Well, that was depressing

[booksomewench]

Wiki-crawls sometimes backfire. I was looking up Psalms on Wikipedia, and somehow went from there to reading about the Holocaust for about two and a half hours--specifically the extermination camps. I finished up with reading about the Righteous of the Nations and the article about the Danish Underground movement saved almost the entire Danish-Jewish population. It was sorta like ending on a happy note. Ish. In a way.

I will never, ever understand the extent of that kind of inhumanity. I can only hope that, should I ever have the misfortune to live through something like that, I have the courage and strength of character to behave in such a way that my name could also be listed among the "righteous."

Comments

[verrucaria.livejournal.com]

Well, here's to courage for you and me.

[claireoujisama.livejournal.com]

I know how you feel. I was looking up...God knows what on the Wikipedia the other day and ended up reading about Vietnam, specifically a massacre whose name I forget already, having the specific memory of a gnat (My Lai, I think). And there was a pilot of a helicopter who just said "WTF NO" and went against his own comrades to save the lives of civilians who were technically on the opposing side. And it was just...God. How did he do it? Even as I hoped like fuck that if I was in that situation, I'd do the same.

I went to Dachau almost two years ago, and to this day I still can't think of it without feeling so damned helpless. It's just...you stand where people died, and wonder how on earth people let it happen. People now actually live in houses that back onto it, and it scares me. How can you live beside a place where so many people died? But then, life goes on...we learn from our mistakes. Or at least, we hope like fuck we have.