“In Whose Shoes?”

A Homily to accompany

“The Holocaust Cantata”

Dave Weissbard

The Unitarian Universalist Church

Rockford, IL

May 8, 2005

[why remember?]

          There are people who believe that it is time to put the Holocaust behind us – “after all,” they say, “ it has been 60 years since the camps were liberated.” There is a variety of reasons for being determined never to forget. One is personal, for those who lost family members. One is collective: many Jews have the lingering fear that anti-Semitism could again rear its ugly head, and trends in Europe today feed those fears. There is, for me, a more compelling reason: As George Santayana warned us, “those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

          The history of the Jewish people over the past two centuries has been one of being subjected to gross discrimination in land after land, time after time. Finally, many believed, in liberal, cosmopolitan, rational, democratic Germany, they had a home: they belonged, they could relax. And then came Hitler, and the Nazis, and the camps, and the Holocaust.

          While anti-Semites continue to insist either that it didn’t happen, or that the Jews “did something to deserve it,” virtually all reputable historians insist that the Jews were available pawns, convenient scapegoats, along with gypsies, homosexuals, the mentally disabled, and dissenters, for a nation gone mad.

[how did it happen?]

          No one has yet answered satisfactorily how it was that the German people were able to countenance such evil. Vast numbers claimed ignorance of what was being done. It is true that relatively few were active perpetrators of the evil, and some went along out of fear. But that does not explain such a monstrous evil. It may be true that we liberals are naive in our clinging to a belief in fundamental human goodness. Something like the Holocaust would be easier to understand if we viewed humanity as sinful.

          The way most of us deal with such evil is to define those who perpetrated and tolerated it as different from us. “We,” of course, “would never do such a thing. It can’t happen here.” The Germans were crazy, or gullible, or authoritarian. The last thing we want to consider is how much like us they were.

[in whose shoes?]

          We are about to experience a powerful musical presentation which evokes the experience of the victims of the Holocaust. I believe it is important for us to prepare for the experience by asking ourselves in whose shoes we will be listening: as victims? As survivors? As Jews? As Nazis?

          I believe that the most important perspective for us to adopt, the shoes to put on, the way to listen, is as the descendants of those who claimed innocence as a result of ignorance – the “good people” who “didn’t know what was going on.”

          Those who are closest to the Holocaust are offended when anyone tries to draw any parallels because, they insist, this was an evil without parallel. But many of us believe that there are some very dangerous indicators of parallels between post World War I Germany and the United States today - not quantitatively, but qualitatively.

          Some writers point to “the concept of exceptionality.” Americans today are more convinced of our inherent superiority than ever before. And that superiority, in the eyes of many, justifies doing whatever we need – exploiting whomever we need to, to meet our desires. Read the National Security Policy of the United States of America, an official White House document that bears more than a passing resemblance to Mein Kampf. It is frightening. Boutros Boutros-Ghali , the former UN Secretary General who was not sufficiently compliant and therefore had to be replaced, has written, "It would be some time before I fully realized that the United States sees little need for diplomacy. Power is enough. Only the weak rely on diplomacy ... The Roman Empire had no need for diplomacy. Nor does the United States."

          Like Germany, the United States today has seen great challenges to its traditional values, and we see the religious right taking center stage with its guarantees of absolute answers and an unchanging world.

          Like postwar Germany, we feel that the rest of the world disrespects us. In fact, the surveys show that to be increasingly true – or at least, that large percentages of the populations in most countries fear us. We assert our right to abrogate any international treaties that we find inconvenient. What international law? Who are other people to tell us how to act. The United States will not be bound by world opinion. We are the most powerful and might makes right. We will decide what government the Iraqi’s need. We will decide whom to imprison, whom to torture ourselves, and whom to ship to others for torture. We will make the world safe for American corporations. We need to stifle dissent. We need to remove judges, even conservative ones, who interpret the laws and constitution in inconvenient ways. (Pat Robertson has declared the judiciary a greater threat to America than the 9/11 hijackers, and he has millions of faithful followers.)

[not just history]

          We must not listen to the Holocaust Cantata just as history, but as warning. History has lessons for us. Will we learn them? We ask, “How could the German people not have known? Why did they not act? Where was their humanity?” Let history not ask about us, “How could the American people of the 21^st century not have known? Why did they not act? Where was their humanity?”

          Let us listen to the history. Let us feel it. Let us learn from it.