
3920393
actually, i can confirm that you are wrong, my
goodsir. My great grandmother actually lived through the Holocaust and passed down her personal experiences with that shit. If you don't know what you are talking about, just don't say anything at all.3920904
just realizing how fucked up my family is. My great grandparents experienced the Holocaust, my grandfather was stationed on the 38th parallel, my father developed lymphoma as a result of the world trade center collapsing. they all survived. Now im worried what the fuck is going to happen to me with that sort of trend.
3920917
Move to Point Nemo. You should be safe there.
Unless Cthulhu exists....
3920923
naah they got'em already
and he's perfectly comfy as is.
Well spoken as always. There's definitely something to be said for the banality of evil. Gonna pull a Nickelback and tell you to look at this photograph:
whale.to/b/Solahuette.jpg
This was something I was shown in one of my electives back in college (can't quite remember which one, as they all kinda blend together). Without any context, this just looks like a group of friends and coworkers having a fun afternoon together. With context, it becomes something far more disturbing: the caption that goes with it is "Auschwitz personnel on vacation in Solahuette." Ever since I first saw this photo, something about it just stuck with me.
I think it's the fact that these aren't the monsters you would have initially imagined played a part in such a terrible event. They look like just ordinary people, and that's probably the most horrifying part: this could just as easily be a photo of me and my friends and coworkers. Because like you said, true monsters are just people either unaware of the wrong they're doing, or aware but unwilling to stop, either because they believe the ends justify the means, or simply see it as a job to be done - valuing professional obligations over moral ones.
Makes you think.
3920531 I know its not much but every time I see a veteran (hell a cop or fireman or paramedic really) I thank them for there service I had one man corrected me saying he served but did not see any combat I looked him dead in the eye and said did you or did you not give of your self for your family friends and country? he said yes I replied I'd like to thank you for your service.
Since this is relevant to the post I'll ask: have you ever read "All but My Life" by Gerda Weissmann Klein?
This was a great post. Thanks a lot for taking the time to write this out.
3921386 I have to agree that image and caption speeks volumes.
3922930
No, but thanks to you I've now added it to my Kindle must-buys. After this event I realize I'm going to have to read quite a few memoirs.
3923711 Yeah I defiantly recommend it. As while it may have been a book I had to read for school, I enjoyed every second.
3921635 Yeah, this is me, too.
I have several members of my family that served (three cousins on my late mom's side of the family served aboard the USS Arizona and went down with her during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941), and I am proud of that fact.
As to saying "thank you" to our honored veterans, in point of fact, as my brother-in-law and I were leaving our local Walmart Supercenter after getting groceries, I had the honor and the privilege of saying "thank you" to, and shaking the hand of an elderly gentleman who was wearing a baseball cap that identified him not only as a veteran of WWII, but a Naval veteran and a former crewman of the USS Midway (CV-41, 1945-1992, Struck 17 March 1997. Nickname(s): Midway Magic).
I had one heck of a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes when I saw that, I can tell you that.