The Final Solution
Behold they will be confounded and ashamed,
all who rage against you.
They will be as nothing, and perish,
all who dispute against you.
You will seek for them and not find them,
those who contend with you.
They will be brought to nothing at all,
those who war against you...
(Is 41:11-12)
all who rage against you.
They will be as nothing, and perish,
all who dispute against you.
You will seek for them and not find them,
those who contend with you.
They will be brought to nothing at all,
those who war against you...
(Is 41:11-12)
This world can be such an unbelievably ugly place, and only because some of those who inhabit it take strenuous steps to make it so. Humankind is brought to attention and despair in the aftermath of horrendous events which one set of humans bring to bear upon another group. We can appreciate that in primeval times when mankind was evolving from a creature of the wild toward a thinking and consequential animal whose evolution gradually included a realization of events and their consequences, the knowledge of right and wrong much was written into the collective human memory relating to the struggle for survival.
Those not of the tribe whose presence was interpreted as a direct threat in a common geography where the ongoing search for adequate food and water, shelter and security were an ongoing and very present issue. When the determination by nature of the survival by the fittest, those most able to take advantage of their surroundings and the opportunities afforded them, also included a need to deny advantage in those areas leading to survival to others not of one's tribe, the message was writ deep into memory.
The stranger, one not of one's tribe, is one's enemy. Limited resources created distinct adversarial situations. It wasn't live and let live, but the struggle to live at a time when mankind was most vulnerable as an emerging life force, just learning to manipulate his environment. An environment which could not be shared due to its life-sustaining limitations. With the gradual emergence of primitive technology and the gathering component added to the hunting equation of existence man learned to become more lethal to his opponents' aspirational struggles to grasp opportunities for survival.
Like the vestigial tail bone still evident in man's vertebrae, signalling his distant past as just another ape, that inherited memory buried deep in the elemental animal brain becomes resurgent from time to time, from circumstance to circumstance and we revert to the pure animal we once were, to the detriment of the intelligent, responsible beings we consider ourselves to be. That's when the vestigial need to wage war, to protect or attain territory, kicks in and it's those events which describe the nightmares which mankind visits upon itself.
Although history doesn't lack in great sweeping events of widespread brutal blood-letting, ransacking of communities and destruction of their inhabitants from the time of recorded history, it was the horrendous intent and unique character of the Holocaust during World War II that caused the world to feel due shame, to insist collectively that this could never, would never be permitted to happen again. As though wishing could make it so. And so, we've seen successors to that genocidal attack by Nazi Germany and her willing Axis allies against the Jews of Europe.
The breathtakingly evil conception and monumental execution, in its carefully crafted intent leading to an industry devoted solely to the extermination of an entire group of people linked by a common ancestry, religion, social order and ethos brought the world to its knees in horror. An odious little man whose brazen sense of cultural, social, racial superiority caught the attention and sympathies of a war-depressed nation brought the Jews of Europe to the brink of total annihilation through a carefully planned sequence of sequestration and destruction.
Century after century of historical apartness by Jews admonished by their vision of a Supreme Being whose insistence upon ritual and adoration and obedience by his chosen folk held them in the eyes and opinions of others to be the exemplification of the stranger among them. The community of Jews in any society in any country in the diaspora were suspect, deliberately deprived f human dignity, hated, hunted, tortured. Through residence in one country after another, some of which engaged in forced religious conversions, incarcerations, banishments, pograms, Jews understood their place in the world without comprehending why.
These historical oppositions to the existence of Jewish populations were but a prelude. The long suffering but determined people who had pledged allegiance to Yahweh fiercely defended their faith and their right of existence. Because assimilation was denied as a life-saving gesture they would pay time and again for their sins of existence as the 'other', as the Stranger. And then came Nazi Germany whose unrelenting pursuit of Jews proved to be utterly destructive to the resilience of Jewish determination.
For it was in Germany itself that so many of its Jewish citizens became so firmly entrenched in the German world, the lifestyle, the culture, the tradition, the business world, the world of its art and popular culture that they began to eschew their Jewishness in favour of undiluted German-ness. When these proudly acculturated Germans of Jewish heritage found themselves as much targets of the Nazi plan for extermination of the Jews as any others, they could hardly comprehend the situation.
No amount of distillation of the Jewish essence was acceptable. The very existence of some element of Jewish background was a violation of German pride, exclusivity, probity, piety. The Final Solution was the solution of finality to expunge the insult to German orderliness and fitness. There was no lack of help and support in their insistence on the destruction of the presence of the pestilence the Jewish presence represented to these rabid Jew-haters. Eastern and Central Europe gave itself over handily to the exercise.
The exceptions were notable by their very scarcity. That there were some Germans, Poles, Ukraines, Italians, French, and Hungarians who deplored the Nazi plan and brought their common humanity to bear in attempting to shelter Jews gave a human face to the tragedy. That the world at large, once knowledge of the full extent of the Nazi plan of extermination became known, did not rise in anger and defence of the Jews is the greater human tragedy, one they and we Jews will have to live with.
And living with it, humankind is still not prepared to roust ourselves collectively when we are faced with similar situations which threaten others with the dire reality of genocide. What, truly, are we?
Those not of the tribe whose presence was interpreted as a direct threat in a common geography where the ongoing search for adequate food and water, shelter and security were an ongoing and very present issue. When the determination by nature of the survival by the fittest, those most able to take advantage of their surroundings and the opportunities afforded them, also included a need to deny advantage in those areas leading to survival to others not of one's tribe, the message was writ deep into memory.
The stranger, one not of one's tribe, is one's enemy. Limited resources created distinct adversarial situations. It wasn't live and let live, but the struggle to live at a time when mankind was most vulnerable as an emerging life force, just learning to manipulate his environment. An environment which could not be shared due to its life-sustaining limitations. With the gradual emergence of primitive technology and the gathering component added to the hunting equation of existence man learned to become more lethal to his opponents' aspirational struggles to grasp opportunities for survival.
Like the vestigial tail bone still evident in man's vertebrae, signalling his distant past as just another ape, that inherited memory buried deep in the elemental animal brain becomes resurgent from time to time, from circumstance to circumstance and we revert to the pure animal we once were, to the detriment of the intelligent, responsible beings we consider ourselves to be. That's when the vestigial need to wage war, to protect or attain territory, kicks in and it's those events which describe the nightmares which mankind visits upon itself.
Although history doesn't lack in great sweeping events of widespread brutal blood-letting, ransacking of communities and destruction of their inhabitants from the time of recorded history, it was the horrendous intent and unique character of the Holocaust during World War II that caused the world to feel due shame, to insist collectively that this could never, would never be permitted to happen again. As though wishing could make it so. And so, we've seen successors to that genocidal attack by Nazi Germany and her willing Axis allies against the Jews of Europe.
The breathtakingly evil conception and monumental execution, in its carefully crafted intent leading to an industry devoted solely to the extermination of an entire group of people linked by a common ancestry, religion, social order and ethos brought the world to its knees in horror. An odious little man whose brazen sense of cultural, social, racial superiority caught the attention and sympathies of a war-depressed nation brought the Jews of Europe to the brink of total annihilation through a carefully planned sequence of sequestration and destruction.
Century after century of historical apartness by Jews admonished by their vision of a Supreme Being whose insistence upon ritual and adoration and obedience by his chosen folk held them in the eyes and opinions of others to be the exemplification of the stranger among them. The community of Jews in any society in any country in the diaspora were suspect, deliberately deprived f human dignity, hated, hunted, tortured. Through residence in one country after another, some of which engaged in forced religious conversions, incarcerations, banishments, pograms, Jews understood their place in the world without comprehending why.
These historical oppositions to the existence of Jewish populations were but a prelude. The long suffering but determined people who had pledged allegiance to Yahweh fiercely defended their faith and their right of existence. Because assimilation was denied as a life-saving gesture they would pay time and again for their sins of existence as the 'other', as the Stranger. And then came Nazi Germany whose unrelenting pursuit of Jews proved to be utterly destructive to the resilience of Jewish determination.
For it was in Germany itself that so many of its Jewish citizens became so firmly entrenched in the German world, the lifestyle, the culture, the tradition, the business world, the world of its art and popular culture that they began to eschew their Jewishness in favour of undiluted German-ness. When these proudly acculturated Germans of Jewish heritage found themselves as much targets of the Nazi plan for extermination of the Jews as any others, they could hardly comprehend the situation.
No amount of distillation of the Jewish essence was acceptable. The very existence of some element of Jewish background was a violation of German pride, exclusivity, probity, piety. The Final Solution was the solution of finality to expunge the insult to German orderliness and fitness. There was no lack of help and support in their insistence on the destruction of the presence of the pestilence the Jewish presence represented to these rabid Jew-haters. Eastern and Central Europe gave itself over handily to the exercise.
The exceptions were notable by their very scarcity. That there were some Germans, Poles, Ukraines, Italians, French, and Hungarians who deplored the Nazi plan and brought their common humanity to bear in attempting to shelter Jews gave a human face to the tragedy. That the world at large, once knowledge of the full extent of the Nazi plan of extermination became known, did not rise in anger and defence of the Jews is the greater human tragedy, one they and we Jews will have to live with.
And living with it, humankind is still not prepared to roust ourselves collectively when we are faced with similar situations which threaten others with the dire reality of genocide. What, truly, are we?
Labels: Human Fallibility
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, April 15, 2007
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