Unfathomable Prejudice!

It is always mystifying why groups of people are hated. Sure, much has been written about prejudice in order to get a handle on its dynamics. And still, it is unfathomable that an entire ethnic or racial group is categorized as objects of hate. From my perspective, it was always easy for me to twist things around and to look at life as though I too were a member of the group that was so negatively categorized. How would I have felt? Wouldn’t I be angry, if not violent, in reaction to these irrational views of others?

“Lives of Others” is a film that captures the Stasi’s penetration of East Germany by their surveillance of whomever was determined to be a person that could jeopardize their government’s control. While there is some redeeming aspects to the film, it was such a strange feeling watching the total control that government officials had over the population.

“Farewell, Shanghai” was originally written in Bulgarian by Angel Wagenstein. The very depressing story traces some Jews who were “lucky” to escape Germany as Hitler started to initiate his program to remove all Jews. The horrors depicted in their migration to Shanghai, one of the few places that they could enter, and in the subsequent decisions to establish a ghetto for them in this forsaken place, were only compounded when the Allies bombed the area as the end of WWII winded down. There were no redeeming aspects to this narrative; it was totally depressing. And all of this based on total prejudice of a people!

If we could read this in order to only recall the past, it would be an educational experience. However, reading newspapers constantly reminds us that this phenomenon has not stopped. History is telling us that this blinding hatred is destroying the lives of so many, in so many places, so often that one is left dazed and bewildered.

The cries of Eli Weisel, “Never Again”, echo in a chamber isolated from reality. There has to be a way for our world to deal with such hatred and yet, we seem immobilized as we read of continuing horrors perpetrated by one group on another.

My view is that we have to promote a change in the United Nations Charter to support an additional mission of being able to initiate action against those who are involved in the commission of genocide.