Never Forget to Lie

I do not watch a lot of serious TV.  I deal with serious all day and I do not want to deal with it at night.  I was watching PBS, and actually turned away from this show, but felt compelled to turn back to it.  The show was Frontline: Never Forget to Lie http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/.  It is a show about survivors of the Holocaust from Poland, who are Jewish.  

There was a time in my life, in my early 20s, when I was fascinated by the story of the Polish Jews, and read everything the tiny little library in Millers Falls had about this topic.  I read novels and history books. I expanded my reading to include the story of Jews in Europe during the Holocaust. It was a story that made me heart sick but amazed me at the horror of man's inhumanity to man.  When, in college, I was exposed to Viktor Frankl's Man Search for Meaning http://logotherapy.univie.ac.at/e/lifeandwork.html, his story of his life in German concentration camps Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, and Dachau, it was a story that spoke to me.

I think that in part, the resonance that I feel for Fiddler on the Roof http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067093/and The Sound of Music  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059742/ is because both movies deal with the issues of discrimination and displacement, Jews, and Eastern Europe.

The show tonight was heart wrenching.  To see people who went through that horror and misery, and survived to be good, productive members of society gives me faith in humanity. But makes my heart hurt for them.

I do not always step up and speak out when I see discrimination or injustice. I am a coward. I need to be stronger about that. Because when good people do not speak out against injustices, other good people get hurt.