Last night there was an article on NBCnews.com about Jews in Hungary. That caught my eye because this weekend I was reading “The Story of the Scrolls” by Geva Vermes. He is very familiar with history, as he wrote:
In March 1944, on Hitler’s order, the half-hearted Germanophile Magyar government was replaced by enthusiastic puppets of the Nazi Reich, and all hell was let loose on the Jews of Hungary. My parents were deported and joined the millions of innocent victims of the Holocaust.History could be repeated, as NBC reported:
The Jobbik party, the third biggest in parliament, has used anti-semitic slurs to boost its standing before elections in 2014, drawing international scorn. The strongest yet greeted last month's call by Marton Gyongyosi, who runs Jobbik's foreign policy cabinet, for Jewish members of government and parliament to be listed in the wake of Israel's recent military campaign to stop rocket fire from Gaza. "I think such a conflict makes it timely to tally up people of Jewish ancestry who live here, especially in the Hungarian parliament and the Hungarian government, who, indeed, pose a national security risk to Hungary," he told parliament.Not even a full generation later and there’s movement to list people with Jewish ancestry. Mankind has not learned to live together in peace.
History has repeated itself in the death of innocents in America, too. Men with guns and mental problems have repeated such deaths from coast to coast. Some will work to pass legislation to control gun ownership – but that will not solve the problem. The solution is love.
Golda Meir was quoted love while having children on her mind:
Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us. … What bothers me most is not that Arabs kill our children, but that they force us to kill theirsCan there be a generation of children raised without hate? Or will history continue to be repeated, at the level of the horror at Newtown? At the level of Hitler’s holocaust? What is an acceptable level?
What help is there? If I were reaching only Christians, I would quote:
And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. (Matthew 22:39 KJV)
For non-Christians, what would be a similar requirement to achieve the safety of children? What can be accomplished? What do we want to accomplish? How are we willing to do this?
The sad truth is that we read about history but we don't look for the lessons so that we don't make the same mistakes.
ReplyDeleteThere are no simple answers, are there?
ReplyDeleteI am saddened to hear about what is going on in Hungary. You would think that people had learned their lesson.