A HORRIFIC RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION
There are events in history that are hard to forget, indeed they shouldn’t be forgotten. We need to remember them, not because they are worth remembering for their intrinsic value, but because they were so painful and shameful that the likes of them should never happen again in the saga of humanity. Nevertheless, they continue and will continue. So we may recall 18 January 1945 when, in the thick of the Second World War, the Soviet Army came very close to Cracow and Oswiecim (Auschwitz), and this was the beginning of a redemption. Auschwitz was the site of the notorious Nazi camp where, from July 1940 to its closing on 27 January 1945, hundreds of thousands of human beings were registered and exterminated because of their ethnic affiliation. One of the many episodes that have brought unimaginable pain and the darkest shame to civilization.
The Nazis were holding some 5,800 prisoners there, Jews for the most part. They were dispatched on what has come to be known as death marches. Men, women and children were all forced to walk for miles in the bitter cold, and when some children slowed down, they were taken away and done away with. Sickly prisoners were left to die. Others too, in due course, were to die in unimaginable ways. The ensuing atrocities were so horrible, so abominable, and such an affront to humanity, it is hard to imagine they were perpetrated. Yet, similar abominable atrocities are happening even now.
This is not the place to recount the gory details of all that happened then because they are too excruciating and numbing even in their recall. Frequent reference to the atrocities that one group of people inflicted on another – on the basis or race or religion or minority status or whatever – is unavoidably painful, for in the process we evoke anger and outrage and group resentment; and we inspire a spirit of vengeance or a lingering hatred between groups.
Yet, it would be unwise to shove it all under the rug of silent history, as. Indeed, recent history shows that there are forces to this day in several pockets of the world which are scheming or wishing for the revival of such hate-filled cruelties against this or that group. So we have coined the ugly term ethnic-cleansing: a monstrous mode by which large numbers of human beings, men and women, old and young, toddlers and babies, are brutally slaughtered on the basis of their tribal, religious, or racial affiliation.
We need to speak in general terms about the variety and virulence of Man’s inhumanity to Man in such contexts, provoked often by political or economic urgencies, or by hurtful illusions of collective superiority, or self-righteous religious disdain of those who subscribe to a different faith. We need to tell our children that such behavior deserves to be held in contempt, condemned and cursed, and must be severely punished.
Much as we trust the innate goodness of human beings, it would be naïve to imagine that the days of such monstrous madness are gone. If history is any lesson, in every generation there arise charismatic crackpots whose minds are warped and whose hearts are poisoned with hate, but who somehow come to political and/or theocratic power with mindless militia under their command. Under such ferocious not one but hundreds and thousands fall prey to their madness. To avert disasters from future Genghis Khans and Hitlers, we need more than education in science and history. We must indoctrinate the young in humane and humanistic values, and we need to condition growing minds in an enlightened ethical framework such as may be drawn from the noblest elements of humanity’s religious heritage. This is far more urgent that debates on whether the Scriptures and Science are compatible or diverging.
Spurts of Thought 