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During the Adolph Eichman trial which started on April 11, 1961 in
Jerusalem, Israel, an elderly victim of the concentration camps
living in Europe was brought into the courtroom to be a witness.
As his eyes fell upon Eichman he collapsed and was rushed
to a local hospital. When he returned to consciousness those
in attendance commiserated with him regarding the understandable
shock of his seeing this "monster" again.
No, the gentleman explained, his shock was not in seeing a
"monster" in the docket, but only a frightened old
man. His shock, he replied, was due to the sudden realization
that the "monster" is actually something which
lives
inside all of us.
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On July 10, 1941 half of the
population of the Polish town of Jedwabne murdered the other half,
who had been their neighbors. Of the 1,600 Jews living in this
town only about a dozen survived that day. Unspeakable
atrocities were committed in full view of the town itself.
(Gross J: Neighbors, Princeton Univ. Press,
2001).
Why did lifetime neighbors murder their neighbors? George Will
believes that they did so because they were permitted to carry out
this behavior without having any chance of being held responsible
for their actions. In other words, because they could. (Will
G: Opinions, Newsweek, July 6, 2001).
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German Wehrmacht sergeant Anton Schmidt
was executed by his Nazi colleagues in 1942 after he disobeyed orders and
assisted Jews in the Vilnius, Lithuania, ghetto. "I merely
behaved as a human being" he wrote to his wife. His actions
were something few other people in Hitler's Reich had the courage to do.
After 58 years the German government, through its Defense Minister, Rudolf Sharping,
finally honored the memory of Anton Schmidt (Ref:
Roger Cohen, N.Y. Times, May 14, 2000).
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In 1939 Vladimir Uhlir was a medical
student at the Charles University in Prague, Czechoslovakia when his country
was occupied by the Nazis. He was forced into being a concentration
camp slave laborer until liberated by the Russians in 1945. After
attempting to help friends escape to the West he was arrested by the
Russians and, once again, became a slave laborer in a concentration
camp. After a number of years he was finally released and came to the
United States where he, and his family, at last found haven and a happy
life. The Editor worked with Mr. Uhlir,
who became a medical research associate in Seattle, Washington in the
late 1960s. He would, on occasion, after late hours of
investigative work, relax and talk about his past.
No one knew more about concentration camps and human survival than
Vladimir. He recalled that when conditions were really bad the
average inmate's social veneer would evaporate and they would sink to the
lowest depths of depravity in order to continue to exist. There
were, however, always a few individuals
who, no matter how bad the adversity and duress, never compromised their
humanity and would chose death rather than debasing their values.
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Diogenes of Sinope is best remembered for the
apocryphal story that he traveled about ancient Greece searching
for an honest man. Diogenes was a Cynic. One of the
objectives of Cynicism was the achieving of self-sufficiency
because this was an important quality by which freedom was
obtained. While much of Diogenes conduct (as documented by
the third century Roman author Laetius Diogenes) would not be
considered social by today's values
Diogenes of Sinope did stand for honesty and pointed out the
"artificiality" of so-called "civilized"
behavior and definitions of integrity.
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