Perhaps It’s Been Too Long
Simon Wiesenthal dies in his sleep at home in Vienna. He was 96. Few Holocaust survivors are left to us, people who miraculously escaped certain death at the hands of oppressors, who came to understand more than most of us just what life means.
That’s the trouble with our soft lifestyles; they don’t force us a gunpoint to face a grave of our own making and stand half-starved and shivering looking into the dirt awaiting a bullet in the head. To life through an experience like that would certainly change one’s outlook for the rest of one’s life.
Simon Wiesenthal, and all who suffered at the hands of Nazi Germany 60 years ago, devoted his life to giving back a tangible thank-you to the world that saved him. For fifty years he served as the “conscience of the Holocaust,” determined to bring to justice the many Nazi war criminals even long after the Allied forces lost interest.
As many other former prison camp survivors understand, life is not to be squandered. What these people did for the Jewish people is astounding. They commit their entire lives to clear away the evils that lead to the depravity they witnessed.
Today we have a new holocaust happening in Darfur, Sudan, which affects aver 1.8 million people. We comfortable Western people have known about this for years. A year ago, President Bush, to his credit, spoke out about the mounting genocide in Darfur, but he hasn’t done anything about it. Beawitness.org offers a petition to the major news outlets to “do a better job of covering the Darfur genocide.” To me, such language is too weak.
From beawitness.org:
Here are the official responses from the networks:
NBC: WRC-TV has chosen not to accept the submitted commercial advertisement, “Genocide is News,” sponsored by BeAWitness.org.
CBS: Management did not approve the airing of the “Beawitness.org” spot.
ABC: I just got word that WJLA-TV will not be able to accept the creative for Be a Witness.org. Please let me know if there may be any alternative creative that we may run.
While BushCo postures for the cameras and news media cater to the Nielsen-rating gurus,the last of the Capitol-H Holocaust survivors fade away and the world turns it’s self-absorbed head from a reenactment of what people like Simon Wiesenthal lived to prevent. Perhaps the trouble is too much time between atrocities, too many sitcoms and too many trips to the casinos for the rest of us to care. While we bemoan natural disasters that occur here, generously (and rightfully) offering to help the “poor” of the richest nation on the planet, we turn our heads at the truly poor people - who are forced to send their children out to the communal well for the family’s drinking water because the young ones are less likely to be raped, mutilated and/or killed in the process.
Have we learned nothing?