Silence Feeds Hatred - A Coast Guard Cadet paper from 2000

[mikelewis]

I ran across this paper written by a Coast Guard Cadet backin 2000. I just thought I'd share it here becasue it seems rather appropriate for today...

Silence Feeds Hatred
Lessons from the Holocaust Still Apply Today

by Cadet 2/C Jennifer M. Runion, Coast Guard Academy
“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. … Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” – John Donne

John Donne wrote those words long before the Holocaust, and yet they are as true today as they were then. What obligations do we as Americans, as human beings, have toward each other? One of the most tragic mysteries of the Holocaust is how the premeditated, systematic murder of millions of people could occur at the hands of a seemingly advanced society. There is no answer to this, only more questions. It is easy to blame the orchestrators; it is harder to blame those who said nothing, though they felt it was wrong. But if we are to learn from the Holocaust, we must place some of the blame on their shoulders as well. Although those willing to use their hatred to achieve their goals are few, if no one stands against them, they appear the majority. If there is one thing we must learn from the Holocaust, it is that silence is the worst enemy of justice. One voice, speaking in anger, is given power by the indifference of those around him.

If we are to learn from the mistakes of the past, we cannot dismiss the Holocaust as history; we cannot look at the Nazis and see only evil, though it was present. If we are to personalize the Holocaust, we must identify with the perpetrators, to some extent, as well as with the victims. The Holocaust did not begin at Auschwitz or in the ghettos. It began long before, in the hearts of those who sat in silence and allowed hatred that was bred in ignorance to grow, to reach their children, to reach themselves. The Holocaust began with the first person that did not speak up, for their silence condoned the actions of a few, making them appear accepted.

If no voices are risen for good, they cannot drown out the few who will scream in anger. We must be responsible for ourselves, and we must be responsible for letting others know our minds, for we are all, as John Donne said, involved in mankind. The bell John Donne spoke of is not just for the victims of the Holocaust, or the survivors, it is for us as well, for we must live with the realization that human beings allowed other human beings to commit crimes beyond the imagination. If we separate ourselves from what happened, to the victims, to the bystanders, and in the hearts of the perpetrators, we create a surreal aura around it – we make it fiction, a tragic story from a different time.

We cannot commit the Holocaust to the history books; we must take its lessons to heart and compare its beginnings with our own actions. How far will we allow others to go before we speak up? How far will we allow ourselves to go? We cannot change the past, so what we are left with, in the end, is a knowledge of the wrongs human beings can inflict upon each other, and a hope that we can learn from what we have done.
http://www.uscg.mil/hq/g-w/g-wt/g-wtl/news/fall00/silence.htm