| Tuesday, June 15, 2004 |
| WW2 and Me |
First, an aside: Last night I spent quite some time typing a long post on what happened on Sunday, which somehow disappeared, much to my chagrin. It had cost me about an hour or so and an ugly experience with Dad for being on the computer at insane hours. I can't remember what, but something happened before Dad came that I think was a hint from God to get off the darn computer, but I ignored it. Voila.
I've been wanting to write about this for a while. I have this...fascination with WW2 history. I wasn't that interested in it when I was still taking history in school, though I remember learning about D-Day and that grainy black and white photo in my textbook. I think it started from reading Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. Consequently I read Anne Frank Remembered by Miep Gies, one of those who helped the Frank family while they were in hiding. I then attempted to read Understanding the Holocaust: An Introduction, but it was too long and thick for me - some kind of introduction! Self-research online turned up more info and some rather gruesome images, which gave me a nightmare - I dreamt of a corpse which gradually shrivelled away. Now I am reading (and finishing) The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank. I've also seen the miniseries Hitler: The Rise of Evil (Robert Carlyle is excellent in this - he plays Hitler, which can't be easy at all. Oh, and Peter O'Toole!)and watched the movie Amen, about how Kurt Gerstein, "a Nazi soldier who moved up the SS ranks by devising a chemical method to purify soldiers' drinking water. Gerstein is unaware of the horrors of the concentration camps until he is recruited by 'The Doctor' to adapt the same chemical for use in the gas chambers. Though Gerstein is overwhelmed by the reality of the imepending massacre, he does not turn a blind eye..."
No, I have no sadomasochistic tendencies. It's simply that the people, from Hitler to the Nazis to the POWs to the Jews - they all fascinate me. Those of you who know me must know that I am deeply interested in Psychology. I find it intriguing that normal, ordinary people can turn into Nazi monsters. There is this famous experiment developed by Stanley Milgam in 1962, which "examines how far ordinary men between the ages of 20-50 will go when told by an 'expert' to administer electrical shocks to another ordinary person in a mock experiment on the effects of punishment on learning (deception)." Of course there was no real electricity; the victim strapped in the chair was an actor. Half to two-thirds of the men gave the highest possible voltage when told to. And there's the Stanford Prison Experiment.
More often than not, I guess, I read these books for their stories of courage. It is amazing that the human spirit can triumph in circumstances especially designed (by other humans too - what irony!) to strip away every vestige of human dignity. Reading and learning about the war has given me a greater insight into the depths of the human psych. I am at turns amazed and chilled by how strong and evil people can be.
At risk of sounding foolish and naive, I am going to say that if war ever broke out that involved this tiny island I live on, I will do resistance work. I cannot bear the thought of not doing otherwise. Yes, there is nothing glorious about it. But there is nothing glorious about war.
"I've killed men and I've heard them dying and I've watched them dying and there's nothing glorious about it, nothing poetic." - Hector, as played by Eric Bana in Troy
"How can anybody look inside themselves and be surprised at the hatred and violence in the world? It's inside all of us." - The late Hubert Selby Jr.
"The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?" - Jeremiah 17:9
But...
"If you could have the arms of Hercules, legs as swift as the wind, if you could lift *super high above the rim, have the kick of a dolphin, the reflexes of a cat, if you could have all this - you would have the body. You would have the tools. But you would not have greatness until you understand that the strongest muscle is the heart." - Andrea Bocelli for the Olympics 2004
(There is a * next to super because I can't make out what exactly he was saying...watch the ad in which he says this here. I wonder why we don't get to see the Nelson Mandela one here...)
The strongest muscle is the heart. I totally agree. =) |
posted by esther @ 7:13 PM  |
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| 1 Comments: |
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Hi Blogger, I just dropped in on my way back to my Trading Cards site. I liked what I
found and thought that I would leave you a note for your efforts in creating WW2 and Me.
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Hi Blogger, I just dropped in on my way back to my Trading Cards site. I liked what I
found and thought that I would leave you a note for your efforts in creating WW2 and Me.