There are few things that truly make me upset.  The biggest is ignorance.

“…she [Anne Frank] died three days before the camp was liberated, it makes me ill.  They knew the liberation was coming and they still went to the gas chamers?!”

~A Patron after the show

Ok, so you sit through two-and-a-half hours of a wonderful production of The Diary of Anne Frank in Salt Lake City, UT and this is what I hear people saying as they leave the theatre.  Go figure.

Go figure also that this comment came from a woman who looked to possibly have been old enough to at least have been born shortly after the war, it would seem to me that someone of that generation should have a little more understanding of what went on.

It amazes me how many people are just completely ignorant of the things that happened during World War II, especially people who are my age or older.  Are events from less than 100 years ago so quickly forgotten all the time?  Did people not learn about this in school like I did?  Does world history not get taught as thoroughly when you move this far west in this country?  Seriously.  Is Utah just that sheltered?

I can’t imagine that all of those things are true or that this is an isolated case.  Mostly because I know that when the show was being produced in Indiana they received similar remarks and questions there.  I will be very intrigued to hear the talkback after the student matinee on Wednesday.

I am having a hard time forming coherent thoughts, can you tell….

This is a period of history that I am sure that many people would love to forget, but it is something that we never should forget.  Sure, it didn’t happen here, in the United States, but it happened.  Even more forgotten is the fact that it almost did happen here, with the Japanese.  How does it come to pass that over a span of over 10 years the world was plagued with some of the grossest violations of human rights that have ever been seen.  How can we combat the continuing threats of genocide in other parts of the world today when we can’t even remember one of the biggest?  Why is it that people just don’t seem to understand history.

I grew up going to religious school, “Hebrew school” as we called it.  I was taught there about the Holocaust.  In public school we read books like The Diary of Anne Frank, Number the Stars, and The Devil’s Arithmetic.  I know some kids who even read Ellie Wiesel and Schindler’s List in high school.  I am pretty sure that at some point in my public school career we watched Schindler’s List.  All of this is grounds for not only a great English class, but for great history classes as well.  Anne Frank was 13 years old when she was writing, and her words were more powerful and better written than many modern published authors.  She wrote a perspective on the war that we see very little of.  Most books and movies focus on the ghettos, the concentration camps and the war itself.  This look at a life of hiding, waiting, never being able to get away from the people you live with is just so different.  It also shows that despite some of the darkest times in our history, there is still some light.

The other day a colleague asked me how watching this play made me feel, did it make me upset, is it hard to watch every night?  In all honesty, no, it isn’t really.  This is something I grew up with, grew up learning about.  I am proud to work on this production, especially on nights like tonight when i know that someone was actually touched by the story.  Zachor – Remember.  To me, that is what it is all about.  We need to remember, and if this helps, then I am happy.

Are there still things that make me upset when I think about the Holocaust, of course.  Could I walk through the museum in D.C. or Yad VaShem in Israel without being moved, no.  It is part of our history as a global community and it is part of my history.  On Passover we remember the Exodus from Egypt by saying “I was there when God took us out of Egypt…” and I think that there are many who feel that the Holocaust needs to be remembered the same way.

As bloggers, many try to leave what they hope will be a lasting impression on the world. Some might actually do that.  We all want to be remembered.  The real question is, will anyone be able to do it the same way that a 13 year old girl did with a fountain pen and a diary?

I am kind of backlogged with posts.  We overlooked the fact that Bloggerstock fell on Memorial Day for those of us living in the USA.  It isn’t actually Memorial Day anymore as I write this, but I thought that I should get it down while the idea was fresh.  So, it is a belated Memorial Day post, and forgive me if I use the wrong tenses when referring to things in this post as I am probably not really thinking about it in relation to when it will actually be posted.

After catching up with a friend for the better part of the afternoon on Memorial Day I headed home and flipped on the television.  Of the programs that were worth watching, all of them were war related.  It made sense.  Memorial Day is a day set aside to remember those who gave their lives for our country.  Most countries in the world have similar national holidays.  It is probably the most honorable of all the national holidays that we have in the USA, and yet by many it is probably one more that gets overlooked or thought of as just another day off from school.

The men an women that we commemorate on on this day deserve our respect as do all the men and women currently in the service of the nation.  They fought and are fighting to preserve the ideals that make up our way of life.  They are there no matter what the threat, be it war or natural disaster.  They are certainly brave and giving souls.

However, when I sit and really think about it, I always come back to the question of why.  Why do we humans have to wreak such terrible conflicts across the globe?  Why do we, for whatever reason, always think that we are better than the next person?  What makes “us” right and “them” wrong?  I mean, when you really think about it, the people who are “right” are really just the people with the best fighting force, the people who “win.”  How is it that in reality the side with the bigger and better army and weapons is the side that is right?  Obviously in any conflict, both parties THINK they are right, otherwise there wouldn’t be a conflict.  Thus, why?

Then of course you have the people who are anti-war, the pacifists, the people who just generally disagree with the government, the people who seek peaceful solutions, and a whole host of other groups.  They all think they are right.  The “peaceful protester” thinks that his methods are better than the “normal protester” or the riotous crowd.  And of course that there is just the seeds of conflict among people who may actually be “fighting” for ultimately the same cause.

It doesn’t really matter who you are, I think that we are all guilty of thinking that we are in the right and someone else is in the wrong.  Sure, there are probably time when this is true, however, there are most likely times that we have been in arguments or fights with people where both sides could equally justify their position as right.  There are few things outside of math and science that actually have a clear right and wrong answer.  Our day-to-day assessments of right and wrong are based on the moral code that we each live by.  However, my moral code is not exactly the same as anyone else’s yet there are many people who would tell me that my morals are wrong.  What makes your moral code better or more “right” than mine?

Why can’t we really just accept that everyone is an individual and that we cannot all fit in the same mold?  I guess really I just find it unfortunate that we have such a need for a holiday like Memorial Day.  While we should always remember and honor those who gave their lives in our defense, I would hope that some day in the future we will be able to stop adding names to the list of people to commemorate.