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The Mysteries of Mercy

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  • The Mysteries of Mercy

    Washington Times
    Jan 30 2005


    Commentary: The mysteries of mercy


    By Martin Sieff
    UPI Senior News Analyst


    Washington, DC, Jan. 28 (UPI) -- It's easy to despair looking at the
    world this week of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the
    Auschwitz concentration camp by the Soviet Red Army. From Cambodia to
    Sudan, and from Rwanda to Bosnia, the chronicle of man's inhumanity
    to man has remained a stunning spectacle with genocide remaining
    frightfully in fashion through the second half of the 20th century
    and into the 21st.


    With millions continuing to die every year of starvation, disease,
    civil war and merciless pillaging across the continent of Africa in
    particular, it is obvious that this is still not "the best of all
    possible worlds" -- an attitude the great French 18th century
    philosopher Francois-Marie Arouet Voltaire ridiculed in his classic
    satirical novel "Candide."

    Given the enduring realities of human greed, hatred, cowardice and
    envy, the recurrence of monstrous crimes against entire races and
    religious groups of people -- be they Christians, Muslims,
    Cambodians, Bosnians, Chinese, Tibetans or Tutsis -- over the second
    half of the 20th century is arguably as predictable as the genocide
    of Jews, Gypsies, Ukrainians, Armenians and Chinese in the half
    century that went before.

    It's easy to overlook, therefore, other common trends in modern human
    history that have been far more positive, yet may be so obvious that
    they are almost always unseen. One of the most important is the wise,
    commonsense observation of the great Mahatma Gandhi, architect of the
    huge non-violence movement that broke the back of the British will to
    remain in India: "There have always been tyrants and murderers, and
    for a time, they may seem invincible, but in the end, they always
    fall. Think of it. Always."

    It's also easy to overlook during this week of the anniversary of the
    liberation of Auschwitz that it and the other Nazi death camps were
    indeed liberated. And less than a decade later when Soviet dictator
    Josef Stalin died, his eventual successor, Nikita Khrushchev threw
    open the gates of the infamous Soviet Gulag Archipelago, freeing
    millions of survivors who had been convinced they would never see
    their homes again.

    It's easy to forget that, as the movie "Saving Private Ryan"
    dramatically reminded an entire generation of Americans, millions of
    American, Soviet and British soldiers, and their Canadian,
    Australian, French and many other allies, fought and died to destroy
    the terrible regimes that had ravaged the human race in the 1930s and
    '40s. Those awful actions eventually called forth an even greater and
    ultimately decisive reaction.

    The bravery and decency of hundreds of millions of human beings was
    called forth as never before during World War II to protect their
    nations and the wider human race from the actions of scores of
    millions more who had been deceived or enticed into supporting
    monstrous regimes. Eventually, the Soviet communist colossus, too,
    crumbled into dust, just as Gandhi had predicted.

    In 1993, the already classic movie "Schindler's List" directed by
    Steven Spielberg and starring Liam Neeson celebrated the heroism of
    an ordinary, indeed, more than slightly seedy German businessman who
    saved more than a thousand Jewish lives from the Holocaust. The awful
    crimes he saw around him called forth from him a decency he himself
    had never before realized was there.

    And now, movie theaters around the world are showing a similar tale,
    "Hotel Rwanda," the story of Paul Rusesabagina, played in the movie
    by the great American actor Don Cheadle. He was another ordinary man
    who was not looking to be a hero but whose sense of decency saved
    more than 1,200 lives from the extraordinary slaughter of 800,000
    Tutsis and moderate Hutus by Hutu extremists in Rwanda in 1994.

    It's easy to demonize every German, or Russian, or Chinese, or
    Israeli, or Arab, or Hutu that ever lived and blame the horrific
    crimes perpetrated by crazed mobs or brainwashed multitudes in
    specific times and places on everyone who fits the appropriate label.
    It is much more difficult by far to remember the eternal words of the
    great Gulag chronicler Alexander Solzhenitsyn when he warned, "the
    line between good and evil runs through every human heart."

    Even Nazis could know mercy. One Nazi Party member, John Rabe, saved
    a quarter of a million lives during the massacre of hundreds of
    thousands of Chinese during the rape of the city of Nanking by
    conquering Japanese forces in 1937.

    The day after world leaders solemnly met at Auschwitz, the terrible
    "capital of death" where at least 1.5 million human lives, most of
    them Jewish, were deliberately and systematically snuffed out, Louis
    Michel, the 25-nation European Union's Commissioner for Development
    and Humanitarian Aid, addressed a European Institute conference in
    Washington. Michel straightforwardly noted, "The bald figures speak
    for themselves. More than a billion people in the world live on less
    than one dollar a day; 11 million children -- most under the age of 5
    -- die each year; over 6 million of these deaths are due to
    preventable diseases." But Michel continued, "This is no time to
    despair; this is the time for us to act."

    In the Book of Deuteronomy, the Bible records God stating, "I have
    set before you life and death: Choose therefore life." On the
    anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, it is well to remember
    that the camp was indeed liberated, even though it was too late for
    so many -- and that the way of life, as well as the way of death,
    still remains open before us.

    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
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