Comprehending the Holocaust by ct 12:05am Wed Nov 19 '03 To AMR and Kenny Freeman, who in another thread voiced their desire to comprehend the WHY of the Holocaust. print article To AMR and KF: You both voiced your desire to understand the WHY of the Holocaust, how people could commit such a horrific crime. And you seem not to have achieved that comprehension yet, though you, AMR, according to your own statement, already have read 100 books on the topic. But probably you weren't looking at the right place? Probably some anwers just can't be found in books alone? Understanding the Holocaust is not impossible, not even very diffcult, I'd say. Yet you don't get it for free, it will "cost" you something: you will have to say farewell to the "it's us, the good guys vs. them, the evil ones" paradigma. Are you ready to do that? As this paradigma is part of all the three big monotheistic religions (and, to my understanding, their basic flaw), is part of politics ("either you are with us or you are against us") and is present in virtually every aspect of daily life, many people adhere to it as the only possible way of regarding the universe. Yet the universe doesn't know such a distinction. The human mind doesn't know such a distinction. It simply isn't built that way. Every human mind is a complete universe in itself, containing everything from the most noble and light attitudes to the must cruel and dark ones. The difference between people behaving noble and those commiting cruelties only lies in which part of their personality they give control. But everybody contains everything; as far as that is concerned, we are all equal and complete. Having realized this, it should be clear that there is a little Ghandi within everyone, a little Martin Luther King, a little Mother Theresa, etc. But there is a little Adolf Hitler in everybody's mind, too, a little Goebbels, a little Eichmann, and so on. Are you ready to admit that? If yes, take an honest look into the abysses of your own hearts. Be assured, you will find everything necessary to understand the Holocaust there. If no, well, reading a million books and living a thousand lives may not be enough... PS: There is an excellent book that might assist you in your quest. It's called "For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence" by Alice Miller, a Swiss therapist. In this book the author takes a therapeutical look on the childhoods of a young drug addict, a child murderer, and, yes, Adolf Hitler. After having read it you will know, among other things, why his name initially was Schicklgruber, why there is such an oversized military training area in the north of Austria, and, most of all, why Hitler did his very best to hide this part of his life from public, once he was in power. But be warned: Hitler is portrayed as a human being there; so if you want to preserve your image of a soulless monster, this book is not for you. add your comments

You got it right, ct... by Dave 12:35am Wed Nov 19 '03 print comment the answer is exactly how you've described it. Unless we each admit that we are multi-faceted and that some of those facets are dark, then the primitive 'us and them' belief system will continue to be used to justify all kinds of horror. I have long been part of an international organisation that teaches people how to find some sort of peace by practicing Alternatives to Violence and one of the founding precepts of the group is that each of us has the potential to do great good AND great harm. And, we have to own our own violent capabilities; not blaming someone else for our actions - "You made me do it", which is an infantile cop-out, but instead, "I chose to do it" or chose not to do it as the case may be. We each have the ability to make conscious choices in how we behave towards others. That is the key; all acts of violence are conscious choices - there is no such thing as 'mindless violence'. A thought always precedes an action or else the human body could not make a move (autonomic movements aside, of course). One cannot actually, physically throw an oject, or a punch, or say a word, or pull a trigger, unless there is a preceding conscious thought - it's physically impossible. ct, you really do know this stuff, don't you. I'm so pleased to read such an honest appraisal; brilliant and concise. Regards, Dave. add your comments

Also, by Dave 12:47am Wed Nov 19 '03 print comment We choose how we feel. Hatred is a choice, just as love or any other emotion is. No one can be FORCED to hate, it is always a conscious choice. Admitting this is a huge leap toward being a responsible adult. Choosing to view people not as enemies but as equals who are having just as hard a time finding their way in the world as we are is an even greater leap to spiritual and emotional adulthood. Assisting others in finding an easier life may be the greatest leap of all, because it also assists us in attaining peace within, and inner peace is the greatest gift we can give ourselves and each other. Thanks again, ct, for bringing this into the open, Dave. add your comments

The key by ct 3:42am Wed Nov 19 '03 print comment "We each have the ability to make conscious choices in how we behave towards others. That is the key; all acts of violence are conscious choices - there is no such thing as 'mindless violence'." Couldn't agree more, Dave. That IS the key. Many years ago I attended a seminar; one of the basic things there was a big sign with the motto "If you want to, you also can" fixed on the wall. Everytime someone said a sentence starting with "I can't do this or that because..." the trainer replied with the nicest smile on his face "Sure you can, but probably you don't want to. So please say 'I don't want to...', for that's reality. And if you like, we may take a look then at what you gain by not wanting to..." And the very same is true for statements of the kind "I had no choice but to do this or that because...". I learned a big lesson there. As you so well put it: we always have a choice, and we are making decisions. "We choose how we feel. Hatred is a choice, just as love or any other emotion is. No one can be FORCED to hate, it is always a conscious choice. Admitting this is a huge leap toward being a responsible adult." Again, I couldn't agree more. Yet I have to admit that taking responsibility for your own feelings is one of the most difficult things to do. As you say, no one can be forced to hate, and no one can be forced to love either. Yet feelings as such are not the problem; even if you hate somebody like hell, you still may decide (sic!) to treat him respectfully. The nasty stuff starts as soon as someone decides to permit his hate to take over... As the saying goes: "There is only one person on earth who really can make you happy, and there also is just one person on earth who really can make you unhappy: this person is yourself." "...and inner peace is the greatest gift we can give ourselves and each other." There always is a tight link between peace inside and outside. Someone who is at war with himself will never be able to bring peace to others. This is why people like Sharon, for example, are so strong when it comes to wage war. And so incredibly weak when they are supposed to make peace. PS: I utterly appreciate your postings too, Dave. As I've already said in another place: those with an open heart always recognize each other, don't they? add your comments

You are way out of track guys... by AMR 4:33am Wed Nov 19 '03 print comment Well CT you have said a lot without saying actually anything. You are attributing opinions to me that has never expressed by me. I am daring you to brows through the hundreds of responses and article published by me in Indymedia and available for anybody by a few clicks of the mouse and find even ONE (ONE) sentence that is claiming “Us versus them” by me as you have claimed. It never said by me and never crossed my mind; to me it seems that it crossed YOUR mind, but definitely not mine. The questionable and to some extent confusing explanation to the Holocaust expressed and brought by me about two months ago in an article that bring a testimony of a senior psychologist named Moley Harrower published in the Psychology-Today on 1976. Mrs. Harrower was a senior psychologist that assigned on the team of alike during 1945-1946 preparation towards Nuremburg Nazi executives’ trials. The psychologist team went through many tests (Rorchach and others) done with the Nazi executives trying to asses the notion that the Nazi leadership were in fact a bench of psychotic people and that could explain their unimaginable crimes against humanity. The psychological team never published its findings… each one of the team’s members found all sort of excuses not to publish an official document of those event ( Mrs, Harrower included, by her own account) and that how it stayed for the next twenty years (it never brought publicly during the trials either). It her 1976 article Mrs. Harrower revealed at last the reason for. …And here are the shocking findings…. All the psychological tests found a NORMAL bunch of people, nothing that is outside of usual human deviation and conduct. The team could not find any ‘out of the ordinary’ person, nobody that could be said about that he is a monster or a blood thirsty animal, NADA, NOTHING….Just a bunch of Normal, ordinary people. Those finding were so shocking that the trial team and the psychological team has decided to archive the finding and not publishing them ever. Eventually Mrs. Harrower broke the silence 20 years later. She is concluding in her article:… …”It may be comforting to believe that the horrors of WWII were the work of a dozen or so insane men, but it is a dangerous belief, one that may give us a false sense of security….IT CAN HAPPEN HERE” (She meant USA…AMR’s addition). The article conclusion can be found in the book “Can it happen again? – A chronicle of the Holocaust”, published in 2001 and is a gathering of many accounts of the most world’s prominents like : Robert Ardrey, Lucy Dawidowicz, Anne Frank, Aldus Huxley, Thomas Keneally, Primo Levi, George Orwell, Wiliam L. Shirer, B.F. Skiller, Albert Speer, Art Spiegelman, Elie Wiesel, Yevgeny Yevtushenko and many others. The book’s conclusion is YES, it can happen again. And as I have observed long time ago…. if it can happen again it most likely will happen again it is only a matter of timing and the right circumstances that should occur. We are all, Yes CT and Dave, you included as all of us, are the product of our nature heritage, human are the impossible combination of angles and bloody beast all in the same one body…. It is not for nothing that I am posting the following phrase time and again…”When you are pointing your finger at the other, watch what your thumb is aiming at…at yourself. It can happen again and we should not rest assured that in our time, the 21st century it is out of the possible. Sooner or later it will happen again in one of the world’s continents, we only have to ask ourselves WHEN and WHER! When I am talking about Anti-Semitism I am doing that from the fear it will happen again… For me it is a wider context issue, racism, generalization and prejudice that is leading to Genocide acts all across the glob time and again, like the Jewish Holocaust never happen, like people never learned the terrible lesson! We the human species are our worst enemies. If something could destroy us it will be most likely by our wrong “Human” act. add your comments

for dave.... by RC 6:01am Wed Nov 19 '03 print comment Emotions are not rational..Emotions are on an entirely different level than that..Therefore, we cannot chose to hate or not hate..Hatred, in fact, is in the realm of passion..It means something matters so intensely to you, that you feel it has negated your sense of 'being'..Of your deepest worth, or your deepest values...If someone was abusing an innocent animal, for example, i would feel hatred and revulsion..for the act itself, maybe for the person..But hatred lets us know what are values are, many times..It means i can't accept this for myself..Although, i accept that it exists, because it is a physical reality.. I hate what the u.s. government is doing..it doesn't mean i am going to chose to act out destructively, though..It is how we respond to our feelings that is the key..No emotion is 'wrong', it is what we do with it that matters..And if we let them fester, and disown the 'dark' or 'shadow', as jung would say, then we do have problems..Most people are afraid to own the shadow, so they project it onto the 'other'...And we get a holocaust.. My experience is to own so called negative feelings and work them through, energically and directly, alone..Release the emotions, and it clears the consciousness..Otherwise, i agree with you..Peace... add your comments

Glad to see you back, ct... by RC 6:28am Wed Nov 19 '03 print comment I just posted something earlier today, "ct, where are you"? You must have picked up my signal...Rita add your comments

To AMR by ct 6:38am Wed Nov 19 '03 print comment "You are attributing opinions to me that has never expressed by me. ... It never said by me and never crossed my mind; to me it seems that it crossed YOUR mind, but definitely not mine." You are right, I don't remember a single line where you had said that you held that oppinion. It rather was my personal impression, so I should have made clear that it was just my impression and nothing else. Please take my apologies for not doing that. "All the psychological tests found a NORMAL bunch of people, nothing that is outside of usual human deviation and conduct." I've already heard about that, too. I think, Alice Miller mentiones it in her book. And if I'm not mistaken, she also speaks of a distinct, even with respect to that time extraordinary brutal and cruel SS unit, whose members drew the special attention of the psychological team conducting the tests. The outcome of those tests were, as you said, that the members of this unit were not at all typical psychopaths or criminals, but rather "normal" people, who had been fairly well-functioning in civil live, i.e. before they were put into SS uniforms. So the final results of those tests are the starting point for Alice Miller's own investigations. And her conclusions are what she sums up in the title of the original German version of her book: "Am Anfang war Erziehung" (At the beginning there was education). I really think it might be interesting and helpful to you to read that book. The English version is available in the net, and probably there is a Hebrew version, too. "The book’s conclusion is YES, it can happen again." Sure it can. Given the appropriate circumstances... Yet, for the time being, chances that it actually WILL happen to Jews again are very low. But it might happen to Palestinians pretty soon, if Israel proceeds on its current path... add your comments

Glad you missed me, RC by ct 7:53am Wed Nov 19 '03 print comment I indeed picked up your signal. Just took off some days for recreation. No intentions for a permanent leave, I swear. Yet it's always nice when someone misses you... :) "Emotions are not rational..Emotions are on an entirely different level than that..Therefore, we cannot chose to hate or not hate.." I agree. Yet emotions usually do not "just come out of nowhere", they are the consequences of events in and experiences with the real world. Or, to be exact, of the very way WE LOOK at these events and experiences. And there we actually do have the choice of how we will regard them, thereby deciding which feeling we will induce within ourselves then. Let's take the not so far-fetched example of someone trying to insult me here. Then it is MY DECISION either to take that personally ("how does this idiot dare to say such a thing about me") or to take a view like "okay, this is his opinion, I'm not responsible for it". In the first case I will at least get angry, if not hateful towards him, in the second I will be able to maintain a neutral or indifferent attitude. So there is a choice at the beginning; once we have made our decision about how we will regard something, the resulting feelings are beyond our control. "No emotion is 'wrong'..." Indeed. It's rather that some are welcome and others are not. "...it is what we do with it that matters.." Exactly. Just accepting the not so welcome ones already may help a lot. BTW, I once read a definition according to which hatred is the force that arises when love is obstructed in its development, the goal of hatred being to remove the obstacles. So hatred and love would just be the two sides of the same coin. Well... PS: I've added some comments on your posts in the "Following the Jewish values" thread too. Here's the link: http://indymedia.org.il/imc/webcast/display.html3?article_id=72479 add your comments

For RC by Dave 9:45am Wed Nov 19 '03 print comment Thanks for the clarification. Yes, I agree that there are no ‘right or wrong’ emotions; it’s what we do with our emotions that is the real point, for sure. Acting vengefully, as David Bowie sang, is “like putting out the fire with gasoline”. I do, however, think that it is indeed quite possible to choose to hate. Such chosen hatred doesn’t come from an immediate experience, but from indoctrination and, often enough, this form of hatred is steeped in fear. As we know, fear stems from either a lack of understanding (as is so graphically demonstrated by fanatics of all persuasions) or a projection of possible future pain (as is demonstrated by the purported need for an apartheid wall, for instance). I’ve read in many different ways, in various postings that we need to learn from our collective history. When we find events in our history that caused pain, anguish and so on, we need to act in ways that ensure our future will be different from the past. That’s where conscious choices become imperative. The future is pregnant with alternatives. It is up to all of us, both individually and collectively, to take responsibility for what we do now so that the future does not endlessly repeat the past. This, of course, means owning our feelings and learning how to release all the ‘negative’ ones as soon as possible. It also means being willing to wrestle with our personal and collective fears (that’s the difficult part) and grow from what we learn. Alternatives to violence do exist, change is possible, the horrors of the past and the present to not have to be endlessly repeated. Peace, Dave. add your comments

Good points, dave and ct by RC 4:09pm Wed Nov 19 '03 print comment The trick is to get to the inner 'place' where we are not in a knee jerk reaction mode..And most people live there. That is a process of evolution. To have the inner freedom to choose how to feel..It does imply really being honest with oneself, and processing the so called, 'dark' feelings, including pain. Anger is always a response to pain. If someone punches you, first it hurts, then you get angry. I think pain is the most primary feeling. Oh, that was a good point, about hate being the force that arises when love is obstructed. I could really get into that concept. That is probably the essence of all trauma. I have often thought that emotional pain is always about separation...And the deeper the hurt, the deeper the hate..o.k., i will stop now...rita oh, i added a new post to the Jewish Values article.. add your comments

hi by peace/ 12:26am Thu Nov 20 '03 print comment I am glad to read the wonderful posts between Dave RC and CT. It is helpful to say the least. As for AMR's lack of comprehension of the enigma that is the "holocaust", it cannot be his fault since NOTHING that is published on the subject is worth reading except of course for the controversial book the holocaust industry which helps put the matter in perspective. add your comments

Is it *always* 'anti-Semitism'? by Dave 11:41pm Thu Nov 20 '03 print comment Anger comes from pain; therefore anger is a secondary emotion; a reaction to pain. Fear comes either from an expectation of further pain – a projection of a possibility – or, as is the case with mass hatred, from indoctrination that ‘the other’ is less than an equal. Mass hatred has many names. One, often used on this site, is ‘anti-Semitism’. But is the perceived Anti-Semitism wholly because of ‘Jewishness’ per se, or is it actually, at least in part, stemming from people’s distaste for Sharon and Co’s policies and how they translate into actions? Sure, for fundamentalists, raw anti-Semitism (which is bigotry, which is another word for ignorance) is not doubt a driver, but from many postings throughout this and other sites I visit, the driver is that of abhorrence toward Sharon and Co’s policies/actions. What this means is that informed people do not hate Israelis or Jews throughout the world per se; they hate these particular behaviours. I’ve also noticed that informed people also deplore these destructive behaviours from Palestinians, Americans, British and any other peoples who choose punitive measures as ‘management tools’. This is where some misunderstandings are occurring and I am reminded of the question Americans asked after the Twin Towers fell: why do they hate us? Jews are not as universally hated as some commentators would have us believe; it is the set of behaviours used to perpetuate violent reprisals that are universally detested. Sadly, over time such behaviours become the symbol of a people. Who knows how long it will be before Germany will stop being associated with Nazism and German people linked to Nazis. In too many people’s minds, Nazism is perceived as genetic – a foolish perspective to be sure, but nonetheless one that shallow thinkers claim as real. Such a legacy could well become Israel’s and Jewish people’s (regardless of where they live) if the Israeli government’s policies/behaviours do not change. It is an indictment on the way humans perceive reality that an entire people can be defined by the actions of a few, but this will continue until the actions of Israel’s leaders mature. Such behaviour changes will need to be demonstrated by those who lead Israel and those leaders need to transcend their extant ‘pre-conventional morality’ and rise to the level that Lawrence Kohlberg calls ‘post-conventional morality’. For a brief explanation of Kohlberg’s position see; www.nd.edu/~rbarger/kohlberg.html Perhaps, one of the first signs to show us that Israel’s leaders have matured will be when they extend a metaphorical olive branch to their ‘enemies’ instead of cutting down their real olive trees. And, it is entirely possible that when the olive branch is offered, it will be received with gratitude. I have read elsewhere, a post by AMR that eloquently explains ‘the Arab Mind’ and I do not fault AMR’s explanation. All I will say is that it’s entirely possible that a growing number of ‘Arab Minds’ are changing and a growing number of ‘Arab Hearts’ are softening. But, we will only find this out when an olive branch is extended. Surely, with the collective wisdom of thousands of years, Israel can become Palestine’s Rabbi and, by demonstration, show the path to peace. add your comments

Great Commentary Dave!!! by RC 1:15am Fri Nov 21 '03 print comment Amen... add your comments