OPINION: WHO WILL STAND UP NEXT?
by Charles E. Richardson, The Macon Telegraph, Ga.
The Macon Telegraph (Georgia)
Distributed by Knight/Ridder Tribune News Service
April 25, 2006 Tuesday
Apr. 25–Some events in human history are just too painful to remember,
but remember them we must, or they lose importance. This week is
Holocaust Memorial Week, a time to reflect on what happened between
1933 and 1945.
Why is it important to commemorate something that occurred more
than 60 years ago? Can’t we all just get along now? Some say what
happened to 6 million Jews and at least 5 million others in places like
Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor and Treblinka
has no bearing on civilization today, that the Holocaust, after all,
was an aberration, a blip in time. Was it?
The Nazis didn’t hold a patent on genocide. The list of countries
where mass killings have taken place is staggering: Cambodia, Armenia,
Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Kosovo and Burundi, just to mention a few.
Unfortunately genocide happens so often we have trouble defining it.
In the Darfur region of Sudan, thousands have been hunted down and
killed, but the U.N. doesn’t want to use the word, as if calling it
something different will make it go away.
After more than six decades we are still exploring the motivations
behind the Nazis’ desire to kill people, even some Germans, who didn’t
fit their vision of perfection. But there are others who kill for
tribal and religious reasons, or just because they have the power
and can get away with it.
Fortunately, the “Greatest Generation” fought back the Nazi threat,
but that generation of American is disappearing at an alarming rate.
There’s a member of that generation, Lamar Taylor, who calls me most
days. He just had a birthday, but since I don’t want to give it away,
I’ll just say he’s in his 90s. If this country were attacked he’d
run them over with his wheelchair, but who else will have the guts
to stand up next time? If you look around, we’re too busy worrying
about the next American Idol winner to care.
Sunday I went to hear a man speak who’s just a little younger than
Lamar. Columbus Juvenile Court Judge Aaron Cohn was the featured
speaker at a Yom Ha’Shoah (Day of the Holocaust) Commemoration
on Sunday.
Judge Cohn was born March 3, 1916. You do the math. He received a
law degree from UGA 68 years ago. He’s been a juvenile court judge in
Columbus for 41 years, and to hear Rabbi Larry Schlesinger tell it,
Judge Cohn is anything but a push over in his court.
Cohn volunteered for the Army in 1940 and was a combat operations
officer in the 3rd U.S. Calvary under Gen. George S. Patton. He spent
27 years as an active and Reserve member of the military. During the
European campaign he was decorated four times.
All of that is important. But what sticks out most in his mind is the
day he walked into Ebensee, Austria, a sub-camp to Mauthausen in May
1945. He saw the emaciated bodies of survivors and bodies stacked up
waiting for cremation beside bones of others who were murdered.
Judge Cohn was at Congregation Sha’ arey Israel to remind us not
to forget.
But why remember? The Nazis are gone and what they did will never
happen again, right?
Judge Cohn brought first-hand knowledge of walking into a death camp
61 years ago next month. The images are seared in his memory, no less
graphic with the passage of time. He understands how quickly mankind
forgets the lessons of the past.
He knows we still go on crusades. That innocent people still die.
Sitting back, there are those who think: As long as it’s not happening
to me, it’s OK. Those types of people lived in 1940s Germany, too,
and they live with us today.
The Nazis convinced an entire country that it had a “Jewish problem.”
Now nations call it “ethnic cleansing,” as if there were something
clean about it. People aren’t victims anymore but “collateral
damage.” Now in the name of security, people who were once freer
accept encroachment of their remaining liberties.
That’s why Judge Cohn was here, to help us recognize the symptoms of
a sick society and give us courage to stand up and do something about
it, just like he and others of the Greatest Generation did more than
40 years ago.
Charles E. Richardson’s columns appear Tuesday and Sunday. He can be
reached at crichardson@macontel.com [mailto:crichardson@macontel.com]
or 744-4342.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress