Night

The only Holocaust literature I've ever read would probably be classified as Young Adult. The Diary of Anne Frank, Number the Stars. I recently read Night by Elie Wiesel. It's a harrowing account of his time in Nazi concentration camps.

I guess maybe I fall into the trap of staying away from "depressing" stuff because I know how easily my mood is affected. I have to make sure I'm in a really good, resilient mood before I attempt anything by Haruki Murakami. I don't even listen to Coldplay anymore, despite how much I really love the band. I take advantage of every sunny day and brace myself for every rainy one. That's just me.

But sometimes we have to face the reality and even the horror of things because it is truth. We have to allow ourselves to come to terms with evil. Maybe we have to force ourselves to see how low humanity can go.

Something that scares me about being human (as if I could be anything else) is the recognition that we all have the capacity to commit atrocities. It's so easy to think, especially when you have made the choice to resist evil and surround yourself with positive, godly examples, that you are above sinking so low. But the fact is that we are all made of the same stuff. Given the right cocktail of circumstances, victim or victimizer, how can you say how you would react? How could you say that you'd never throw another human being into an incinerator if you were made to believe that you were superior and that you were completely justified in doing so? How could you say that you'd never kill another human being over a piece of bread if you were nothing more than a starving shell of what you used to be and your only impulse was the basic will to survive? How could you say that your faith would stay intact despite bombardment with demoralizing and dehumanizing images and situations: being jam packed into train cars without room to move or breathe, seeing babies thrown into fire pits, smelling the stench of burning human flesh, living in constant fear and being stripped of everything you love and hope for?

On the flip side, once seeing examples of the horror that humanity is capable is creating, in the end, I realize that even though I can't do anything about history, I still have a choice now. I can choose to rise above evil. I can choose not to sit idly by when I see evil being committed. I can do everything in my power to never allow the Holocaust to ever happen again.