Re: [BearwWthoutBorders] My prologue to the German Guilt article was cut off (!?) Here it is.

Very thoughtfully put, David.  We're a few years apart but we've both -- as have others in our vicinity -- lived through some hideous times.  One's values are constantly being tested -- sometimes in a whirlwind.  When I started out to Save the World, a much older friend warned me that, in the last analysis, we'd all do well to save our "own little corner."  

But with you, I always sense a basic optimism -- grounded on ultimate faith in Humanity.  I, along with a vast number of us, have tried to hang onto that, some way and somehow.

That's the fuel that keeps us going -- and, if we haven't lost it by now, we never will.

The lessons of history are myriad and I'm not inclined to dismiss them in cavalier fashion.  But, on the other hand, time-lock is dangerous, to the individual and the Cause -- no matter how abstract, even foggy, the latter may seem at times.

I recall spending a couple of hours, back in the '80s, speaking to a classroom full of young white Southerners, most of them Mississippians.  They liked my style of lecture, replete with apt story-telling, but the real "meat" of the moment came when a fair number wanted to talk in a semi-private atmosphere.  In an interesting number of cases, they wanted to know "how" their parents and grandparents had supported, via commission and omission, the horrible system (whose residues were still out around us and whose effects were still, however indirectly, continuing.)

I talked of the skeleton hand of Dixie history and its various sociological components -- and I could tell them honestly that what I'd seen in Chicago, for example, was just as evil -- if flowing from somewhat different headwaters.  And I had to admit, too, that, apropos of Clarence Darrow's frequent examples of the power of environment, It -- It -- could happen to any of us as it had their parents and grandparents -- if the cards had fallen out in such a dark direction.

We ended, more or less, on the note that we can learn from History -- but should never become trapped.  And that our best answer to the old but still resilient Horrors is to learn and then "look away" and look ahead -- work for something far better and vastly more healthy than our elders, whatever their perspectives, had ever known.

All best, Hunter

----- Original Message ----- 
  From: David McReynolds 
  To: Hunter Gray ; Friends of Hunter Bear 
  Sent: Saturday, March 30, 2013 9:26 PM
  Subject: Re: [BearwWthoutBorders] My prologue to the German Guilt article was cut off (!?) Here it is.


  Of all the events in my lifetime, one of the few I still find incomprehensible is the Holocaust - not only the six million Jews, but the additional six million Slavs, etc.

  The Soviet Union committed terrible crimes - the Katyn Massacre in 1940 of over 20,000 Polish officers and intellectuals by the Soviets (later confirmed by the Soviet Union) was one of many such examples. But terrible as this slaughter was, at least it had
  a terrible logic to it - Stalin wanted to eliminate possible opposition to communist rule in Poland. 

  In the case of the Holocaust, this diverted time and resources which were badly needed by the Nazis to pursue a course which was not only criminal but literally insane - the murder of people who could have provided needed labor in German factories, where so many workers had been drafted and sent to war.

  And the sheer number of those murdered was so huge that there had to have been more than "a few" select military folks who knew about it.

  However . . . this theory of the collective guilt of peoples is a very risky line to pursue. One might just as well apply it to the Israelis, and ask how it is possible for a civilized, educated people to carry out the barbaric (and illegal) actions of the Occupation over a period of decades. 

  This issue - the Holocaust - haunts the contemporary history of the Germans. But we, for our part, need to ask how aware we are of the terrible suffering in the immediate postwar period when millions of Germans who had lived in what was then Czechoslovakia were forced from their homes into a Germany where there was no food, no housing.

  We need to keep in mind the millions of Germans killed in the war, most of them civilians, many of them either very old or terribly young. I remember on my first trip to Europe in 1951, by boat (in those days cheaper than air! I was on my way to a youth
  pacifist conference in Denmark) long and heated arguements with a young German returning from Canada. Not sure how he got to Canada, he was very young but had served on the Eastern front (the Nazis were throwing teenagers into combat). I tried to convince him of the burden of the murder of the Jews. in the end, he broke off the discussion by yelling "how dare you talk about the Jews we killed when you killed millions of civilians with your bombing!". (Which alas was true).

  And yes, anti-Semitism was a serious problem in Poland, and yes,rape from the Soviet troops was more common than rape from the US forces.

  In the end we are left with a great horror - not just that these crimes were committed, but that Hitler was ever able to come to power in the first place.

  However to treat the Germans as special is to fail to look at the deepest horror . . . there are very few among us who would not have served as guards in the concentration camps if we found ourselves trapped. 

  Sometimes (and I KNOW the two things are NOT the same) I wonder how I can explain that the American people elected Reagan not once, but twice, and Nixon not once, but twice. And George W. Bush not once but twice.

  David McReynolds


  On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 3:30 PM, Hunter Gray <[email protected]> wrote:

    This -- the guilt of Germans re WW2 -- is broadly interesting.  Many in this country had relatives who suffered grievously, often lethally, at the hands of the Nazis.  Others had relatives who fought, often died, in the European theatre.  Both Eldri and I remain wary of "Germans" in the abstract sense but find ourselves making exceptions for some individual German nationals. We are also aware that there were some Germans who fought the Nazis and were killed or imprisoned.  Eldri is Finnish, Saami, Scandinavian -- and very much aware of what happened in Norway.  Although I have a few close German speaking relatives and ancestors, they are/were Swiss -- but I'm certainly aware of the racial/ethnic and other atrocities of Germany. 

    Much closer to us is the question of "forgiving" in the "post-war" era -- figuratively and literally -- old Dixie adversaries.  We've been pretty open to that -- if it's reasonably clear the individual involved has been in the process of positive change on racial issues.  (Having read the great fantasy, GWTW, as a child -- and viewed the flick many times -- I've always had some sense of the "mind of the Old South."  Besides, General W.T. Sherman was also extremely anti-Native in thought and conduct.)  I zealously and venomously hated a certain white Mississippi family for seven years -- 1963-1970 -- but then we all publicly "buried the hatchet."  They had changed much for the better and I'd grown up a little more.  H.


    HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis 
    Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk 
    Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO
    www.hunterbear.org 
    (much social justice material)

    See the new and expanded/updated edition of my "Organizer's 
    Book." It's the inside story of the massive Jackson Movement,
    bloody repression and murder, and more -- including a myriad
    of organizing "lessons."  And with my new and 10,000 word
    Introduction. http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm (". .a local activist's
     important account of the deleterious effects the involvement of 
    national organizations can have on indigenous protest movements."
    David Garrow in "The Age of the Unheralded", Progressive Magazine,
    April 1990.

    See my piece ON BEING A MILITANT AND RADICAL
    ORGANIZER -- AND AN EFFECTIVE ONE:
    http://crmvet.org/comm/hunter1.htm

    The Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
    http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm
    (Expanded in 2012. Photos. Material on our Native
    background.) 


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