Some are Guilty; All are Responsible
How far is each of us from being a torturer or someone who is tortured?
That’s not a question most of us spend time thinking about, but it did come up in the discussion at an IPP event last Saturday night.
The event was the presentation and discussion of a 20-minute contemporary film about the Holocaust called “Das Spandau Ballett.”
“Das Spandau Ballett” was the sick term the Nazi’s used to describe the writhing in agony of the Jews who were being gassed. Ironically, the same term was used by the Allies to describe the Nazi war criminals as they danced at the end of a rope when they were hanged.
The film, which featured Louisville dancer Hannah Jones, used the language of dance to explore what happened to one individual victim of the holocaust as she was put to death.
The discussion that followed the film was powerful. The 25 or so persons who were gathered at Thomas Jefferson Unitarian Church included one individual who had escaped the Holocaust. Comments ranged from puzzlement about why the director had chosen this particular way to tell his story, to questions about what he intended to say with the film, to comparisons with the new award-winning foreign film, “Pan’s Labyrinth.”
But when the formal discussion was over and the equipment was being disassembled and the audience was beginning to depart one person made a comment about the film that really stunned me.
As she held her thumb and forefinger about an inch apart, she said, “You know each of us is about this far away from being the Nazi or the victim.” (Personally, I’m more worried about our becoming like the Nazis than I am about our being victims.)
She went on to talk about the horrors of Abu Ghraib, and how ordinary American men and women took apparent glee in torturing and humiliating their Iraqi prisoners. (And then there’s Guantanamo and “Special Rendition” and…sadly the list goes on.)
But I don’t want to point the finger solely at those who run our government or the military. As the great Jewish thinker Abraham Joshua Heschel said, “In a free society, all are involved in what some are doing. Some are guilty, all are responsible.”
It is the job of all us, whatever religion we embrace, to constantly voice the reminder (especially ourselves) that each and every person on the planet is human and deserving of basic human rights. All should be free from torture and abuse.
How far is each of us from being a torturer or someone who is tortured?
That’s not a question most of us spend time thinking about, but it did come up in the discussion at an IPP event last Saturday night.
The event was the presentation and discussion of a 20-minute contemporary film about the Holocaust called “Das Spandau Ballett.”
“Das Spandau Ballett” was the sick term the Nazi’s used to describe the writhing in agony of the Jews who were being gassed. Ironically, the same term was used by the Allies to describe the Nazi war criminals as they danced at the end of a rope when they were hanged.
The film, which featured Louisville dancer Hannah Jones, used the language of dance to explore what happened to one individual victim of the holocaust as she was put to death.
The discussion that followed the film was powerful. The 25 or so persons who were gathered at Thomas Jefferson Unitarian Church included one individual who had escaped the Holocaust. Comments ranged from puzzlement about why the director had chosen this particular way to tell his story, to questions about what he intended to say with the film, to comparisons with the new award-winning foreign film, “Pan’s Labyrinth.”
But when the formal discussion was over and the equipment was being disassembled and the audience was beginning to depart one person made a comment about the film that really stunned me.
As she held her thumb and forefinger about an inch apart, she said, “You know each of us is about this far away from being the Nazi or the victim.” (Personally, I’m more worried about our becoming like the Nazis than I am about our being victims.)
She went on to talk about the horrors of Abu Ghraib, and how ordinary American men and women took apparent glee in torturing and humiliating their Iraqi prisoners. (And then there’s Guantanamo and “Special Rendition” and…sadly the list goes on.)
But I don’t want to point the finger solely at those who run our government or the military. As the great Jewish thinker Abraham Joshua Heschel said, “In a free society, all are involved in what some are doing. Some are guilty, all are responsible.”
It is the job of all us, whatever religion we embrace, to constantly voice the reminder (especially ourselves) that each and every person on the planet is human and deserving of basic human rights. All should be free from torture and abuse.
posted by Interfaith Paths to Peace at 1:24 PM
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