Should the Holocaust be forgiven?

I must begin this post with a note. I'm not Jewish. I'm not Semitic, I'm not Protestant, I'm not Catholic, I'm not a gypsy, and I'm certainly not gay. In providing my opinion, I could be accused of "just not understanding the psychological issue," or I could be giving it a totally objective standpoint.

It's been forgiven before.

But, should it?

Some say yes, many others say no. Forgiveness is a complicated aspect of psychology which deals with many aspects of the human psyche. The consensus in psychological literature has reached a consensus that forgiveness is a process. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language has a clear definition of forgiveness:

1. To excuse for a fault or an offense; pardon. 2. To renounce anger or resentment against. 3. To absolve from payment of (a debt, for example). These verbs mean to refrain from imposing punishment on an offender or demanding satisfaction for an offense. The first three can be used as conventional ways of offering apology. More strictly, to forgive is to grant pardon without harboring resentment: “Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them” (Oscar Wilde).

For our purposes, definitions 1 and 2 will be referred to the most.

However, there are also many different aspects in forgiving the Holocaust. One possible definition is the forgiveness of the people who could have prevented the Holocaust yet out of self-preservation chose to act as a bystander.

Another possible definition is the forgiveness of the Nazi's actions and decisions which led and fueled the Holocaust. These may include those who knowingly performed direct actions that led to the persecution of Jews. Nazi concentration camp officials may fall into this category of forgiveness.

Yet another definition is the forgiveness of all Nazis and all involved in the persecution of Jews, in some cases even Hitler himself. In some cases, people find it necessary to separate the individual people as Nazis, from the Third Reich Nazi party, as many people see individual forgiveness different from forgiving an entire society, even if individual forgiveness is universally inclusive. This isn't a particularly popular viewpoint.

I have a pretty confusing job in front of me in constructing an essay out of this. This better outline it well.

Photo: The railway tracks of the Auschwitz concentration camp are illuminated with fire in memory of the victims of the Holocaust. AP.

Friday

It's Friday, December 8. Hit the snooze button at 7:30, and at around 7:45. Got up and began my morning rush. I made my bed, took a shower, got dressed, had a breakfast, brushed my teeth, got in the car and drove down to the high school to catch the first shuttle bus to ACS. By 8:32, I was on the bus, settling down for fifteen minutes of rest, when I suddenly realized...

Oh shit there's SNOW on the ground! Needless to say, I certainly panicked. It frightened me. I hate winter, I hate the cold, and while I don't hate snow, I hate what it represents. If you sit on your ass the whole day and be as lazy as I usually am, you generally won't die of Ithacan summers. But winter...oh yes, winter is fatally brutal here in beautiful Ithaca, New York.

Third period was spent debating on the subject of an article that basically denied the Holocaust. Certainly the article had little evidence, but what really made me angry was the amount of people who openly said "how could someone deny the Holocaust?" or "that's bullshit, of course the Holocaust happened!" I must say, I made a pretty convincing argument stating that if we didn't listen to these kinds of points of view, the kinds that come from people that we usually shun, we're being awfully close-minded. How could anyone in that classroom say truthfully that the Holocaust did occur? Just because the entire world believes it, does it mean it has to be true?

And isn't such dangerous ignorance part of what started the Holocaust? Didn't the Aryans believe that they were so righteous and so much more inferior than everyone else that they forgot to question reality? Wasn't it the blind belief in a history, in a moral code which no one thought of for themselves, but instead was passed onto them by a totalitarian dictator? I made some people pretty upset, I must say. I'm sorry I made them upset, and that they had to feel that way. But I'm not sorry for what I said. Needless to say, I didn't believe the revisionist article myself.

After school I walked with Sasha to his house in the cold, slippery snow. Stopped by John's Convenience Store to pick up some gum. The cashier accused me of trying to steal twice, and then he warned Sasha that "you better start watch step next time you come by." I walked out with no gum, but some powdered donuts containing 40% of my daily value in saturated fat. The remainder of the walk I could feel my arteries clogging up. Got to his house, played his Gamecube for a bit, then got picked up. I returned home, sliced up some bread and poured some olive oil. Then I sat down at my computer and checked my email. Xanga - Your Subscriptions Digest.

Oh yes, Xanga, that old thing. Anyways, I opened it up, got signed on, and started to read 2-year-old posts that had been formulated out of apathy and stupidity. There was a time I said "toodles." There was a time I was so into opera that I went and saw as many as I could. There was a time I tried to phish passwords off my friends just to see if they would take the bait, then I'd shove it in their face and laugh. There was a time I thought that "zomfgroflmfao" should have been in the OED.

I realized how much I missed being a 9th grader.