I have been reading people's comments about the movie, Act of Valor, so I decided today to do something I haven't done in a while...attend a matinee at the local Cinema. The movie, based upon actual Seal Team missions, depicted the activities of a Seal Team deployed to various parts of the world tracking down terrorists, rescuing captured CIA operatives, and other baddies.
It comes as no surprise that I am a typical guy when it comes to movies like this; I like when we kick the bad guys' ass and rescue the operatives and stop the terrorists from wreaking more havoc upon the innocents who have done nothing but be born in the United States of America. Still, I think about the policies that lead us into war or the causes...I am not a blind, stick my head in the sand, America love it or leave person. Yet I appreciate the sacrifice of those who gave all...
Here is the song by Keith Urban that plays at the end of the movie...
Saturday, April 28, 2012
No Room for Apathy
A few years back, I had a discussion with someone who was involved in Hospice Care concerning the number of WWII vets that she cared for in her daily practice. She quoted a statistic of about 1,000 of this group were dying nationwide each day. So, I did a little research of my own and found the following information.
Over 16,000,000 American men and women served in WWII of which over 290,000 died in combat with another 113,000 deaths in non-theater related incidents. According to the Department of Veterans Affairs 1,711,000 survivors still remained as of November 2011, and of that number it is estimated that 850 die each day.
In an article this week in the Washington Post another group was profiled from that era; survivors of the Nazi Holocaust. In my research, I learned that the term "holocaust" comes from a Greek word, "holokaustos". The word is a reference to offerings made to gods and literally means "burnt whole" and was for years used to refer to any great massacre. However, since the 1960's, writers have used the word entirely to refer to the genocide of the Jewish people. The word Shoah, which means "calamity", has been the preferred term of reference by Jewish people rather than the more offensive Holocaust since the 1940's. Whatever the term, the horror of what happened that allowed over 80% of the Jewish population of Eastern Europe to be wiped from the face of the earth, should never, ever happen again.
Many of the one's interviewed in the article for the Post were survivors who entered the death camps as children or young adults. Many lost both parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters; some were sole survivors of their own families. I cannot even begin to imagine what loss of that nature does to a person; the trauma that is inflicted on one's soul, on one's sense of safety and well being.
In my circle of friends there are some who follow the Hebrew faith and I have asked the question, "Have you been to the Holocaust museum in D.C.?" Some have and some have not. The one's who have not all have told me similar stories about a grandmother or another relative telling of those times in Poland, Germany and other Eastern Europe countries where relatives or they themselves were taken from homes and sent to the death camps. For them, there is no need to see what they already know. There is the need for us, as a nation, to constantly remind ourselves that things like the Holocaust can never happen again. We had hoped once the film of the death camps reached the eyes of the world that the horror of the suffering of the Jews; the loss of two-thirds of the Jewish populace of over 9 million that lived in Eastern Europe would shake up to our very core. That, as a nation, we would do what ever we could to prevent the repeat of this atrocity in other places in the world.
However, the genocide continues; Rwanda, Darfur in the Sudan, the Iraqi Kurds, Bosnia....there are just too many to name. This country cannot and should not be the police of the world, but we should be the uniters of like minded leaders to do everything in our power to stop this senseless slaughter of people because of the race, creed or religious origin.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran pastor and theologian who was involved in a plot to overthrow Hitler made the following statement,
Over 16,000,000 American men and women served in WWII of which over 290,000 died in combat with another 113,000 deaths in non-theater related incidents. According to the Department of Veterans Affairs 1,711,000 survivors still remained as of November 2011, and of that number it is estimated that 850 die each day.
In an article this week in the Washington Post another group was profiled from that era; survivors of the Nazi Holocaust. In my research, I learned that the term "holocaust" comes from a Greek word, "holokaustos". The word is a reference to offerings made to gods and literally means "burnt whole" and was for years used to refer to any great massacre. However, since the 1960's, writers have used the word entirely to refer to the genocide of the Jewish people. The word Shoah, which means "calamity", has been the preferred term of reference by Jewish people rather than the more offensive Holocaust since the 1940's. Whatever the term, the horror of what happened that allowed over 80% of the Jewish population of Eastern Europe to be wiped from the face of the earth, should never, ever happen again.
Many of the one's interviewed in the article for the Post were survivors who entered the death camps as children or young adults. Many lost both parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters; some were sole survivors of their own families. I cannot even begin to imagine what loss of that nature does to a person; the trauma that is inflicted on one's soul, on one's sense of safety and well being.
In my circle of friends there are some who follow the Hebrew faith and I have asked the question, "Have you been to the Holocaust museum in D.C.?" Some have and some have not. The one's who have not all have told me similar stories about a grandmother or another relative telling of those times in Poland, Germany and other Eastern Europe countries where relatives or they themselves were taken from homes and sent to the death camps. For them, there is no need to see what they already know. There is the need for us, as a nation, to constantly remind ourselves that things like the Holocaust can never happen again. We had hoped once the film of the death camps reached the eyes of the world that the horror of the suffering of the Jews; the loss of two-thirds of the Jewish populace of over 9 million that lived in Eastern Europe would shake up to our very core. That, as a nation, we would do what ever we could to prevent the repeat of this atrocity in other places in the world.
However, the genocide continues; Rwanda, Darfur in the Sudan, the Iraqi Kurds, Bosnia....there are just too many to name. This country cannot and should not be the police of the world, but we should be the uniters of like minded leaders to do everything in our power to stop this senseless slaughter of people because of the race, creed or religious origin.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran pastor and theologian who was involved in a plot to overthrow Hitler made the following statement,
“First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me."
There can be no doubt that apathy in the face of tyranny will only result in there being no one left to speak if we don't speak up in the face of evil.
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