[Cz-L] Re: czernowitz-l digest: July 11, 2009

Hello from Cora Schwartz regarding lessons from the Holocaust:
I offer here some notations I made after the Ghetto March last October in
Czernowitz. I believe it relates to the current comments with regard to
...how could certain people engage in the horror of the Holocaust:
"Dr. Josef Bursuc, is the leader of the present Jewish Community housed in
the center, Hased-Sushana. His family was forced out of their home on that
morning, however his father bribed a soldier who was policing the march,
and they were permitted to “veer off” to the left somewhat and hide in a
gentile friend’s house that day. After Oct. 11th the Nazi’s started their
search through the city for those like Dr. Bursuc’s family who had managed
to evade the march, and most everyone was found and shipped off to the
ghetto, and then some.
So our walk that day was bitter-sweet with the older Jewish participants
telling the stories they had been told by family members of that day. We
had a discussion group before we walked and there was a marked absence of
anger or hatred that was refreshing of course. One recurring issue, or
question though was that of “why and where.” Where did the hatred and the
subsequent atrocities come from? One gentleman in particular said that he
understood what it means to dislike someone, or even to dislike a people, but
that this dislike could escalate into what later happened was something that
 could not be understood. I hope I am communicating this clearly; the
issue for these people now is actually trying to “understand”…which I think is
quite remarkable given what they had seen and heard. In this respect I
tried, through translation to give my own theory, comparing it to a virus or
a contagious disease. The first response was the question that there were
some people who did not hate the Jews, and even tried to save them. As Dr.
 Bursuc is a medical doctor he was able to relate my theory to the others;
that hatred, like a virus spreads and attacks those who have a lower
immunity. As with a disease, those who have a lower immunity tend to get sick
while others, with a healthier immunity do not; hence the ‘righteous’ for
example. The next question was that of immunity and trying to compare a lower
physical immunity to a lower spiritual immunity. Here too, this was
explainable in that we talked of economics and responsibility; that it is almost
human nature for people, most people to blame their demise on someone else
rather than look at themselves and see that they too can be at fault..
So, given the economic status of these eastern European countries, the Nazis
propaganda about the Jews and their responsibility for the economic
demise, appealed to those who were looking for someone or something to blame. It
was these people who had the “lower immunity” and so the virus of hatred
was easily and quickly spread amongst them. The righteous (my philosophy)
were those who were “mature” enough to see where the blame really belonged
and place the responsibility there. (I use the word ‘mature’ for want to
another workd and also because the word ‘intelligent’ is not accurate;
many, many intelligent people caught the virus of hatred, or what I call
(borrowed from Tolle’s book, the New Earth) the phenomena of ‘collective
insanity”....Shalom, Cora
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Received on 2009-07-12 19:32:13