Anti-Semitism

 

 

Anti-Semitism and denial of the Holocaust are on the rise. In Hungary, albeit a civilized and reflective culture, growing anti-Semitism has forced 100,000 member of the Jewish community to consider the option of leaving the country. Anti-Semitism in Europe is deeply-rooted in its culture and history. Despite major efforts toward creating a prejudice-free environment since the end of World War II, a declining economy has now made a mentality of fear, suspicion, division and supremacy to come out of its fringe shell and spread throughout the continent. In countries like Iran, hidden under the mantle of anti-Israeli sentiment, anti-Semitism has also become a part of foreign state policy of the government.

 

While living in Europe I had the opportunity to travel to some places with historical and cultural significance. One of the most meaningful trips that I took was to the Dachau concentration camp in Upper Bavaria in the southern part of Germany [http://www.kz-gedenkstaette-dachau.de/index-e.html]. It was a rainy gray day. Certain aspects of the concentration camp stood out to me. The walls and the watchtowers were threatening. As we continued to walk through the place we saw the cots where the prisoners would sleep. For every ten beds they would put up to sixteen people in one room. Next door to the bedroom was the gas chamber. The gas chamber was this empty dark square-shaped room which was more commonly called amongst the Nazi’s “the shower room.” The camp held communists, political opponents, Jews, religious minorities, Gypsies, and homosexuals. The museum of the camp was poignantly informative. There were pictures and documents reflecting the suffering of the victims and systematic efforts of a regime bent on annihilating everybody whom they would assume as a threat to their racist ideology. This experience, which was enhanced by a visit to the museum of the Holocaust in Jerusalem accompanied by Professor Moshe Sharon of the University of Jerusalem, had a huge impact on me. It opened my eyes to injustices and consequences of political systems that took advantage of peoples’ sense of insecurity and fear, promising a utopia but in reality delivering intense misery and unspeakable suffering.

 

Later, I also had the opportunity to visit the House of Anne Frank in Amsterdam http://www.annefrank.org/. Her life and experiences in the annex gave me a new perspective on life, and humbled me. Both of these experiences have helped me realize the importance of human rights and having a non-judgmental attitude towards everyone. The Holocaust was the hallmark of barbarism that lurks beneath the skin of civilization. Denial of the Holocaust should alarm us as it usually precedes the ominous resurgence of fascism in different forms.

 

My learning journey came to fruition recently when I visited Washington, DC for participation in a human rights event. During this trip I had a few free hours which gave me a chance to visit The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum [http://www.ushmm.org]. It was a memorable experience. I highly recommend a visit to the museum as it will enhance you intellectually, ethically, and spiritually. President Obama's remarkable speech while visiting the museum sums up my feelings and aspiration during my own visit:

“We must tell our children. But more than that, we must teach them. Because remembrance without resolve is a hollow gesture. Awareness without action changes nothing. In this sense, " ‘never again’ " is a challenge to us all -- to pause and to look within. For the Holocaust may have reached its barbaric climax at Treblinka and Auschwitz and Belzec, but it started in the hearts of ordinary men and women. And we have seen it again -- madness that can sweep through peoples, sweep through nations, embed itself. The killings in Cambodia, the killings in Rwanda, the killings in Bosnia, the killings in Darfur -- they shock our conscience, but they are the awful extreme of a spectrum of ignorance and intolerance that we see every day; the bigotry that says another person is less than my equal, less than human. These are the seeds of hate that we cannot let take root in our heart.”

In our educational system a student generally goes through public schools without understanding the true purpose and application of the subject areas not only in daily life, but also in the scheme of history and philosophy and how our culture has been shaped by them. Students should learn how these historical facts fit into a larger and broader scheme. Some of the questions they need to consider are: How have their own lives been shaped by the lives of people hundreds of years ago? How are they a part of the human journey of the past and the future? What mistakes are a constant theme throughout our collective past, and how can we avoid making them ourselves in this age? What are the erroneous assumptions made and are we making similar errors today? What human characteristics have led to historical downfall of civilizations?

I fully believe that in our educational activities the student body should be reminded that no country, government, or political system can ignore or violate the human rights of its citizens. They should understand that respect for human rights is now categorically and undeniably a major premise of ethical discourse and international law. Students should learn that political differences are legitimate but they should not be a reason to applaud violators of human rights.

More than fifty years ago, on the ruins of World War II, the Declaration of Human Rights was ratified by the General Assembly of the United Nations. It is a monumental document that goes over every aspect of human rights and acknowledges that all human beings have been created equal, and have a need for freedom of expression. It emphasized freedom, economic prosperity, and equality for all. Respect for human rights, freedom, and the dignity of every individual human being are the most fundamental ethical concerns of all humanity.


Dr. Dirk Riedel has kindly corrected two points on my blog. I am grateful for his feedback: 

1.                  The bedrooms for the prisoners were in barracks. These barracks do not exist any longer (only two of them were reconstructed in 1965). The crematorium building (including the gas-chamber) was called “Barracke X” and does still exist. But the gas chamber in “Barracke X” is not next door of the bed rooms. The SS built the “Barracke X” on a separate plot of the former concentration camp. So the prisoners could not see, what was going on around this building.

2.                  The first prisoners, who died in Dachau Concentration Camp, were brought to Munich and cremated there. In summer 1940 the SS had a crematorium built in Dachau because the number of dead had risen dramatically. In 1942/43 a second large crematorium (the “Barracke X”) was built with four furnaces and a gas chamber (marked as “Showers”) for mass extermination. The prisoners, who died in Dachau concentration camp mainly because of the exhausting work, the small food rations, the cruelties of the guards and the deceases in the camp, since 1943 have been cremated in the large crematorium. Also executions by hanging and shooting in the back of the head were carried out very often particularly in the last period of the war, whereas the gas chamber in Dachau Concentration Camp was not used for mass extermination. However there is some evidence, that the SS-medicine Siegmund Rascher killed some prisoners in the Dachau gas chamber during experiments with combat gases.

 Dr. Dirk Riedel

Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter

KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau

Alte Römerstr. 75

85221 Dachau

Tel. +49 (0)8131-66997-169

Fax +49 (0)8131-66997-6169

www.kz-gedenkstaette-dachau.de

riedel@kz-gedenkstaette-dachau.de

On the 45th Anniversary of Dr. King Assassination

 

 

On April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated. To mark the 45th anniversary of his assassination we need to initiate serious reflection and constructive consultation on the unfinished business of racial healing in this nation. Despite significant improvements in elimination of racial discrimination, a cultural cynicism is still creating a backsliding in race relations. And the fact remains that a disproportionate number of black people are plagued by persistent poverty, educational disparity and social inequality.

On the 45th anniversary of his assassination, a combined multicultural, multiracial effort is needed to correlate his ideas and vision to the urgent problems and challenges of a rapidly changing society. This is necessary if a way out is to be found.

To push back racism, we certainly need social policy and legislation. But to defeat it permanently we need spiritual transformation and moral reeducation. Spiritual transformation implies a sense of universal love that transcends differences and provides a unifying frame of reference for the diversity of human experiences. When we speak of spiritually, we tend to think of it as something that needs to be ¨added on¨ after everything else is said and done. Dr. King, however, defined spirituality as the foundation for racial understanding and harmony.

Manifold manifestations of this love are reflected in various religious and cultural systems. Dr. King believed his dream of racial harmony was inexorably bound with the common vision of the cultures of both the East and West concerning the final victory of moral imperatives and the universality of peace and justice. His intuition had led him to believe that his dream could go beyond a mere idealist sentiment. He felt the stage was set for its realization. His spirituality, therefore, was not a motionless and static thing. It was, rather, a moving and dynamic process that motivates human nature and brings about social change.

His message of nonviolent social action, framed after Gandhi's method of resistance to colonialism, proved to be a powerful tool for change. The use of peaceful means to bring about social change asserts that violence is not a justification for ethical ends. A sense of indignation need not lead to violence. Violence absorbs the righteous motive of its perpetrator and leaves him wandering in its absurdity.

Dr. King believed in the essential oneness of the human race. Racism, he believed, is a psychosocial condition, reinforced by a distorted perception of social reality. It obscures that oneness and violates the dignity of humankind. The suffering of any group or race is an injury to all. The idea of separation only hardens the alienation that is apparent everywhere, and results in violence and conflict. The resolution of this alienation, Dr. King observed, lies in his vision of a world free from racial, political and ideological prejudices.

The essence of Dr. King’s message was non-polemic. His critique of racism escapes the narrow confines of political parochialism. According to him, racism is a problem from within which involves the whole way of life. It is intertwined with materialism and rampant individualism and must be resolved from inside and outside. Any partisan approach blights the progress of racial unity.

Racism is not an instinctual impulse. It is a learned behavior. This should give us hope and optimism because it holds the idea that an increase in awareness and understanding will lead to the elimination of racial discord and alienation. Contemporary societies are so imbued with effects of racial tension that many have given up hope and accepted it as an integral part of life, therefore ineradicable. Research has shown that there is a strong relationship between human expectation and human behavior. A negative image of our behavior and future has the potential to become a reality and shape our fate. That is the reason a new look at the genesis of racial prejudice is needed. Dr. King’s call for sincerity and rectitude may help us in this arduous learning process.

A.N. Whitehead and the Aims of Education

Alfred North whitehead, (1861- 1947) [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/whitehead/] was a British/American mathematician and philosopher who wrote extensively on education. The following are some pieces from his book The Aims of Education. I believe his thoughts are still very relevant to our educational challenges:

In training a child to activity of thought, above all things we must beware of what I will call "inert ideas" -- that is to say, ideas that are merely received into the mind without being utilised, or tested, or thrown into fresh combinations. 

In the history of education, the most striking phenomenon is that schools of learning, which at one epoch are alive with a ferment of genius, in a succeeding generation exhibit merely pedantry and routine. The reason is, that they are overladen with inert ideas. Education with inert ideas is not only useless: it is, above all things, harmful -- Corruptio optimi, pessima. Except at rare intervals of intellectual ferment, education in the past has been radically infected with inert ideas. That is the reason why uneducated clever women, who have seen much of the world, are in middle life so much the most cultured part of the community. They have been saved from this horrible burden of inert ideas. Every intellectual revolution which has ever stirred humanity into greatness has been a passionate protest against inert ideas. Then, alas, with pathetic ignorance of human psychology, it has proceeded by some educational scheme to bind humanity afresh with inert ideas of its own fashioning.

Let us now ask how in our system of education we are to guard against this mental dryrot. We enunciate two educational commandments, "Do not teach too many subjects," and again, "What you teach, teach thoroughly." 

The result of teaching small parts of a large number of subjects is the passive reception of disconnected ideas, not illumined with any spark of vitality. Let the main ideas which are introduced into a child's education be few and important, and let them be thrown into every combination possible. The child should make them his own, and should understand their application here and now in the circumstances of his actual life. From the very beginning of his education, the child should experience the joy of discovery. The discovery which he has to make, is that general ideas give an understanding of that stream of events which pours through his life, which is his life. 

Education is the acquisition of the art of the utilisation of knowledge. This is an art very difficult to impart. Whenever a textbook is written of real educational worth, you may be quite certain that some reviewer will say that it will be difficult to teach from it. Of course it will be difficult to teach from it. If it were easy, the book ought to be burned; for it cannot be educational. In education, as elsewhere, the broad primrose path leads to a nasty place. This evil path is represented by a book or a set of lectures which will practically enable the student to learn by heart all the questions likely to be asked at the next external examination. And I may say in passing that no educational system is possible unless every question directly asked of a pupil at any examination is either framed or modified by the actual teacher of that pupil in that subject. The external assessor may report on the curriculum or on the performance of the pupils, but never should be allowed to ask the pupil a question which has not been strictly supervised by the actual teacher, or at least inspired by a long conference with him. There are a few exceptions to this rule, but they are exceptions, and could easily be allowed for under the general rule.

I appeal to you, as practical teachers. With good discipline, it is always possible to pump into the minds of a class a certain quantity of inert knowledge. You take a text-book and make them learn it. So far, so good. The child then knows how to solve a quadratic equation. But what is the point of teaching a child to solve a quadratic equation? There is a traditional answer to this question. It runs thus: The mind is an instrument, you first sharpen it, and then use it; the acquisition of the power of solving a quadratic equation is part of the process of sharpening the mind. Now there is just enough truth in this answer to have made it live through the ages. But for all its half-truth, it embodies a radical error which bids fair to stifle the genius of the modern world. I do not know who was first responsible for this analogy of the mind to a dead instrument. For aught I know, it may have been one of the seven wise men of Greece, or a committee of the whole lot of them. Whoever was the originator, there can be no doubt of the authority which it has acquired by the continuous approval bestowed upon it by eminent persons. But whatever its weight of authority, whatever the high approval which it can quote, I have no hesitation in denouncing it as one of the most fatal, erroneous, and dangerous conceptions ever introduced into the theory of education. The mind is never passive; it is a perpetual activity, delicate, receptive, responsive to stimulus. You cannot postpone its life until you have sharpened it. Whatever interest attaches to your subject-matter must be evoked here and now; whatever powers you are strengthening in the pupil, must be exercised here and now; whatever possibilities of mental life your teaching should impart, must be exhibited here and now. That is the golden rule of education, and a very difficult rule to follow.

The difficulty is just this: the apprehension of general ideas, intellectual habits of mind, and pleasurable interest in mental achievement can be evoked by no form of words, however accurately adjusted. All practical teachers know that education is a patient process of the mastery of details, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day. There is no royal road to learning through an airy path of brilliant generalisations. There is a proverb about the difficulty of seeing the wood because of the trees. That difficulty is exactly the point which I am enforcing. The problem of education is to make the pupil see the wood by means of the trees.

The solution which I am urging, is to eradicate the fatal disconnection of subjects which kills the vitality of our modern curriculum. There is only one subject-matter for education, and that is Life in all its manifestations. Instead of this single unity, we offer children -- Algebra, from which nothing follows; Geometry, from which nothing follows; Science, from which nothing follows; History, from which nothing follows; a Couple of Languages, never mastered; and lastly, most dreary of all, Literature, represented by plays of Shakespeare, with philological notes and short analyses of plot and character to be in substance committed to memory. Can such a list be said to represent Life, as it is known in the midst of the living of it? The best that can be said of it is, that it is a rapid table of contents which a deity might run over in his mind while he was thinking of creating a world, and has not yet determined how to put it together.