The Democrats and Dachau

With the excitement,hope and anxiety of the Democratic National Convention swirling around us and the world, it somehow seems a bit strange to be reflecting on Dachau and its place in our consciousness. But not really.

Some of the speeches are boring.Some have punch. But Barack can always stir me. What a sense of hope flows through him. I see him as a post-racial candidate--but that is another discussion.

Every election is a identity crisis--certainly at the presidential level. Who are we and how will we relate to one another and the world? I certainly hope and pray that we are more like the vision Obama offers.

But Dachau--one commentator on my previous blog obviously knows far more about the history of Dachau than I do. In the movie we saw there though they did indicate that the doctors were from the SS. It is interesting to think of Night as a fictionalized account of Weisel's experience. Creating particular scenes to offer deeper insights in the horrors of the whole concentration camp world was undoubtedly something he found necessary. Clearly, he has been able to speak to the world. Ken Kesey at the beginning of his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest wrote--Everything in this novel is true, whether it happened or not.

The spiritual challenge I see is how do we face the evil of humanity. How do we see that evil not just in the other--in our enemies but in ourselves? Demonic evil is in the world and in us and we are called to battle. The concentration camp system and the final solution brought about 11 million or so deaths including the death of hundreds of thousands of children. That is demonic. But we are so tempted to say that all evil is in the Nazis--and then in anybody we can somehow associate with them. `You see my fellow Americans, we good and righteous people(true Christian believers more or less) are battling Satan again in the form of the Axis of evil.' We Americans have rooted in us so deeply the images of WWII--where we see ourselves as the righteous heroes to the rescue. In many ways, there is truth to our self image, but self righteousness can blind us to the deeper truths of our own story.

Somehow, we in America need a spiritual revolutinon to look in the heart of our own story and stories to know better our glory and our shame. What would be the equivalent for us of requiring high school students to stare into the face of some of the evil aspects of the American story. Do American students know who Emmett Till was--on this the anniversary of his death?