Dehumanization

LISTEN. Two remarkable human beings visited our campus and shared their stories of survival yesterday.

Frances Cutler Hahn was a hidden child in France. Born in 1938, she was very young when her parents hid her in a Catholic children’s home to save her life. During the Holocaust she practiced two religions, had five names and took refuge in seven homes with eight different families. Her mother was murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau and her father, a member of the French resistance, died of wounds he suffered in combat. 

Jack Cohen, born in 1932 in Greece, lived as quietly as possible in the Italian occupied section of Greece from 1941 until the Germans began arresting and deporting Greek Jews to the ghettos and death camps in 1943. The family fled to a monastery in the mountains for two years until it became too dangerous to remain there. Once again the family fled, this time to a small village, until the end of the war. Although most of the family survived, Jack’s grandmother was captured and, presumably, murdered. They never saw her again.

Our last CoPhi midterm report presentation, in a coincidence of serendipitous synchronicity,  immediately preceded this event. The topic: "dehumanization." That's exactly the deplorable phenomenon behind the holocaust, and behind so much of the loathsome ugliness in our public political discourse today.

As Mr. Cohen said, that's humanity at its worst; but we should turn our attention and our intentions to humanity at its best. Without the kindness, altruism, and willingness to "stick their necks out" of some "righteous Gentiles," said Mrs. Hahn, countless more innocent lives (including hers and Mr. Cohen's) would have been sacrificed to irrational hatred. Most of us are not haters, but few of us want to stick our necks out. That's how the haters win.

An important reminder, on Halloween, that there's nothing scarier in the known universe than human indifference to the suffering and injustice perpetrated by our fellow humans: “Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.” Primo Levi

“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented... For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.” Elie Wiesel