Hope, History, and the Holocaust
(Page 2 of 2)
March / April 2006
Sam Smith DESIGNER/builder
Here is the part of the Holocaust that is most frequently
denied. Not that millions were slaughtered but that those who did
the deed might under certain conditions be either you or me. And we
would do it, as Adolf Eichmann had suggested, simply by finding the
words that allow us to deny responsibility, what he called 'office
talk.'
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It is this unrecognized, undiscussed denial, especially at
moments of solemn observance, that most frightens me. And our
recovery does not lie in still more talk, ceremonies, and
professions of horror. It lies instead in the study, honor, and
practice of the good and the decent.
If you watch good people closely, you see that their good comes
as naturally as evil came to Eichmann. It does not have to be
propped up with memories of great wrongs; it is just the everyday
unconscious behavior of those graced with honor: the banality of
decency.
Perhaps we need a museum of the good, a curriculum founded in
the skills and rhythms of decency. We need peace experts instead of
military experts talking about Iraq on FOX TV. We need mediators
instead of just lawyers on Court TV. We need movies, and heroes,
and moving stories that win Academy Awards, and models for our
children that lead them to the contentment of cooperation and
fairness rather than to brutal examples drawn from the play-by-play
of violence and wrong that appears with every other click of the
zapper.
The frightening thing about Auschwitz is not that some would
deny it but how real it still seems. The frightening thing about
Auschwitz is that our leaders go to honor it while still denying
Guant?namo and Abu Ghraib and Palestine. We will know that we have
finally learned the Holocaust's lessons when we no longer hear new
echoes of it.
Sam Smith is the editor of Progressive Review, a
Washington, D.C.-based online journal
(www.prorev.com) in which this
essay originally appeared. Reprinted from the environmentally
driven, socially conscious DESIGNER/builder (Sept./Oct.
2005). Subscriptions: $28/yr. (6 issues) from 2405 Maclovia Lane,
Santa Fe, NM 87505;
www.designerbuildermagazine.com
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