“Life was filled with guns and war
And everyone got trampled on the floor
I wish we’d all been ready …
“Children died, the days grew cold
A piece of bread could buy a bag of gold
I wish we’d all been ready …”
So begin the first two stanzas to Larry Norman’s sobering song, “I Wish We’d All Been Ready,” released in 1969. Norman, considered to be one of the pioneers of Christian rock music back in the late sixties, was said to have combined “street language and gritty imagery with a mixture of reverence and rebellion” in an attempt to spread word of an impending Judgment Day in the midst of war and moral decadence.
It would seem, some half-century later, that we have arrived.
The obscure former tax-collector, the Apostle Matthew, warned, “Watch out for doomsday deceivers. Many leaders are going to show up with forged identities. They will deceive a lot of people.
“They are going to throw you to the wolves and kill you, everyone hating you because you carry my name. And then, going from bad to worse, it will be dog-eat-dog, everyone at each other’s throat, everyone hating each other.
“For many, the overwhelming spread of evil will do them in–nothing left of their love but a mound of ashes.”
Dishearteningly, this has become our reality. I sense an urgency in our world that has never existed before, at least in my lifetime.
While this may be true for me and others in my generation, we are not unique in this respect as participants in the human experience.
I have recently been viewing documentaries, as I have always appreciated them as a mirror into my own life, as well as a window into others’ life experiences.
Two such documentaries are noteworthy in the context of this column:
A 2004 “Goodbye Holland” documentary produced by International Emmy Award-winning Dutch documentary filmmaker Willy Lindwer, and a 2006 Russian Concentration Camp documentary by Anastasia Cherkassova, titled “With Much Love and Kisses.”
Both narratives demonstrate the harsh reality unmasked in philosopher George Santayana’s words, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
“Goodbye Holland”
Even though eighty percent of the Jews in Holland were transported (ninety three trainloads) across the Dutch border and exterminated–the highest percentage of any Western European country-it was done as though “silently.” People supposedly didn’t see anything. They were not aware of what was happening, or they “chose” not to see anything.
The mass expulsion and killing of members of Holland’s unwanted ethnic/ religious group began with what can be seen as organized isolation in which every step taken was excessive. Their grief and humanity were completely ignored, evidenced by an icy indifference stimulated by those in positions of authority.
Decisions and actions unquestionably exposed the myth of Dutch tolerance.
“The magnitude of these tragic events is something I have never been fully able to comprehend,” expressed the film’s producer Willy Lindwer. “It is disturbing to see that, despite everything that happened, people haven’t learned anything from the past.”
“With Much Love and Kisses”
This retelling is, at its roots, a geography of evil. Shortly after the Bolshevik revolution, a forced-labor camp was set up on the Solovetsky Islands, located in Russia’s Onega Bay of the White Sea. Solovki prison was the first of a network of detention camps known as Gulag. Over twenty years of its existence, thousands of prisoners passed through the camp, many never to return.
Gulags were never as notorious as under Stalin’s regime. Thousands of Russians, including many intellectuals who were considered so-called “enemies of the people” [those who refused to adhere to Stalin’s cult], were arrested and transported to this barren place in the 1920s and 1930s.
“Stalin’s regime forcibly purged society of what it saw as threats to itself and its brand of communism, which included political dissidents, and those of the working class who demonstrated ‘counter-revolutionary sympathies,” writes Jeffrey Rossman, Associate Professor and Director, Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies.
The documentary’s linear narrative, depicting stories about executions, mass graves and solitary confinement in a freezing cell, explains what happens to a human being when his freedom is taken away. What remains of his human dignity if all he can think about is hunger and cold?
One such “enemy of the people,” portrayed in the film, was Andrei Snesarev, the son of a Russian Orthodox priest. Snesarev, a veteran of the First World War, became the creator and director of the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies. In his diary Snesarev writes, “It is important to fix every day with its details to remember better what you have indeed lived through …I am ashamed because my life is driven by my hungry stomach stressed by circumstances, and my mind and heart are silent. It is not my fault, but I am ashamed of a mere physiological weakness of my heart and power of my stomach. I am turning into a real Marxist …” November 17, 1929.
Author Mark O’Green may provide insight into Snesarva’s contemplation. Green, in addition to being a distinguished game designer, is a member of a group of science fiction writers who consult with the government on how to defend against possible attacks in our future. Green writes, “Evil is when good gets completely screwed up! Evil is when brave people can’t be brave anymore! Evil is an anagram of vile!” Green implores us, “There’s got to be a moral standard somewhere!”
Gene Roddenberry, creator of the original Star Trek television series, held strongly to the conviction that “Evil seeks to maintain power by suppressing the truth.” (an understatement!)
In blunt contrast to Star Trek, we aren’t living science fiction–although sometimes what we are experiencing presents itself as surreal. This is unquestionably our severe reality in the frontier into which we are about to venture.
When German-born theoretical physicist Albert Einstein was visiting the United States in 1933, when Adolf Hitler came to power, Einstein elected not to return to Germany because of his Jewish background. He instead settled in the United States and became an American citizen in 1940. Einstein correctly warned, “The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”
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