Anne Hirschle - July 21, 2006
Thoughts on the Holocaust
How do you feel about the Holocaust today? I know you said that you don't think-you don't see yourself as a victim.
I don't see myself as a victim and I think the tragedy that I see it is that really nothing has changed and that the, the, the people to whom this is happening has changed, but that the same horrors are going on in many different parts of the world to this day and we haven't learned anything and that certainly the war to end all wars-nothing has changed and, and, and, and man's inhumanity to man hasn't changed. And, and I just feel very sad, but the kind of world, you know, we're leaving-I have five grandsons and I feel I've lived my life and I've had a very-I've been very, very lucky-thanks to that tram conductor-and, but I feel we've made an awful mess of things and I don't think that the world my grandchildren are inheriting is a better place and that I think is the tragedy. And I think the tragedy when one said-at least I said, "This couldn't happen anywhere else, it's just these beastly Germans, this couldn't happen anywhere else," I'm-and people said "No, it could happen anywhere." And I look around now and I think, yeah, it could probably happen anywhere. I still don't want to think that it could happen in this country or in England, but there've been a lot of things lately that have upset me enough to think, "Well maybe the pessimists were right, perhaps it could happen anywhere." And I listen right now-I turn on the news and it just...
Yeah, it seems like the whole world is just....
It's, it's just so awful. So that's how I feel about the Holocaust. It was a dreadful, dreadful thing, but the, the real tragedy is that nothing has changed and that, that there are probably people suffering in, in, in many parts of the world just as, just as dreadful. So I, I don't know whether we've learned anything. I-maybe a few people have learned something, but I, I-I'm, I'm very pessimistic about, you know, that things have really got that much better or that we've learned a lot.
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn