Matt and I stopped by the Hotel de Ville today to see “They Were Children,” an exhibition about Jewish children of Paris who were rounded up under Nazi occupation. This image above is from a notebook one Jewish child kept during that time; “Flowers for my parents” is his caption. And look below at the photo of the child who kept the notebook shown below his image:
Children. The horror of this. The innocence and the horror.
Pete says: Unimaginably monstrous behavior, in a culture long thought to be the most enlightened on Earth. What does that tell us?
MH - Secular Misanthropist says: What does that tell us?
Humans are wild animals and civilization is our wild red in tooth and claw.
From a CNN article last month:
“In contrast to more conservative U.S. statements, the Stanford/NYU report — titled “Living Under Drones” — offers starker figures published by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, an independent organization based at City University in London.
“”TBIJ reports that from June 2004 through mid-September 2012, available data indicate that drone strikes killed 2,562 – 3,325 people in Pakistan, of whom 474 – 881 were civilians, including 176 children. TBIJ reports that these strikes also injured an additional 1,228 – 1,362 individuals,” according to the Stanford/NYU study.
“Based on interviews with witnesses, victims and experts, the report accuses the CIA of “double-striking” a target, moments after the initial hit, thereby killing first responders.”
Read the article here:
http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/25/world/asia/pakistan-us-drone-strikes/index.html
We’re killing children, we’re maiming children, we’re causing children to be pulled out of schools in extremely poor countries because their parents are afraid (not without reason) that their schools will be hit during drone attacks and their children permanently injured or killed. This is on us. Does anybody care?
Aaron Gross says: Say what you want about all those Frenchmen who willingly helped send the Jews to the camps, but remember, they really knew how to enjoy good food.
Rod Dreher says: Well, sorry to disappoint you, but the fact that some French people sent Jews to the camps doesn’t make their croissants taste any worse. You perfectly well know that one has nothing to do with another. That was a cheap shot.
MH - Secular Misanthropist says: Erin, I care, but I’m not sure what to do about it. The Democrats are hawks and the Republicans are hawks with roid rage. Occasionally when an issue really boils my blood I’ll write my congressmen and senators, but nothing ever seems to change.
MH, I suspect that I’m in the same boat (and not voting for either party this election because of it). But I think that we should be careful when we sit in harsh judgment on the past. The French who proudly collaborated with the Nazis and handed over their German neighbors can be rightly condemned, and the French who stood up against the Nazis, even at the costs of their own lives, should be honored. But what about the rest, the people who feared the Nazis and hated what they were doing but felt powerless to do anything about it?
Future generations may well ask us: why didn’t you protest against drone warfare, torture, kill orders, the various evils of the Patriot Act(s), the slow erosion of liberty in the name of security? What will we say? For many of us it may come down to: well, we didn’t much like any of that, but what could we do?
It is immeasurably sad that Jewish children died at Nazi hands in France and elsewhere. It is immeasurably sad that Pakistani children might die this week, or even today, in a morally evil act of drone warfare which is demonstrably disproportionate and unjust. It is sadder than both that some who weep for the children of the past shrug at the deaths of the children of today as they mutter would-be exculpatory words about the war on terror and collateral damage.
And I find it sad to the point of horrifying that both of our major political parties are fine with this sort of thing, and even try to out-do each other in rhetoric about how good it all is.
John T says: You can read about a young French girl Simone Arnold from Mulhouse who refused to join in the Nazi hatred and violence. She was beaten unconscious by her school teacher because she refused to give the Nazi salute. After her parents were sent to concentration camps, Simone was sent to a German reform school. There although she was treated cruelly she never compromised her beliefs.
You can read about her here: http://www.alst.org/pages-us/founders/simone-arnold-liebster-founder.html
Also her life story is recorded in the book Facing the Lion Memoirs of a Young Girl in Nazi Europe
M_Young says: Mr. Gross’s comment exemplifies why I am against this continual harping on the events of 1933-1945. There is a strong sentiment among a lot of Europeans and others that their cultures, their peoples themselves, are not worth preserving because of some admittedly very evil actions committed by some mostly ordinary Germans, Frenchmen, etc in a time of upheaval.
As it is the Holocaust has taken on many aspects of a religion. Certainly in France and elsewhere the received narrative is protected by blasphemy laws. It is not only denial that will put you afoul of the law, it is even ‘minimizing’ the Holocaust, which can be as simple as uttering the perfectly accurate statement that it was a detail of WWII (that got Jean Le Penn fined).
Uncle Vanya says: @Erin Manning:
thank you for your comments. What took place under the Nazis was horrible, but how many of us would really have had the courage to challenge them if we’d lived then?
It’s sanctimonious to righteously wring our hands over past evils, which we can’t undo, while we fail to address present evils that we can. If a person won’t speak up against the slaughter of innocent civilians by our own government, I doubt he would have had the courage to do anything to stop the Nazis. Being an armchair hero is as easy as being an armchair quarterback.
Rod Dreher says: You think you would have stood up to the Nazis if you were in occupied France? Maybe you would. But watch “The Sorrow and the Pity” before you state confidently what you would have done under those circumstances.
MikeS says: I second the opinion of Erin Manning. Little Menachem (or whatever his name was) died in a barbaric national policy; probably thousands of innocent Little Mahmouds will die if the neocons get their wish for a new war in Iran. What can we do about it? How about voting for the party least likely to start the war in Iran?
Aaron Gross says: Rod, it was sarcastic but it wasn’t meant as a shot. If anything, it was an allusion to that James Baldwin passage you quoted a while back.
What “one has to do with the other” is simply that it’s the same people, nothing more than that but nothing less. That doesn’t mean you should let your reaction to one aspect of Frenchmen influence your reaction to the other. I’m not saying that exhibition should make you go eat Danish food instead of French.
All I’m suggesting is that we keep in mind that in both cases – notebook and supper – you’re reacting to the same people.
Charles Cosimano says: I am honest enough to say that I would not have stood up and objected. I value my skin far too highly.
We must not be so quick to judge those who had little choice and that are viewed as evil by an accident of history–the Nazis lost the war. If they had won there would be no question but that they were doing the “right thing,” because no one would be around who would say otherwise. It is an example of might not only making right, but might determining what right is.
I’m uncomfortably sure I wouldn’t have had the courage to stand up to the Nazis, unless the Holy Spirit infused that courage in me. I sympathize with the Flannery O’Connor quote (re: a character in a story): “She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick.”
But I’m not sure how MikeS’s suggestion helps. It is the party in power right now that is authorizing the drone strikes in Pakistan. It’s pretty awful to vote for the party with the slogan: “Sure, we’ll kill innocent children in our War on Terror, but we’ll kill fewer in the long run!”
Uncle Vanya says: Last night I watched a BBC program on the trial of the regicides, of the parliamentarians who’d condemned Charles I to death following the English Civil War, which took place immediately after the restoration of Charles II. It was based on contemporary accounts, court transcripts and eyewitness testimonials.
One of the defendants who had strongly protested executing Charles I had, nevertheless, along with 57 others signed the King’s death warrant. When he was asked at his trial by the presiding justice why he had done this if he’d been so opposed to the King’s execution, he turned to the jury and asked them if they could remember how unsafe everyone felt and how dangerous everything seemed following the English Civil War. He asked them to recall how few knew of a safe haven to turn at that time. His life was spared, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment.
This defendant’s defense of himself struck me deeply, and I wondered how I would act and what I would do if I found myself in a world where I might be putting myself in danger by committing too strongly to one side or to another?
It’s easy to judge cowardice and lack of moral certitude at a distance. So, while what occured in France in the period of Nazi occupation was horrible, I would never want to judge the ordinary people who lived then and who faced that stark moral dilemma. All I can do is pray to God that I will never have to face that sort of choice, and that if I do, by his grace I will choose rightly, as I’m sure back then many did.
All but the very best of us has feet of clay.
MH - Secular Misanthropist says: I’m fairly certain that I would not be a hero in Nazi era France. Particularly at my current stage of life where being a hero could cost my family dearly. I think I would have the courage to avoid being a villain.
cecelia says: I think Erin has it right – the drones seem to me an abomination and we sit about happily condemining any number of other societies for barbarism while we do nothing about our own barbarism. Surely this slaughter of children and recruitment campaign for new terrorists ought to generate more protest than it has so far – I wonder if we have become jaded to this sort of violence??
None of us really know what we would do, unless we are faced with an actual choice. Few if any of us want to find ourselves in such a situation, but neither did most of those who went down in glory, or survived in quiet infamy. Sufficient unto the day…
Drone strikes are not good, but if we all think back, in 2008 Barack Obama was under pressure to show he would not be a militarily wimpy president in the face of al Qaeda et al. John McCain was openly chanting “Bomb, bomb, Iran…” to a familiar old tune.
Drones are, as some of those targeted allege, a cowardly way to kill enemies without running risks. But, when military forces in isolated mountainous regions harbor forces capable of killing 3000 people on a single day in New York, the alternatives are “Leave them alone, they can’t get us that often,” or, sending in troops on the ground, which ALSO kills large numbers of civilians, and a higher body count of our own troops…
So, seriously, what SHOULD our policy be? I used to think we could just “declare victory and bring the troops home,” as Sen. George Aiken suggested about Vietnam. In fact, nobody in Vietnam was attempting to kill people in North America. This is a bit different.
During the liberation of Europe from the minor unpleasantness (?!?) of 1933-1945, thousands of French civilians were killed too. I’m not sure that adds up to, we shouldn’t ever have invaded Normandy. After all, the Nazis would have killed even more, if we hadn’t.
“War is hell.” Nobody should suggest otherwise.
philosopher says: “But I think that we should be careful when we sit in harsh judgment on the past.” The trick, I think, is to absolutely, and resolutely, judge those _actions_ (and culpable inactions) in the past as harshly as they deserve. But at the same time, to be humble in our judgments of the _people_ involved, as, indeed, the frail sorts of creatures we all, or most of us, are.
These two attitudes together can best serve us in at least attempting to live up to that oft-failed slogan of “never again”. We must not forget that the atrocities were, indeed, atrocious. And we must not forget that they were committed by people who are fundamentally the same as we ourselves are — and that thus we are _capable_ of the same.
The infamous Milgram experiments were originally carried out to explore the hypothesis, “what was it about the Germans that led them to behave so indecently during WWII?” But, of course, when they did the initial experiment in America — which was meant to provide a contrast with the German results they intended to gather later — the results were sufficiently disappointing, that they realized that the relevant question is, in fact, “what is it about us humans that led so many of us to behave so indecently during WWII?”
As I recall, someone once said something to the effect of “Americans often deride the French for surrendering in WWII, which the U.S. did not do. But we should not confuse not having a border with Germany with courage.”
SteveM says: Rod, maybe you want to extend your rumination with this Glen Greenwald story:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/23/klein-drones-morning-joe
There is a lot about the American Power Elite Class that is absolutely repulsive.
There is something more horribly blatant about Nazi policies, compared to many other atrocities one might also point to. It was not only official state policy, but state policy implemented with comprehensive ruthless efficiency.
Still, Americans who view this and implicitly feel we have clean hands should remember Col. Chivington’s order at the Sand Creek massacre of the southern Cheyenee, “Kill them all, big and small. Nits breed lice.” The “nits” he referred to were also children.