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SECOND GENERATION
L O S A N G E LES
Sons and Daughters of Jewish Holocaust Survivors
email: 2ndGen@imeg.com
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G2 Newsletter
Volume, 16, Number 3
Tishrei 5760
October 1999
PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE
"... Is this violence a distinct result of a deteriorating social fabric in
America, or is there a world-wide change?
"
The Jewish New Year has come again; this time it presages the end of
the secular century. Whether or not the completion of the Gregorian century
is meaningful with respect to our calendar, it is certainly meaningful to
our people. The close of this period is welcomed by a people who have
seen so much death, destruction, and dislocation, and only the passage of
time allows us to assess the impact of mankind's actions on civilization.
Certainly Western culture has taken a step backward. For all its
scientific and technical achievement, as a community of human beings we
have not progressed toward those universalistic goals of peace,
self-determination, and respect for the dignity of mankind.
If we were to look back one hundred years, and set ourselves in an
industrialized nation, among the middle class, it would have been quite
inconceivable that, given technological success, the benefits of health,
work, and security would not have been advanced throughout the culture.
Thoughts of war against civilian targets, and the destruction of Europe as
the center of culture would have seemed impossible. To the progressive
mind, it would have seemed unlikely that the wealth and success of a
nation would have been undermined by an expanding chasm between the
educated elite, and the uneducated masses; that the benefits of art,
music, and literature would be enjoyed by a diminishing, and greying
audience rather than its disconnected and disheartened youth; that hope
for a secure tomorrow safe from random acts of terror would be available
to a cloistered few behind security bars and gated communities, rather
than citizens who seek active participation in a whole community. Our
present world would have surprised our forebearers.
Now these significant social problems are not new; the challenges of
this disconnected culture have confronted Western civilization. The
difference is that now our frustration and anger can be turned into mass
violence. Technology, and perhaps a society with limitless boundaries,
allows for more damage than ever before. Witness the recent attacks on
Orthodox Jews going home from Shabbat in Chicago, synagogue fires and
vandalism in Sacramento, and the recent shootings in our own backyard at
the North Valley Jewish Community Center. These are not symptoms a rising
proportion of anti-semitism among Americans, just a rising proportion of violence committed by anti-semites.
Is this violence a distinct result of a deteriorating social fabric
in America, or is there a world-wide change? I would propose that there is
greater violence as a direct result of a greater disrespect for life
internationally. As discussed previously in these pages, we live as a
culture not so much of violence, but of disrespect for the sanctity of
life. The numbing effects of mass extermination, first experienced in
the trenches of the "Great War" and later directed against civilian
populations- Armenian, Jews, Africans and others- has desensitized the
civilization to death and to the suffering of human beings.
Many among us fear comparisons of the Shoah with other mass
exterminations, and I would agree that the Shoah was distinct, not
because it affected our people, but because it was a watershed event.
The Shoah represents, to this very day, a distinct attempt to undermine
Western civilization. Its architects had sought the extermination of a
people on the basis of "biologic" or "genetic" grounds, and sought to
create a purified "volk" committed to the value of "blood and soil".
These values were distinct from prevailing religious values of piety,
humility, and acceptance' separate from existing social values of decency,
charity, and community. Nazi values accepted violence, devastation, and
death as a means to achieving the pure Aryan state where an Aryan culture,
philosophy, and ethos would co-exist with a purified Aryan people. No
brotherhood of mankind was preached from the Nazi pulpit, but one of
arrogance and disrespect for others, even for the lives of others.
As a watershed event, the Shoah was the result of a natural, and
very rapid, application of German fascist philosophy- the world first for
the benefit of the Aryan race. It has been copied by many others over
the ensuing decades.
There have always been inherent conflicts in Western civilization:
liberty and equality, justice and freedom, fairness and democracy. But
never before had a philosophy taken hold so antithetical to these values,
disparate and inconsistent though they may be. Now the subordination of
life to the fulfillment of some strange value-system is commonplace, a
distinct change in the culture of humankind.
It has taken over fifty years to begin to appreciate the
ramifications of the Nazi "experiment." Fifty years were required to
bury the dead and to rebuild lives for the surviving victims. And fifty
years were required to begin to process what happened to the way we see
other human beings after this deluge.
Only now have philosophers, ethicists, and artists have come to
the challenge of memory, and the implications of the Shoah. A powerful
example is our exhibit, entitled "Memory and Meaning: The Holocaust
Through the Eyes of the Artist." Second Generation is proud to have
sponsored this event, without question the most significant Art exhibit of
the season in Southern California. There is nothing like it, and the
response has been dramatic. You must see it, and see how artists now
interpret the events of our history.
-Gary Schiller, M.D.
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