An Open Letter to Klara Polzl and Alois Schicklgruber.
The World would have been a better place without someone like Adolf Hitler having ever entered it. The World could have been saved from a terrible tragedy, a Catastrophe, an affront to all of humanity. These two people atop of the page could have foregone a union which would have saved somewhere in the region of 50 to 70 Million people. A chance to cheer? From the debilitating effects of war and death attributable to a debased human being, humanity has come to know the depths to which mankind can truly plunge. If only this suspended union could have been effected, what we would then have come to learn would have saved the World entire. For these two future parents, no doubt ignorant of what was to come, own a responsibility they had no warning of. The premise then, for us to ensure that the World does not have to attempt to comprehend what the Slaughter of 6,000,000 Jews in The Holocaust has come to mean, Hitler should not have been born.
Tragically, it was far too late once Hitler strode the world stage to attach any regret to what a Parent of his should or shouldn’t have done. From a 2,000 year old hatred so vile and vitriolic, Hitler brought that antisemitic hatred to new lows. It is Hitler’s final solution which engaged in antisemitism’s abhorrent nature. What then emerged under Hitler’s tutelage is an atrocity that has exposed the World to further Genocides. Ever since the certain product of Hitler’s Parental union, and once Adolf Hitler was born in 1889, the history of mankind has been degraded by this very debased human being. What Hitler delivered to the World, and much of his venom was the particularly inflicted atrocity upon the Jewish People that is The Holocaust sheds a shocking light upon human brutality.
A World War would well and truly have been prevented without Hitler being alive. Ever since his emergence, conflicts have raged in various guises which are now measured in Genocidal terms. Even when warfare continues to rage and newer genocides ravage the outposts of our society, and with gathering momentum, a finger is squarely pointed at the attributably bad lessons brought to us by Hitler and his regime. Today the detailed lessons of The Holocaust are to be learned and though this is what presents all of History with some falsely amicable settlement of what to say and what to do, The Holocaust cannot fail to outrage. So as to approach The Holocaust with feeling and understanding, we must respect the fact of the horror for the victims. This for me is what History should look like, attempting to comprehend what it is we need to know. What we need to know is how, in this age of Civilisation and Culture, could the World stand by and allow what happened to the Jews of Europe to occur?
There should be no litigating any of that remedy for which humanity seeks a resolution with this past. Where a common bond of decency should have prevailed, we have to face the facts that people behaved without conscience toward a beleaguered, debilitated and distraught Jewish community. Of course this astonishing reckoning is all before we came to know the evidence we are aware of now. That such a startled world would become witness to the most excessive destruction of a single people in all of history is a brutal reality enough. But back before the terror, there was no Court dictating to future Parents on how best to treat their Child. No life force could ensure that Hitler would still not emerge hate filled and reviled. Hitler was the author of his own hatred and he certainly was the orchestrator of that plunge which Germany – with the Germans – took.
It was an ignominious descent into which 6,000,000 Jews of Europe were pitched as part of a human deficit of 50 to 70 Million human beings. All of these human beings were dead, killed or murdered during World War II, and the rampant race creed of antisemitism was mixed with Hitler’s worldview to achieve such destruction. Of course children are resilient and they manage the extremes of emotional trauma, each in their own separate ways. The loss of a Mother at any age is no reason to lose the element of compassion and empathy which such a Mother’s bond brings to a home. True! Hitler lost his Mother at a tender age, merging into teen aged life without that certain rudder. That loss is never an excuse for the derailing of all of his moral and ethical probity. Such guidance has not been totally effaced by Hitler’s loss, and though many are encouraged to state that was so in Hitler’s case, we must realise that it was Hitler’s choice to leave all the guiding principles of humanity behind.
Not all children losing a Parent at this age turn their loss into an aberration, or a monstrous construct, or becomes a distortion in human form. That such trauma and dilemma proves the resilience of most children, even at the worst of times, all goes on to prove that children have to be pliable in order to combat the rigours of normal life. But will the World ever understand why Hitler took the route he seized upon when the proof of a Child’s resilience has been so well documented? Children grow and emerge so as to become the building blocks on which all of society is built. Each child has materialised and moved into a mainstream of certainty and unity. However, which route do we expect all children to take when faced with what is a deeply saddening tragedy. The loss of a parent is certainly a trauma and the loss of a Mother, more so.
The umbilical cord is never more severed than when a child loses its Mother. The psychological trauma, which some in history seek so as to abandon the norms of a common ascendance, is never more true than with regard to Hitler. It must not be ignored that Hitler shifted in favour of what must have been a conversion from rights to wrongs. This anomaly was at his own behest and the World around him emerged a darker space. Meanwhile, others have used their bereft emotion, from that same deeply traumatic event, to become better and more accomplished human beings. But Hitler took a deviant course which will forever have the German people and Germany to answer for what he called for. We are each responsible not only for what we say but for how those words are heard.
Indeed, how those words are ritually interpreted becomes a responsibility to check that we are not misconceived. Also, while no one has the right to ignore the iniquities which exist in this World, there are those who ignored Hitler’s hatred for the Jews and are somewhat culpable in what emerged as The Holocaust. We know all too well that Allied intelligence agencies had intercepted Hitler’s clear intentions, and not just for the Jewish People but for War also. It could not be possible that Hitler achieved his earlier goals, Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia, Austria and then sweeping any semblance of diplomacy aside to take Poland, and no bona fide intelligence was available? The enigma of ultra was working well into the emerging obscenity after Hitler swept into Russia. The German codes had been broken July 9th. 1941, less than 2 weeks after Operation Barbarossa barged across a 3,000 mile Russian front.
European Jewry was already under Hitler threat, now the Jewish fate took on a more precarious and catastrophic dimension. We are all obliged to speak out against any and all injustices, and indeed what happened to the Jewish People was both unjust, deadly and preventable. Perhaps though, the Jews have more of a right than anyone else to speak out about The Holocaust, and more so in light of what was known in advance of what was to come. So by the time Hitler had raged against the whole of World Jewry, the world of the Jews was already disappearing rapidly. Truly, and only an idealist would consider this as it appeared to me, that given the very extenuating experience of The Holocaust for the Jewish People, and then for the State of Israel, this catastrophe should have become a beacon of hope for us all.
We could each then shine a light on the evil deeds of Hitler and look to a better future guided by the vilified example of an atrocity we have no wish to repeat. Lessons learned, or so I thought, and we thereby would have our passage through a more tolerant understanding, illuminated by the concerns for a past we had neglected and which had allowed for this most brutal atrocity to occur. Enlightened as we should have become, we surely saw the intolerable lessons that these Jews of Europe had to endure. We would then begin to make all the necessary alterations to move us away from such a darkened period. That these Jews were deliberately driven toward an intended oblivion, this would garner for us all a genuine need to learn the positive lessons which tolerance will ensure? If we have not been provoked to act with charity and compassion toward those we share this planet with, what will it take for humanity to learn anything?
Clearly, as tolerant as we should have become, Wars should never have darkened our lives ever again. Ideally, and with a stinging rebuke unresolved by such an unprecedented and unparalleled atrocity as The Holocaust, we will all share more equally the space we inhabit. Can we now afford to be unresponsive to the requirements of our fellow human beings or ignore their moment of gravest need? Will the past ever forgive us if the present day lessons take us into a future marked by more atrocity and other extremes of intolerance? Latterly, Hitler has been caught in an ideological lie which led to a genocide on an unimaginable scale. He gifted himself with a larceny which ran rampant alongside this supposedly ideological program. The truth of Hitler however, remains one of a hate-filled individual imposing that exact same hatred upon a willing aggressor who adopted with blind fury, Hitler’s final resolve.
There were well worn paths toward enlightenment which were ritually abandoned. The very deep seated altruism of nations, which is no different in the Jewish Faith than it is for Catholics everywhere, failed all of humanity. The fact that kindness and charity are both termed in its total obligation to assist any human being in distress has apparently been lost to Hitler. That said, the same truth can be levelled at any and all Christians who failed in their moral duty to assist the Jewish People during The Holocaust. All assistance at any level must be administered if the fundamental belief system, adhering to Jesus’ teachings are to be adhered to. The Jews have every right to look to our Christ-based Faith system and question its relevance, especially when it ignores the core values of what Jesus was sent here to deliver for us all.
That is where Hitler got things squarely wrong. For more than 2,000 years antisemitism has labelled the Jews as Christ-killers when in fact, Jesus volunteered to do what God had demanded of Him! So we come to a conclusion which sites a parent who would have saved the World entire had they known what was to come. We then have the parent who sends his only Son to die to save us, for History to distort that and pressure the Jewish People with 2,000 years of antisemitism and a Hitler who developed that hatred into, The Holocaust.