When Will We Learn?

It was a particularly warm spring day in 1984. Mr. Jones had the windows open in our 9th-grade civics class, trying to let a breeze in to cool the room. Today was the day we would watch a documentary on the Holocaust. The class fell silent at the first image of the documentary as it took us through scenes at Auschwitz and Dachau. It showed the streets of Berlin, the trains transporting the Jews, soldiers herding the Jews into the camps, shaving their heads, and treating them like animals.

No one made a sound. There were no jokes to be told, not even by the usual class clowns. Tears streamed down my face and puddled into my lap. Sniffles could be heard across the room as the tissue box made its way down each row.

When the scene changed to the mass graves where bulldozers shoveled hundreds of bodies into deep ravines, pushing them like worthless garbage, I covered my mouth and ran from the room. Sprinting down the hall to the bathroom, I threw up three times. I sat on the floor sobbing for what seemed like 10 minutes before I could finally catch my breath. I splashed my face in the sink and tried to regain some composure before walking back to my classroom.

I was greeted at the door by Mr. Jones, who told me I didn’t have to go back in to watch the rest of the film. I could sit in the hallway for the remainder of the period. He told me the entire reason behind showing the documentary was to make a profound effect on each of us, hoping that if enough people were affected by the stories and visuals of the Holocaust, perhaps it would ensure that nothing like this would ever happen in our world again.

That evening, I lay in bed, wondering how this could ever happen. How could a man convince so many people to be so inhumane to a group of humans? How could he persuade the German citizens to turn on their neighbors and allow them to be tortured and killed—all based on their race? I also couldn’t understand how it could happen so quickly that the Jewish people could not escape the country and get to safety. Weren’t there any signs? Weren’t the Jewish people taking things seriously? How could this all happen so quickly?

When I was in college, there was an uprising of students in China protesting against their government because they had started to ban books and place strict controls over the people. The students protested in Tiananmen Square, and a horrible scene played out where the military shot and killed over 100 students. It was horrific to watch on television, and the images have stayed with me since that day. I couldn’t understand how a government could be so controlling and so unempathetic toward their own people. We learned how the Chinese were fed misinformation through their media and how the citizens never really knew what was going on within their own country. They were fed propaganda and only told what the government wanted them to think. I couldn’t even imagine how that felt because in America, we had a free media where we always knew what was happening. We had the truth!

I had lived through the Cold War and watched Russia control its citizens in the same way—using propaganda to convince its citizens that other countries were evil. They were kept locked in a virtual prison with very little freedom and no way to prosper. Many tried to escape to America as Russian refugees in hopes of a better life.

At the age of 55 I have had the “privilage” of enough life experience to know that our world always has been and always will be in a state of unrest. History will repeat itself over and over in different locations, with different characters, on a different stage and perhaps with a different flare. But one thing is for certain, as a whole, humanity will never learn. Just as a lobster placed in a pot of water that slowly warms to a boil, we are lulled to our own demise.

It’s happening in a half dozen countries across he world at any given time. A leader steps up, pits neighbor against neighbor and divides the country by race, socioeconomic group, ethnicity, religious belief, etc. The more division, the easier itis for them to pick off and control each small group. The easier it is to convince each group to hate others, giving way to horrific acts of inhumanity at the hands of the government, all seemingly accepted by its citizens.

Here are the answers to my questions. This is how a person could convince so many people to be so inhumane to a group of humans. How they could persuade citizens to turn on their neighbors. How it could happen so quickly that people could not flee for their safety. Some signs are subtle. Others are too outrageous to believe they are real, so people don’t take things seriously. That’s how this all happens!

Look at Gaza and Israel; the Ukraine and Russia; Sudan; Myanmar; The Democratic Republic or Congo. There is even unrest in the UK; Germany and the US.

It appears there is no answer. We will continue to repeat the same mistakes until the Earth no longer exists, until chaos overtakes humanity and ignorance wins. I pray that I am wrong. I hope that some day, some way inteligent good-hearted people will find a way to make this world a better place for us all.