I have seen and read a lot about the world in my 68 years. Out of curiosity, yesterday, I read an obituary of a local person who had served in WWII, and participated in the freeing of prisoners at a German concentration camp that I had never heard of before. My curiosity was peeked to find out how many concentration camps the Germans operated during the War, so I googled and found out there were many more that I hadn't heard of or read about. While getting that info on the internet, I came across dozens of pictures of the liberation of numerous camps showing multiple images of the dead and dying. I had seen some of the pictures before, but much like the local Stokes collection of Chattanooga pictures, many of the images were new to me. Needless to say I had to turn away with tears in my eyes.
The same had to be said about the pictures of the inside of the school in Pakistan. I had to turn away with tears in my eyes. Quoting others, "The only thing required for evil to prevail, is for good men and women to do nothing." The world cannot and will not condone the evil of the Pakistani attack, nor the atrocities of the holocaust. One thing we all can do (if nothing else), is to make sure the history of these atrocities is passed on to future generations, through our books, libraries, schools,and museums; to sear an indelible mark on our minds, so that with God's help, we can eliminate them, and mankind is not doomed to repeat them.
My teenage son was assigned to read "Night" by Elie Weisel, which tells about his experience with his father in the Nazi German concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Weisel penned many books, but also a play, "The Trial of God" -- putting God on trial to see if he was guilty for allowing the holocaust( an interesting play to read). Our children have to carry the "baton" of knowledge on to their children. Our teachers have a more sacred duty of exposing our children to these concepts; maybe a college curriculum of "Inhumanities" rather than "Humanities," lest we fall victim to what I heard a DD survivor say about how an elementary school teacher introduced him to the class when he was going to tell them about storming the beaches in Normandy: "Today boys and girls, we have a speaker who is going to tell you somethings about World War Eleven."
Jerry Sloan
Ooltewah