Sincerely War

Is it possible to be fair and balanced when reporting on such atrocities such as the sights of Buchenwald, or, more recently, the Iraqi orphanage where American and Iraqi soldiers found starving children, tied to cribs or sleeping on cement?

I do not believe it is possible, nor do I believe it is necessary. Horrific things happened—it isn’t irresponsible or unfair to report those horrific things exactly as they were nor is it unfair to report any responses to them.

Here are the opening sentences of both stories: The first is from Edward R. Murrow’s radio broadcast of the liberation of Buchenwald in 1945.

There surged around me an evil-smelling stink, men and boys reached out to touch me. They were in rags and the remnants of uniforms. Death already had marked many of them, but they were smiling with their eyes. I looked out over the mass of men to the green fields beyond, where well-fed Germans were ploughing….

Full transcript

Murrow tells the story, exactly as he sees it and he apologizes for nothing. He feels the public should know what happened in Buchenwald and the determination and disgust in his voice are very apparent. It is at times hard to listen to, it is perhaps more real, seems less fictitious, than reading a memoir and therefore does not allow the listener to become detached in any way.

The second account is a CBS News story from 2007 telling of when American and Iraqi soldiers found the suffering orphans.

It was a scene that shocked battle-hardened soldiers, captured in photographs obtained exclusively by CBS News.

On a daytime patrol in central Baghdad just over than a week ago, a U.S. military advisory team and Iraqi soldiers happened to look over a wall and found something horrific.

Horrific is not necessarily a fair and balanced word in the world of journalism, unless it is a direct quote, but I do not believe another word should have taken its place.

The two passages are very similar even though one is being reported on more than 60 years after the other. The language is very simple, plain, and precise. Although some of what is reported is opinion based, such as Murrow saying, “evil-smelling stink” or the CBS News using the word “horrific” but in such circumstances I think it is ok to voice opinions in order to better communicate the story to the reader or listener.

Elie Wiesel was quite like a reporter, despite the fact he was looking back on the events that had happened, he gave the accounts of what occurred, with little to no commentary. He simply told his story, as biased as he should have been he did not dwell on the evilness of the people or the place he was confined by, nor did he tell his story in a way that made him seem better or more deserving of survival than any other prisoner.

Even though his story is told in first person, it is a story just like the two stories cited above. Each reporter has his or her own perspective and therefore inserts themselves into their stories whether they want to or not.

Murrow ends his broadcast with these words:

I pray you to believe what I have said about Buchenwald. I reported what I saw and heard, but only part of it. For most of it, I have no words.

If I have offended you by this rather mild account of Buchenwald, I’m not in the least sorry….

I believe these words can also describe Elie Wiesel’s work. He makes no apologies for what happened to him nor does he apologize for needing to tell his story.

What makes all three of these stories compelling, heart wrenching and dramatic is their sincerity and no one should make apologies for that.

Detachment from the past

Each day that moves us into the future removes us even farther from the past. The connections that this world has with the world of WWII become fewer and further between and the real people in memoirs or documentaries become more like characters of fiction.

It is hard to imagine that anyone who lived during or through the Holocaust is still around today. It is even tougher to imagine that anyone who served on the side of the Nazis was able to continue enjoying their lives and their freedoms for more than 60 years after the war ended.

It does happen, however. People slip through the cracks and are allowed to go on, living seemingly normal lives. One of them happened to turn up in Ohio. An Associated Press Article tells of the man, John Demjanjuk, and the charges he is facing.

German prosecutors said Wednesday they have charged retired Ohio auto worker John Demjanjuk with more than 29,000 counts of accessory to murder for his time as a guard at the Nazis’ Sobibor death camp, and will seek his extradition from the U.S.

Demjanjuk is accused of participating in the murders while he was a guard at the Nazi camp in occupied Poland between March and September 1943.

“In this capacity, he participated in the accessory to murder of at least 29,000 people of the Jewish faith,” Munich prosecutors said in a statement.

Read the full article here: Former Nazi camp guard charged 29,000 times

I cannot even fathom one of Elie Wiesel’s or Vladek Spiegelman’s camp guards being around today, unscathed and free, despite the crimes they committed during WWII. These people, as real as they were and are, are about as tangible for me as the monster under the bed.

How could this be? There cannot be living WWII Nazis, not today, not in the 21^st century…

Just as Elie Wiesel could not believe the crimes committed by the Nazis were even occurring during the 20^th century.

…I could not believe that human beings were being burned in our times; the world would

never tolerate such crimes…(Wiesel 33)

There are those who are proving they will leave no stone unturned in the search for all of those involved in the Holocaust.

Efraim Zuroff, the top Nazi hunter at Israel’s Simon Wiesenthal Center, said he was “very pleased that the German authorities have taken this step.”

“We hope that the process can be expedited to ensure that this Holocaust perpetrator will finally be appropriately punished,” Zuroff told the AP in a telephone interview from Jerusalem. “We’re on our way to a victory for justice today.”

If this man is guilty and did in fact serve as a Nazi prison guard, has he felt any guilt or remorse for the crimes he committed against the Jewish people and against humanity in general? I know human beings will do almost anything to protect themselves from punishment, whether they deserve it or not, but isn’t there a point when the guilt becomes unbearable?

I cannot even imagine being responsible, fully or partially, in ending a person’s life, let alone ending the lives of 29,000 innocent people.

This man is at least well into his seventies and in my opinion, has already gotten away with his crimes. He emigrated to the U.S. in the 50’s and led a normal life, raising a family and working at an auto company. He (as far as I am aware) was not forced to abandon everything he knew and loved because of his race or religion. Even if he were sent to prison for the rest of his life, justice will not have been served.

What’s in a name?

In the preface to Elie Wiesel’s novel “Night” he talks about the need to invent a new language.

It became clear that it would be necessary to invent a new language. But how was one to rehabilitate and transform words betrayed and perverted by the enemy? Hunger—thirst—fear—transport—selection—fire—chimney; these words all have intrinsic meaning, but in those times, they meant something else (Wiesel ix).

This talk of perverting language immediately made me think of an article I read a few months ago. An article that made me ask the question, what’s in a name?

Well, I guess it depends on the name, right?

Read it here: Happy birthday, Adolf Hitler! Boy with nazi leader’s name denied ShopRite cake

Adolf has two sisters, JoyceLynn Aryan Nation and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie. The latter, just eight months old, was named for Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler.

The article also says the father denies the holocaust even occurred and has his home decorated with swastikas. Really? A man who gave his children Nazi themed names denies the holocaust. Who would’ve thought? I bet he thinks the south won the Civil War, too.

They’re just names, you know, father Heath Campbell told the Easton Express-Times. Yeah, they (the Nazis) were bad people back then. But my kids are little. They’re not going to grow up like that.

If they are just names, as the father says, then why do they conjure images of gas chambers, emaciated faces and one of the worst instances of racism the world has known? (At least in my mind and I am sure in many others as well.)

The parents could have easily picked other names for their three children but it is obvious they intentionally chose these names. The fact that they were denied a cake with “Happy Birthday Adolf Hitler” on it serves them right; they need to know, at least in some way, that naming their son Adolf Hitler was wrong and offensive in so many different ways.

The parents insist they are not racist, although they don’t believe in mingling the races. And Heath Campbell claims he doesn’t understand why people are shocked when they hear his son’s full name. Someone give him a history book.

These parents have not only used these perverted names to idolize monsters of the past, they have also done a great disservice to their children. Any person capable of retaining an ounce of historical information knows what the name Hitler represents. A person with only a slightly greater knowledge of WWII would probably know what the other names symbolize and, surely, these children will have biases against them and against their parents (who are at least more deserving of them than their children) upon the learning of their names.

The names are not funny or ironic; they are living, breathing tributes to a horrific event in humankind’s history.

*On a side note, the three children were removed from their parents custody in February. No details have been released as to why the children have been put into state custody. Read about it here.

The Liberation of Buchenwald Reported by Edward R. Murrow

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYVn0hzcSs0

This is a link to the actual broadcast that aired when Buchenwald, the concentration camp Elie Wiesel was in, was liberated by American troops. Watching the video is not necessary, just as Murrow’s words were not originally accompanied by any pictures.