Life in Death

Sometimes, when I stroll along the cracked pavements of city squares and pavilions on a cold New York City night, when I breathe and then watch curiously as the water condenses to fog, when I pass a perfect, silent stranger painting smiles on the faces of passerby, I pause and think of them.

I think of victims. All victims of an unknown time who died in an unknown place.

Perhaps the sky is their graveyard, or maybe the open field at Treblinka, or the forest of Sobibor. Or maybe it's the streets of European towns that bear the marking of their deaths.

But, particularly, I think of the victims whose memory has been ingrained in my heart—those whose stories I have read and whose personal, but universal messages I have come to know. And to cherish. And to cry over. Sometimes, when all around me I see vivid signs of life, I think of death.

And then the death haunts me and when I sleep it chases me. In the morning, I awake, and it awakes with me. I wish not to overcome it, for I fear that I will forget it. And then, who will be left to return to the open field at Treblinka? Or the forest of Sobibor? Who will be left to teach that bystanders are as complicit as killers? No, I cannot forget.

So, instead, I look for ways to keep death. To enshrine it. I carry the pain of death with me. I tuck it in the pocket of my consciousness when I walk and talk and run through meadows where lilies sing and dance before the knowing sky—the sky that remembers all that we cannot—above a graveyard somewhere.


Today is the 66th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camps, designated by Resolution 60/7 of the 2005 UN General Assembly as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Today, member states, communities, and individuals everywhere renew their commitments to the values of human dignity and reaffirm their resolve to fight the forces that would do away with us.

On its face, it seems that, though late, the world has made progress—that which can be measured, poured into a cup and quantified. Yet, while the establishment of this universal memorial is to be celebrated, it is not to be taken for what it’s not—a sign that the countries of the world have dealt adequately with the past and are working together in common purpose to build a better future. Many, in fact, are not nearly. Many have failed—as evidenced last week, when the Simon Wiesenthal Center published a report of nations’ grades based on their efforts to bring former Nazi criminals to justice. Many literally failed.

Holocaust memory—fancy it a species—faces the threat of extinction. In America, two states out of fifty have instituted high school curricula focused on the rise, atrocities, and moral implications of Nazism. Record counts of antisemitic acts have been recorded in communities across Europe over the past year. Neo-fascist groups bent on the indoctrination of youth have surfaced all over the internet. And while it may seem plausible to some, no—Iran’s Ahmadinejad does not stand alone in his denial of the Holocaust. Nor does Venezuela’s Chavez.

A "Day," no matter how "International," will not prevent the ultimate reality if each of us does not step in and speak out on behalf of the victims. If we do not take to the streets and call for the extradition of those who had consigned them to their deaths. If we do not build a foundation upon which their stories can rest and teach and inspire our contemporaries not only to learn about the perils of intolerance, hatred, and bigotry, but to make meaning of them in these changing, difficult times; arrive at mutual understanding through dialogue; breathe life in death.

We must always remember these truths. That there is, at the end of every tear, a smile. There is, at the end of every tunnel, light. There is, at the end of one generation’s responsibility, another’s.

And sometimes, when the air is cold, I breathe it in and out again. And then I close my eyes and think of those whose breaths were taken from them. I feel the whistle of the wind around me and hear the clucking of distant steps. I see the open field at Treblinka. I imagine the forest of Sobibor. And the streets in Amsterdam, and Paris, and Prague.

I think of life. And then of death. And then I take my breath and slowly, between my lips, breathe one into the other.

Remembering Tuscon

And what is the best time for remembering? At noon
when shadows are hidden beneath our feet, or at twilight
when shadows lengthen like longings
that have no beginning, no end, like God?
-Yehuda Amichai, Who Will Remember the Rememberers?

Tragedy often numbs us. It numbed me on January 8. How could this happen?

A bullet. Thirty-one bullets. Six lifeless, nineteen injured. A nation devastated. A brave congresswoman fighting for her life. Making strides that leave the doctors speechless. We are wise to acknowledge miracles, they say. Yes, you are.

I tried to enter the mind of Jared Loughner, but failed. I wanted to understand, but I could not. Instead, I found solace in the stories of heroism: a judge who shielded a staffer from imminent death; a mother who dove in front of her daughter; everyday Americans who wrestled to the ground a deranged gunman and impeded his attempt to reload with an extended magazine—men and women who, when the stakes were highest, sacrificed their lives for their fellow citizens. These are heroes, I thought.

But some were beyond their reach. Some had died. And families and friends were called upon to mourn the senseless passing of the victims. But how does one mourn? And for what purpose? When President Obama addressed the nation a few days after the shootings, he put stories to the faces, to the names, to the ages. He attempted, with his words, to remember the victims for what they represent in the lives of us all. But what especially struck me as key was the connection he made between memory and action: beyond our reflections, Obama contended, our conduct must subscribe to the victims' legacies.

Does it? And what, after all, are the obligations of those left behind? Many understand the concept of commemoration as honoring the legacy of the dead. Have we done that? And if we haven’t, how do we?

Remembering Tuscon must ultimately be a difficult undertaking. Memory, by nature, binds the past and the present. Memory is a recollection; the thrust of a moment, a person, a feeling, into one’s mind. The task and challenge becomes carrying memory into the future. It begins by transcending what we know and assuming what we must.

To me, the only way to keep the victims of the Tuscon tragedy alive is to live in the way that they would have. While meritorious, reciting psalms does not constitute due service. It’s not enough to gather under the roof of a basketball arena one winter evening. It’s not enough to visit a make-shift memorial. Or to write on a Facebook page. Or to cry.

Perhaps the first step is to imagine. Perhaps the first step, as many have well done, is to tell the stories—to humanize the victims and the values for which they stood. But beyond that, commemoration must be constant and forever. It must reconcile the loss, embrace it, and then internalize it. And once it has been internalized, it must be transformed. Into kindness, into respect, into civility—into what a Jared Loughner tried incomprehensibly to take away on that heartbreaking Saturday morning. That, we must redeem.

In the end, memory calls upon our conscience. To act. Not out of remorse, but out of determination. To undo. Not our ethical temperaments, but our ethical lapses.

In the end, memory calls upon our image of a nine year old Christina Taylor Green. The youngest of the Tuscon victims, she had just been elected to the student council at her elementary school and had gone to visit Congresswoman Gabby Giffords to learn more about the political process. A dancer and a swimmer, she represents, most unbearably, pain at its sharpest. But she also represents the imperative at its highest. For her, we must live—we must live in the way that she would have.

So do it for Christina Taylor Green: blossom. Bloom. Rent a yacht and do the things you always wished to do out at sea but never had a chance.

Stop.
Breathe.
Dance.
Swim.
Run for student council.

Dream.

Christina: I hope that we, in our small way, in the hallways and classrooms and streets of our country, find your courage. That we aspire like you, and push bounds like you. That we are never afraid to follow our hearts like you. And that we smile because you were, and because you are, and because you will be.

If there are rain puddles in heaven, Christina, I hope you’re jumping in them now.


This post is dedicated to the victims of the Tuscon shooting tragedy of January 11, 2011. May they rest in peace.

Why Peace in Sudan Matters

You sigh. A day's worth of searching for firewood in the remote outskirts of Abyei slowly fades as the sun above you turns a starker, darker orange. It then sets and sets off the recurring fear voicing from within: it will get colder tonight.

But that fear is compounded with an even greater one. You hurry, your heart beating fast and faster, back to the camp, to the "safety" of the camp, because you know those men. You know what they do and what they did. Your friends have been raped. And they have been killed. And the risk you take to defend your family is the greatest risk of all. And so you run, empty-handed, because you don't want to be buried the next time the sun turns a starker, brighter orange.

It began yesterday. In an unprecedented moment in our history, the people of Southern Sudan took to the polls to cast their vote on a referendum that could see their secession from the north and the subsequent birth of a new nation. This pivotal event was the intended culmination of a peace process between the north and the south, its timetable determined as part of the Naivasha Peace Agreement, signed in January 2005 between Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) and the Government of Sudan. Independence is looming; decades of civil war, anguish, and genocidal crimes could soon come to an end.

Not so fast? The peace process could also well be undermined, as it has been undermined time and again by Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir and his proxy-militia in Khartoum -- nefarious violators of humanity whose own self-interest unleashed mass-atrocity crimes in Sudan's region of Darfur for the past eight years, leaving more than 500,000 dead and more than 3 million displaced. He and his clowns have done so before. We needn't look farther back than April of last year, when Al-Bashir, for whom an arrest warrant was issued in March 2008 by the International Criminal Court, conspicuously stole the election, gerrymandering his way to power via intimidation tactics and the instigation of unadulterated chaos - you know, typical behavior for a mass-murderer.

And so political turmoil has precedent. Violence has its stage set. The votes are being cast, and the world remains watching.

But what responsibility does the world have, anyway? Why does peace in Sudan matter so? Why does the international community have a responsibility to ensure that peace and stability endure after the creation of a new African state? To solve oil-revenue sharing squabbles? Secure post-referendum border demarcation? Speak, stand, stay?

Sixty-two years ago, delegates at the United Nations had a vision: that conscience should be able to stand up to power, and that the small countries of the world should not fall by the wayside as they submit willingly to the agendas of the big ones. Yes, this was the dream of Eleanor Roosevelt. A world rid of war. A world where the worth of a child in Nairobi was equal to that of a child in New York, and London, and wherever else. Sifting through the rubble and devastation of two world wars, she, together with the other idealists of her time, framed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the first bill of rights to which all human beings are entitled. These were thirty independent articles, not dependent ones. Among them was the right to life, the right to liberty, and the right to security. The right to a nationality and the right to work. The right to an education and the right to participate in community-life. In other words, the rights we "know" but never knew we had.

Eleanor Roosevelt understood something profound about the world. She dreamed because she understood- not only the moral imperative that lay in giving hope and purpose to people everywhere; to protecting innocent civilians from the failures of their own governments; to democracy; but what lies beyond: namely, the nature of our connectedness in a post-modern world. That the butterfly admired by one little girl somewhere is the same butterfly admired by any little girl anywhere. That the persecution of one people implies a threat to all people. And that the grass really is only green until it's not.

The history of genocide teaches one thing: hate incubates. It festers. It grows. It multiplies exponentially until words become chants, lies becomes truths, and ideologies that once seemed ridiculous, well- are no longer. Incredulity dies. Rather, it dissipates, more quickly in a community environment than we realize. But what is community, after all? In Hitler's world, perhaps it was Germany, perhaps it was Europe. Yet, had he been able to, is there any doubt in your mind that Hitler would have exterminated the Jews of America? The homosexuals of America? The disabled people of America? All of America? I have little doubt. And that's for one very simple reason: in the so-called "logic" of Nazism, hatred of the Jew preceded the general hatred of mankind. The Pan-German idea excluded all who were deemed racially inferior. The blood stains of the 1940's bear evidence to what was done, not what was intended.

"Community" today implies and implicates differently than it did in post-WWII Europe. Differently than it did on 9/11. Differently than it did when Barack Obama defeated John McCain. Globalization is globalizing. And imagine Hitler with the power of the internet. Just stop, just stop and imagine. Frightening, I know. But it underscores the fundamental point: social responsibility in today's world has pretty big feet.

What matters there matters here. We cannot rest on our lawns, gazing at the stars, indifferent until tragedy knocks on our door, fainting with sadness when it does. We cannot remain diffident, blissfully ignorant, uninvolved, simply because the referendum (whatever that word means, anyway) is happening half-way across the world and not next door. We, at this historic crossroads, have a unique obligation to ensure that the world continues watching; that it does everything in its power to prevent future violence from unfolding in Sudan. Because peace is at stake there. Not only for them, but for us. And if we don't speak for them, who, said Martin Niemoller, will be left to speak for us?

The people of Southern Sudan are ready and deserving. They don't want self-governance. They want independence. They want the privileges we know, and those we often take for granted. They want to be able to protect their families and their children. To walk outside their towns and cities without the fear of being raped. To keep warm at night.

As we do, they want to be free.

We'll do it together

One. One. OneOne.

The journey begins. And I begin with it.

Also with us is Bertrand Russel, recipient of the 1950 Nobel Prize in Literature and special guest in this first blog post of many to come.

In the prologue to his autobiography, entitled What I Have Lived For Russel reflects:

"Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

"I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness--that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what--at last--I have found.

"With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.

"Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.

"This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me."

Russel's convictions, in many ways, mirror my own. I often grow frustrated at all that I cannot change. I sigh when the pain felt half-way across the world reverberates and overwhelms me. But it never quite defeats me.

I look forward. To thinking with you. To writing with you. To questioning with you. To keeping alive the dream of peace- a flame that must be kindled and kept.

We'll do it together.