It's All Your Fault
I'm not sure what it is that compels us to want to blame the victim, at least in part, for whatever befalls them. However, it must be human nature to do so, since it happens time and again, regardless of the circumstances of the wrong that has been done to the victim. Rape? The woman did something to entice the male to do that to her -- suggestive clothing, leading him on, etc. Poverty? Didn't try hard enough to get a job.
This article, however, surprised even me. A Yahoo News story, Jews 'partly responsible' for their troubles: Churchill, reports:
The Second World War prime minister Winston Churchill argued that Jews were "partly responsible for the antagonism from which they suffer" in an article publicised for the first time Sunday.Churchill made the claim in an article entitled "How The Jews Can Combat Persecution" written in 1937, three years before he started leading the country.
He outlined a new wave of anti-Semitism sweeping across Europe and the United States, which was followed by the deaths of millions of Jews in the Holocaust under the German Nazi regime.
"It would be easy to ascribe it to the wickedness of the persecutors, but that does not fit all the facts," the article read.
"It exists even in lands, like Great Britain and the United States, where Jew and Gentile are equal in the eyes of the law and where large numbers of Jews have found not only asylum, but opportunity.
"These facts must be faced in any analysis of anti-Semitism. They should be pondered especially by the Jews themselves.
"For it may be that, unwittingly, they are inviting persecution -- that they have been partly responsible for the antagonism from which they suffer."
The article adds: "The central fact which dominates the relations of Jew and non-Jew is that the Jew is 'different'.
"He looks different. He thinks differently. He has a different tradition and background. He refuses to be absorbed."
Churchill was talked out of publishing it, and it was recently discovered in his papers. I am reading Night by Elie Wiesel for my Book Group (not to be confused with the LWL Gang*), which meets today, so this piece was especially poignant.
At some point after college, I read a series of books on the Holocaust, Hitler and the Third Reich. I was young and naive -- I just could not fathom how the world stood silently by while Germany rounded up a group of people and eventually tried to eliminate an entire race of people. I could never understand the fact that the world stood aside and just let it happen, without protest. In the late 70's, I spent some time in Germany on a European trip and visited Dachau, outside of Munich. I thought if I read enough about the time period, I would understand what was unique about that period that such horror could occur. The answer, however, did not come from the books, it came from observing life.
I'd like to say that the words outside of Dachau, "Never Again" would prevail, but I know that it is not so. I see things that occur today, such as the fact that the United States engages in torture and imprisons people without charge or trial -- for years -- that do not engender protest. Genocide is occurring in Darfur, with scant news coverage. We are aggressors in waging war. The list goes on.
So long as we can label someone "different," it is so much easier for us to be able to distinguish ourselves from them and dehumanize them enough to justify whatever treatment is brought to bear against them. Whether it's rounding people up in ghettos, reservations or concentration camps, engaging in torture or even applying the "final solution" -- death.
* Ladies Who Lunch (a/k/a my office mates)
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I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
-- Elie Wiesel
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