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“If
you can feel that staying human is worth while,
even when it can't have any practical result whatsoever, you've beaten
them.”
George Orwell
This video below is not new, but someone asked me for a summary of Chris
Hedges' narrative of modern US history, and what he sees as the dwindling
death of the American dream.
This video is a fairly decent example. I obviously do not agree with
everything Hedges says. But I find his perspective much more plausible than
other 'alternative histories' and viewpoints that come from left of center,
and certainly moreso than those from the right.
I look at the political party to which I had belonged for most of my life,
and I am disbelieving and ashamed. But I can find no easy home in the other.
There are few places for the independent thinker to rest their head in
rational moderation with decency. Hysteria, polarization, and division seem
to be the order of the day.
I do not think that things will change until they get bad enough, and then we
will finally see the change that will be required to forge a sustainable
economic recovery.
Enjoy.
"We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who
walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of
bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that
everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human
freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to
choose one's own way.”
Viktor E. Frankl
"Upon her recent passing at the age of 76, I took the opportunity to
reread Bubby's memoirs. In four different instances, my grandmother had
stood—amid the smoke of the crematoriums, the barking dogs, the
trampling boots and swinging clubs—on the infamous "selection
line" at the head of which Mengele and his minions stood, pointing left
and right, sentencing some to back-breaking labor, and sending others to the
gas chambers. In each of those instances, somebody would come along and say
or do something that would change Bubby's fate from certain death to tenuous
life. In one such incident, she already had been sent to the line of those
marked for death when a man appeared as if from nowhere, physically removed
her from that line and shoved her into the other, without saying a word.
Indeed, the miracles and the mysteries of the events of those days abound
along with the horrors and the tragedies. In contrast to the vile actions of
the "Angel of Death" were the noble and heroic actions of many
"Angels of Life" who stood ready to risk their own lives for the
sake of saving that of a stranger.
It is thanks in no small part to "Angels" like these, who stepped
out from behind their own misery and grief to come to the aid of others, that
generations now live on to tell the story. How clearly we see the infinite
ripple effects of single acts of kindness and compassion, even if
accomplished in a split second..."
Yossi Refson, Angels
of Light
"Maximilian
Kolbe, a Polish Franciscan friar, provided shelter to refugees from Greater
Poland, including 2,000 Jews whom he hid from Nazi persecution in his friary
in Niepokalanów. He was also active as a
radio amateur, with Polish call letters SP3RN, vilifying Nazi activities
through his reports.
On February 17, 1941 Kolbe was arrested by the German Gestapo and imprisoned
in the Pawiak prison, and on May 25 was transferred
to Auschwitz I as prisoner #16670.
In July 1941 a man from Kolbe’s barracks vanished, prompting SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl Fritzsch,
the deputy camp commander, to pick 10 men from the same barracks to be
starved to death in Block 13 (notorious for torture), in order to deter further
escape attempts. One of the selected men, Franciszek
Gajowniczek, cried out, lamenting his family, and
Kolbe volunteered to take his place.
During the time in the cell he led the men in songs and prayer. After three
weeks of dehydration and starvation, only Kolbe and three others were still
alive. Finally he was murdered with an injection of carbolic acid [14 August
1941] ...
Kolbe is one of ten 20th-century martyrs from across the world who are depicted in
statues above the Great West Door of Westminster Abbey, London."
Jewish Virtual Library, Maximilian Kolbe
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