Violence
I have written before that;
The heart of man tends toward violence. I say this not because of our history, but because of the way we define and separate our history.
Today I have heard an interview with Kurt Vonnegut where he made the comment about the bombing of Dresden (made famous in Slaughterhouse 5) that it benefitted no one, except him. He went on to say that the benefit he got out of it was approximately $5 for each person that died in that horrible event. Here is a man that had the insight to see beyond the terrible, beyond the violence, and still had the sense to captilize on it all. In respect for this amazing man I submit the following.
In November of 1938 a great tragedy occurred. After a night of havoc in the streets of german jewish homes and business a man was thrown in a jail. All this came about because of a man who is generally associated with pure evil. That man was Adolf Hitler. If one were to follow the chain of command from the tragedy that occurred that night, one would find this man at the top. And so this Jewish blooded american has only this to say to him, Hitler is the reason I am alive today. The man who was thrown in jail was my maternal and yet again maternal great grandfather. The woman who rescued him was my great grandmother from the same side, his wife. The man responsible for the need for the escape from their comfortable life in Germany from which they would travel until reaching Ecuador. The man responsible for my maternal grandmother growing up as a poor jewish girl obsessed with hating her bloodline for the hate it brought on her, who would play games with a man old enough to be her father, a man who became the father of her children, of which one daugther would marry an American who was in the peace corp. And this chain of events would lead to a male child, and in respect to Mr. Vonnegut; That was me, that was I, that was the author of this blog. The man responsible for all this, the man at the top of the chain of command, if one were to follow it back from enough and up far enough was Adolf Hitler. Without him there could not have been the mixing of seed and egg needed to make my mother. Without him my mother would not have been in Ecuador where my father had gone in service to the peace corps (as an aside I may some day look into the chain of command that caused the Korean War which was my father's reasoning for joining the peace corp, which was better than going across the world to kill people; the people in charge of that war were about half as responsible). Without Adolf Hitler they never would have found each other, there wouldn't have been an "each other" to find in terms of my mother.
How many other Jewish boys and girls must admit to themselves that their fates, the fate of the origin of their life has a similar story, a similar responsibility laid upon Herr Hitler? Perhaps we are better to ask, how many cannot?
I say this in no way to justify the man's abhored behavior. I do not wish to present him as anything other than the monster he was. I simply wish to question the view of those who believe nothing good can come of the pure evil of a monster. Do we see all this first because our hearts tend toward violence? Are we to blame for seeing the evil before the good? I suspect that most people who read this will say that the atrocity is so great, that it could not be ignored, that it must always come first, that we as a society must never come close to reconciling a monster no matter how his unintentional consequences may have benefited us, may have produced us. They would say, I suspect, that I, a man of jewsih heritage, should never be able to see any good to come out of such a tragedy. That nothing good came out of such evil, they may never be able to acknowledge it. Perhaps it is the reason some people are immediately repelled by me, perhaps they believe that I must be evil because nothing good could have come out of such a thing and I came out of such a thing.
And so I say what Kurt Vonnegut said. Nothing good came out of the holocaust as nothing good came from the bombing of Dresden so far as I know except this. The holocaust produced the circumstances that ultimately lead to my birth, and the bombing of Dresden producted the circumstances which ultimately gave Mr. Vonnegut the experience to write Slaughterhouse 5, to make $5 for each person who died in that particular tragedy. As for myself I have made about $80,000 in my lifetime, this amounts to far less than $1 for each Jewish person who died in that other particular tragic event. I suppose he is doing much better so far. And I suppose further that the heart of man will continue to tend toward violence. And I could further suppose that this will probably mean nothing to anyone but me. So it goes.
posted by David Fuchs (Greg Goble) @ 9:13 PM
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