“…The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” (Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln)
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It began as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free; one hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination; one hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity; one hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land. “I Have a Dream Speech,” August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr
In this kingdom of darkness, there were many people. People who came from all the occupied lands of Europe. And then there were the Gypsies and the Poles and the Czechs ... It is true that not all the victims were Jews. But all the Jews were victims.
Now, as then, we ask the question of all questions: what was the meaning of what was so routinely going on in this kingdom of eternal night. What kind of demented mind could have invented this system?
And it worked. The killers killed, the victims died, and the world was the world, and everything else was going on, life as usual. In the towns nearby, what happened? In the lands nearby, what happened? Life was going on where God's creation was condemned to blasphemy by their killers and their accomplices. 50th Anniversary Speech of the liberation of Auschwitz, 1995, Elie Wiesel
I remember: it happened yesterday or eternities ago. A young Jewish boy discovered the kingdom of night. I remember his bewilderment, I remember his anguish. It all happened so fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed.
I remember: he asked his father: “Can this be true?” This is the twentieth century, not the Middle Ages. Who would allow such crimes to be committed? How could the world remain silent? Excerpt from “Night” Elie Wiesel
"You had a group on one side, and you had a group on the other, and they came at each other with clubs, and it was vicious, and it was horrible, and it was a horrible thing to watch. But there is another side. There was a group on this side — you can call them the left, you just called them the left — that came violently attacking the other group. So you can say what you want, but that's the way it is.” August 12, 2018, Response to violence at Charlottesville, Donald Trump
At 68, I have marveled at the advances in technology, medicine, and creativity during the six soon to be seven decades of my life. I have read history books, I pour over the events of the past, and motivate myself to discover where the thinking went wrong, where the misery began, where the ignorance advanced. As a Communal worker, I worked with groups, trying to determine the commonalities, and reach out to understand why the differences seemed to matter more. I had made unity a mission, acceptance a purpose, inclusion a certainty. America had never been a perfect nation, but somehow some people always strived to become better. I learned from both the Black community, the Jewish Community and the LGBTQ community that remaining silent equal death, and promised myself to ALWAYS speak loud, and speak out. And now, today In my country, in Washington DC, there is a gathering of men and women and sadly children whose intent is to destroy, diminish, decimate any form of democracy, to exclude, and explode this nation into a Civil War, not a geographical war, but a Culture War/a Crusade/a replication of bigotry, hate, envy and exclusion. I had hoped we could become better than this…but then understanding our differences much better than most Americans, Vladimir Putin created a puppet, Trump and a gang of self-serving politicians to hone in on fear and loathing. Is this our future…if so whatever happened to our past!
