Auschwitz..60 years on..

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Post by bee »

Tchocolatl wrote: I did not want to preach (this, I am afraid to be accused of doing so)

this is too easy to wash our hands of humanitarian problems by saying : "Look, Madam, this is not psychology, this is politic and finance". By saying this, it is said : the problem is not ours, is not mine, it lays outside (another version of "the others" are the problem) so there is nothing I can do. For me, this just means "Money and control are ruling me and I do not want this to change". And that's it.

I wish for little more freedom and responsability, and evolution, and counsciousness. And that's it. And yes, Love. I am a big dreamer :D
When a child goes to school and he is told, that 2x2=4, child would sometimes say- oh no, I want it to be 2x2=5. Chances are, when that child grows up he would turn to a great poet or a great artist, because he can make it 5, like Picasso and Lorca etc. If not, that child being a grown up person and still insisting that 2x2=5, they are called ignorant fools at the best.
John Lenon can sing - I am a dreamer- in fact- he was not, he was quite a good business man. He wants you to be a dreamer.
He did not lay naked on the bed with his wife while living in a little house in Liverpoole. He did it while in a big house and having plenty of money to cover that naked prick.
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Post by bee »

Midnight- yes, I wasn't that sure, but now I know.
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tom.d.stiller
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Post by tom.d.stiller »

You are just a dreamer
and I am just a dream...
This thread will surely have its own dynamics, and no one will be able to stop it, so it's a vain hope that Andrew's orginial intention might survive the various discussions.

Never again!

The strategies to make the "NEVER AGAIN!" real might differ, let's at least get clear about the GOAL! (sorry for shouting, btw)

Remember the victims!
Think about them.
Make them real in your minds: Pick one person who died in the Shoah, try to get acquainted with that person... Relate! Don't bury this grave truth in abstracts about the "real nature of fascism".

Try to imagine what it is to drink the "black milk of dawn"...

Sorry for disturbing you.

Tom
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Joe Way
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Post by Joe Way »

Dear Jim, Midnight and Bee,

I have avoided the political threads like poison.

This discussion of facism is rather "out there" from my personal perspective.

I come from a small town in Northern Wisconsin and there are mostly Scandanavian Lutherans mixed with a few German/Irish Catholics. The Chevy dealer was Catholic; the Ford dealer was Protestant. Guess who bought what?

One set of my grandparents were born in Germany before the war, immigrated. and didn't need to deal with the political reality during the 30's and 40's. I wonder now about relatives who stayed there and how they survived the war and perhaps, participated in it.

For those who are wondering about the choices that we make, I offer you one of my favorite poems:

Friday's Child


(In memory of Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
martyred at Flossenbürg, April 9, 1945)


He told us we were free to choose
But, children as we were, we thought---
"Paternal Love will only use
Force in the last resort

On those too bumptious to repent."
Accustomed to religious dread,
It never crossed our minds He meant
Exactly what He said.

Perhaps He frowns, perhaps He grieves,
But it seems idle to discuss
If anger or compassion leaves
The bigger bangs to us.

What reverence is rightly paid
To a Divinity so odd
He lets the Adam whom He made
Perform the Acts of God?

It might be jolly if we felt
Awe at this Universal Man
(When kings were local, people knelt);
Some try to, but who can?

The self-observed observing Mind
We meet when we observe at all
Is not alariming or unkind
But utterly banal.

Though instruments at Its command
Make wish and counterwish come true,
It clearly cannot understand
What It can clearly do.

Since the analogies are rot
Our senses based belief upon,
We have no means of learning what
Is really going on,

And must put up with having learned
All proofs or disproofs that we tender
Of His existence are returned
Unopened to the sender.

Now, did He really break the seal
And rise again? We dare not say;
But conscious unbelievers feel
Quite sure of Judgement Day.

Meanwhile, a silence on the cross,
As dead as we shall ever be,
Speaks of some total gain or loss,
And you and I are free

To guess from the insulted face
Just what Appearances He saves
By suffering in a public place
A death reserved for slaves.

1958 (W. H. Auden)

It seems to me that Dietrich (who I understand knelt naked before his hanging-a week before Hitler put his own gun to his head) prefigures the self-same public figure who challenges our humanity.

Prior to 911, my faith was strong, my soul secure. I put a sign out in our yard back in 1991, saying, "Stop the War!"

I remember my embarrassment in February of that year, as I skied for the first time across the northern part of our state, and heard the positive news reports of the charge into Iraq. We re-hydrated at a bar and watched our conquering troops. Who can argue with triumph?

A decade then raised its head, and we were asked, "Who will you tolerate?" "What degree of danger will you tolerate in the new September 11th environment?" Who is a fascist? Who is a victim? How do we escape this terrible reality?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a complex preacher- with relatives, presbyterian by nature- who faced with the awful choice to participate in a death threat, agreed to ponder the act of killing Hitler, and still further more acted upon it.

The image of him, naked on his knees, in his cell prior to his hanging, both haunts and ecourages me.

I cheer on our troops; I pray for our future.

Joe
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Post by bee »

tom.d.stiller wrote:
)

Remember the victims!
Think about them.
Make them real in your minds: Pick one person who died in the Shoah, try to get acquainted with that person... Relate! Don't bury this grave truth in abstracts about the "real nature of fascism".

Try to imagine what it is to drink the "black milk of dawn"...

Sorry for disturbing you.

Tom
Tom, what makes you think that we don't know the victims? What makes you think that we just have to "make them real in your minds"?
I personally met a gentlmen who as a boy was a "patient" of doctor Mengele. I've heard horrors which are not even written in books. And much more...
What makes you so arrogant as to assume, that all of us here are a little school girls infatuated with LC?
Just give me a break.
Where do you live Tom? I am really interested what kind of wonderland is that.
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tom.d.stiller
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Post by tom.d.stiller »

The bee must sting...

Never the thought crossed my mind that you - or anybody else - don't have any personal knowledge of the victims. I just offered a way for those who are used to think in terms of how many people killed to get closer to what happened.

I can live with you disagreeing with me, or calling me "arrogant" - we've been through that, and I'd though we've been through with that - but I have to reject the assumption of me regarding anyone around here " little school girls infatuated with LC".

And now let's resume an attitude that's compatible with mourning...

Tom
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Post by bee »

Oh Tom dearest- what is the attitude of mourning? is it weeping, sobbing, lamenting? yes, it is,~ but even more- it is to be alert, be very awake, clear, sober, observant, mindful, it is to put 2+2 together and see what has been counted and what has been left out. ones soul and mind has to work and be, process and comprehend.
I pushed you a bit about the "schoolgirls", was angry a bit, I apologize for that, I know you don't think that
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Post by tom.d.stiller »

bee wrote:Oh Tom dearest- what is the attitude of mourning? is it weeping, sobbing, lamenting? yes, it is,~ but even more- it is to be alert, be very awake, clear, sober, observant, mindful, it is to put 2+2 together and see what has been counted and what has been left out. ones soul and mind has to work and be, process and comprehend.
I pushed you a bit about the "schoolgirls", was angry a bit, I apologize for that, I know you don't think that
Dear bee, the attitude of mourning - to my mind and experience - is always a very personal way of reacting to deaths. I agree, btw, with most of what you said in your last post, and I accept your apology: I knew you didn't think that I thought that.

Let's be alert. (May I refer you to the German Rev. again?)

Tom
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Post by bee »

Tom, yes, I know, thank you. Just that it is not, that we simply are mourning a death~ as a natural turn in life, there were death for millions by somebodies hand, by somebodies will and calculation, effort and labours, investments and finacial gains.
Death by "philosophical" considerations, departmets of propoganda workers, drivers and secretaries, telephonists and journalists of herr.Gebel's department, guards and the dogs and train workers, who knew where they were going, the bank clerks who received deposits of moneys to accounts of sums never heard before, the farmers who got the hands working their land whom they can feed in the pigs stile, the people moving in to the apartments furnished and still with the blood stains from the ones who were just taken down to slaughter, but just the same- cheering up to their "good fortune", well, when one thinks of that- dearest Tom, what does ones mourning turns to?
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tom.d.stiller
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Post by tom.d.stiller »

I'd never let the causes of a death reduce my mourning. I'd take political actions against a state that imprisons homosexuals - even though I'm not homosexual, I'd oppose those suppressing Judaism, though I ain't a Jew, I'd speak up against some now on the danger of being illegally sent to Guantanamo.

But this is not the place for fighting. This is the time and place for considering each individual loss. Because "after the first death / there is no other."

Tom

PS: Though I consider some of your opinions fatally wrong, I'd fight for your right to venture them.
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Post by bee »

Tom, please do specify- which of my opinions are fatally wrong, so you would not have to fight for my rights in vain?
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Tchocolatl
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Post by Tchocolatl »

Yes Bee. Whatever. :D I like your posts because you are doing a good never ending show. :D (G-d! I'm happy to know that you are in the showbizzzzzz - I feel that you are a lucky one that found her real place in life) :D

Yes Bee. Along with Mr. Lennon, Mr. Einstein was another who was taking poetic licence with numbers. I guess they are not good examples to follow : the first get shut the second helped to create the deadly atomic bomb.

1+1 = 2

Morality 1 : be good with numbers, that's where life is standing.

Morality 2 :
If you are a celebrity (other are understood something about you, so, it must be something to understand)= you are real.

If you are not a celebrity = you do not exist (This just, mean in fact, that the person is not recognized by others who are not able to have personal reflexions and must relate on leaders to tell them what to think - sheeps that have brains only to be able to detect where they have to go to follows - could be deadly sometimes, even if one knows about 2+2 = 4).
***
"He can love the shape of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love."

Leonard Cohen
Beautiful Losers
Tchocolatl
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Post by Tchocolatl »

Catherine,

Justice is not revenge.

If somebody is saying/acting otherwise, there is something about justice that this person had not understood yet. I'm afraid.

I'm afraid of people who are not making the difference between justice and revenge and are spraying hatred everywhere in the name of the "good" against the "evil".

Parentheses : I like your hobby bus/beer. I will adopt the bus hobby as soon as I'll have time to do it (but I'll forgot the beer, because even though I like beer a lot, I soon feel sleepy when I drink alcool of any sorts - so I miss all the fun and action (that is why I usually only take alcool at home, when I do (in the couch near to my bed :D ).
***
"He can love the shape of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love."

Leonard Cohen
Beautiful Losers
Tchocolatl
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Post by Tchocolatl »

Jim, I was remind about psychology and nazis and Jews in this sad page of history of humanity last evening while reading a book (about something else completely) :

Here is the man who was the best (to my impression) psychologist of these dark times, Viktor E. Frankl :

A link : http://www.geocities.com/~webwinds/frankl/quotes.htm

By the way, how many people does know about the Black Gemans that were exterminated (also)? (urgh! - that subject is painful!!) I have enough for today.
***
"He can love the shape of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love."

Leonard Cohen
Beautiful Losers
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Post by bee »

Tchoco- I've tried and tried and one more,- using both parts of my brain- i stared at the screan and tried again,- but I could not get any sense of what you were saying. :cry: a bit of that&this, and again- no sense.
But than again- I am happy that you are happy for me. :lol: Tchoco, my work at the theater is just a one aspect, most of the times I do painting and sell them. I've been commissioned to do portraits, which is more stable income, but not always that much fun. I should've known more my 2x2 to make more money, which i am pretty lousy at.
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