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Did you ever see the film, "The Hiding Place" - it is a wonderful film. It helps to understand Christmas in a death camp... from the prisoners' perspective. "No pit so deep that his love is not deeper still." - Betsy Ten-Boom
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While the prisoners were suffering from starvation and cruel and inhuman conditions, Nazi soldiers and camp workers had every thing they needed or wanted. In fact, their lives were relatively normal and comfortable - unaffected by the diabolical work they were engaged in. Not unlike many of their fellow civilians who denied such things were happening. Astonishing?
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Men find it hard to look evil in the eye and call it by its true name. It was no different in early 20th-century Germany, where women spoke of the need to "curb coercive procreation" by legalizing abortion. Coercive here meant having to bear to term a child who was already in the womb. In 1908 the "bourgeois" Federation of German Women's Organizations demanded repeal of the abortion clause, §218, so that every woman might be Herrin ihres Körpers, or master of her body. In this specious slogan the child in the womb was reduced to part of the mother's body. Before World War I only elite women used this newspeak, but after the war ordinary women chimed in, as in a 1931 rally in which "many thousands of women were mobilized under the communist slogan Dein Körper gehört Dir! (Your body belongs to you!)." The year 1931 also saw the birth of the Committee of Self-Incrimination Against §218, which encouraged celebrities to come out and admit to having had, or having aided in, an abortion. Among those who came out was Albert Einstein. - Read the entire article here.
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I laugh, you laugh, we all laugh - ignoring the atrocities occurring in our society.
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Photos:
Top: SS officer Karl Hoecker lights a candle on a Christmas tree
Bottom: Laughter lines the faces of camp staff as they prepare for a sing-a-long.
Read more here: Laughing Death Camp Guards At Play.
"I laugh, you laugh, we all laugh - ignoring the atrocities occurring in our society."
ReplyDeleteHow shamefully true. You have no idea how often I think about the above statement.
+JMJ+
ReplyDeleteWhen I lived in New Zealand, a little girl was kidnapped and murdered. The whole nation took it very badly. Some people wanted to declare a national day of mourning. Others wanted to cancel all international sports tournaments for the rest of the year.
I and the other international students had never seen anything like it. Most of us came from countries in which little children are kidnapped and murdered all the time, and yet life goes on. I suppose we found most of the reactions funny.
Yet the Kiwis got it right. Every life is precious and every brutal death, especially that of a child, is something worth the suspension of regularly scheduled celebrations. At the same time, I don't see how we can have that spiritual reality before our eyes at all times without going crazy . . . or entering a monastery.
Can't say I'm laughing at this or have ever. But what bothers me is that I can't say I'm praying about it either.
ReplyDeleteTom - I do too.
ReplyDeleteEnbrethiliel - Agreed.
Owen - I wasn't thinking of laughing at the death camp scenario either... just the irony of the Nazi's celebrating while the holocaust was going on. The end times are just like that.
I sometimes pray as if I were there - as if no time or space exists - and I pray for those who had no one to pray for them.
Terry - I went to the book that the New Oxford Review author referenced (it is online) and the spiritualist and occult practices seemed to be well engaged at that time. I couldn't help but think of our own age—The Secret, Course in Miracles, Rosicrucian practices, wiccan and shamanism, etc. Jeffrey Satinover wrote in First Things an article that touched on that connection and abortion.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.leaderu.com/ftissues/ft9410/articles/satin.html
and another document I came upon a few years ago written by an Anglican:
http://www3.telus.net/st_simons/CarlJungPaper.pdf