Sins of the Father: Tribalism and the Armenian Genocide

"I'm sorry I don't know international law.  But I'm a councillor, for crying out loud, who makes $105,000 a year... so I apologize that I don't know, Mr. Chairman, I apologize for that; I apologize if I've upset anybody,  But I was elected to cut grass, fill potholes, make sure our curbs are in place, and to make sure my constituents are happy with the municipal level of government."

69 years ago, the Mayor of a town called Gotha hanged himself. 

He did this after being forced to visit to Ohrdruf, a labour camp not far beyond city limits.  This visit was demanded by one General Eisenhower, who at the time was Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces. 

It was Germany, 1945 - the end of World War II.  Ohrdruf was a sub-camp of Buchenwald, one of the Nazis' infamous Concentration Camps and the setting of the attempted genocide traditionally referred to as The Holocaust.

I know a bit about Buchenwald.  In fact, I was there but a week ago, celebrating the 69th Anniversary of the camp's liberation by Eisenhower's forces.  My grandfather, as you may know, spent time in Buchenwald as an inmate. 

While other Allied soldiers experienced the atrocities of Buchenwald in the immediate aftermath (due to a very wise decision by Eisenhower), my grandpa was one of 168 Allied Airmen who were there at the peak of the Camp's operation.

I've heard the faith-shattering stories from many, many survivors: the inhuman conditions of the camp, the dehumanizing treatment by the SS and Camp Kapos, the illness, starvation and being worked to death.  And always, the constant plume of smoke rising from the crematorium's chimney.

Buchenwald rests on the far side of a hill visible from Weimar, once the centre of German intellectualism.  The smoke from that chimney would have been visible to the naked eye of the people of Weimar.  It's hard to imagine the gunshots from the hill wouldn't have echoed as far of the town as well.

The people of towns like Weimar and Gotha would have known, or at least have had ample evidence to piece together what was happening just beyond their borders.  Yet they chose not to see, not to hear - they didn't want to be responsible.

But they were responsible.  In turning a blind eye and by their inaction, they chose to do nothing and evil triumphed. 

At least for a time. 

The war ended, atrocities came to light and consequences began to be felt.  The people of Weimar were made to visit Buchenwald and see what exactly they'd turned a blind eye to.  When they could no longer deny what had happened - when they were forced to look upon the horrors they had permitted to happen in their midst - they wept.

Times have changed in Germany; now, the City of Weimar has pledged to condemn and fight against such tyranny in the future.  It doesn't matter whether such matters are federal in nature.  Matters of jurisdiction don't matter any more - what's morally just does.

The same holds true of a new initiative in Spain seeking to create a community of municipalities that declare themselves anti-Fascist.  Municipalities are realizing that, while their federal counterparts get mired in the complexities of foreign affairs and strategic diplomacy, they are unfettered in their ability to stand up for what's right.

Today, when my grandfather and other Buchenwald survivors from across the globe return to Weimar, they are greeted as friends.  These survivors, in turn, view the people of Weimar as friends.  In fact, some of the best friends we have are young Germans who volunteer their time to support commemoration efforts because they feel exactly the same way we do; the Holocaust happened, it was horrible, and it's up to all of us to remember the past and prevent it from happening again.

One of the most important lessons my grandfather has taught me is that it is wrong to blame the child (or grandchild) for the sins of the father.  It's possible that one of my German friends is the grandchild of an SS guard who worked in Buchenwald - I don't care.  I know who they are, what they believe in, and that's what matters to me.

The Armenian Genocide was just that - a systematic and intentional attempt to eradicate an entire people.  It was immoral, wrong, inhuman and those who perpetrated the massacre of 1.5 million Armenians deserve to be remembered for all time for what they did.

But it happened in 1915, a very long time ago.  None of the Turkish politicians fighting against the Armenian Genocide being called what it is were alive when it happened.  They are not to blame for the sins of a past generation.

Look, I get their concerns.  People by and large are still tribal - we generalize people all the time and heap whole hosts of assumptions and lineages of the past.  Politics in particular is bad for this - Parties will take credit for the work done a century ago by people who had completely different perspectives than they did, while equally tarring opponents with the negative legacies of anyone who shared their brand once upon a time.

In a tribalized view of the world, a Turk is a Turk and an Armenian an Armenian - ne'er the twixt shall meet, each generation carries the weight of their tribal past.  By the same token, in a tribalized view of the world, there's us, who are real people, and them, who aren't.  

The Nazis didn't view Jews or Poles or Homosexuals as fellow human beings - they dehumanized them, which is why they were able to to treat them like animals.  The same held true for the Turks who killed Armenians, or the Americans who massacred First Nations, or any other ethnic conflict anywhere in the world.  

Tribalism perpetuates false divisions and dehumanizes anyone you can describe as not like you, which is a group that invariably grows larger the more you pursue a path of exlcusion.

But the world isn't tribalized any more, is it?  There are children out there of mixed Turkish, Armenian, Dutch and whatever else descent who don't view themselves as the embodiment of one lineage, but the progenitors of something new.

My children are a mutt-mix of European lineages, plus a couple strands of East Asian.  How do they self-identify?  As Canadian.

To me, that's the whole point of Canada - we're not a competing tribe.  We're not a monochrome people.  We are a confluence of every ethnicity, every ideology, every religion and every way of looking at the world.

By virtue of being a bit of everyone, we don't have the luxury of cherry-picking arguments or picking one side over another.  The very mix of our population forces (or at least, should force) us to look at the bigger picture, empathize, take the time to understand and focus on what we can learn from the past to improve the future.

This has been a trend this week which has carried through writings by Don Lenihan and Andrew Coyne; we must get passed entrenched ideologies, we must embrace this thing called responsibility. 

Today's young Germans are no more the perpetrators of the Holocaust than today's young Turks caused the Armenian genocide or young Canadians build the residential school system.  But we do have responsibility to learn from these sad chapters of history so that we don't repeat the mistakes of our forefathers.

Fortunately, this is starting to happen.  In fits and spurts, the people are recognizing that they aren't tied to one history, nor one brand; even in Turkey,Young Turks are pushing back against the official denial of the Armenian Genocide.

It's unfortunate that we have a rising tide of politicians taking the "not my problem" approach once favoured by the Mayor of Gotha.  It's not going to work out very well for them in the long run.

Fortunately, we have a growing mass of individuals stepping out of the dark cave of tribal identity and seeing the world for what it is - a complex dynamic environment that doesn't live in the past, but rather evolves rapidly into the future.

As always, it will be our governments shaming us either through "strategic" positioning in places like the Ukraine or "strategic" ignoring of crises such as that in Syria or the Sudan.

It takes an engaged people who recognize that not knowing isn't an option to speak truth to power and break the sway of tribalism.

One day, we will be the mothers and fathers whose actions will be discussed by our grandchildren.  Instead of focusing on what someone did in the past, maybe it's time we start thinking about what legacy we want to leave behind ourselves.

Back to Buchenwald

Every man for himself is not going to work.  It's time to start organizing.  We need to figure out how we're going to survive here.

Last week most of us were strangers.  But we're all here now.  And God knows how long we're going to be here.  But if we can't live together - we're going to die alone.

   - Jack Sheppard

This weekend an international group of survivors, family members, organizers, politicians, ideologues and media will be congregating in the small, historic German city of Weimar.  My grandfather Ed Carter-Edwards and I will be among them.

We will be there as invited guests to commemorate the liberation of the Nazi Concentration Camp Buchenwald.



My grandfather, as you may know, is a survivor of Buchenwald.



As ethnic hatred and political violence grows like a cancer in European countries like Greece, Hungary and Russia warns of war in the Ukraine as bigger players start to resume Cold War posturing, we will be remembering the tragic human toll hatred caused the last time Europe went to war with itself.

I've been to Buchenwald several times.  My first visit was in 2001 as a backpacker;  I remember vividly the first time I walked down the steps to The Hanging Room beneath the crematorium.  On the walls are meat hooks from which inmates were hung with piano wire.  

The first time I walked into that room, I couldn't breathe; it was like air refused to enter a space where such horrors had been committed.

Before that visit, Buchenwald had just been a name I'd heard associated with my grandfather - we'd never really talked about the Camp, or what he had been through while he was there.


The chill I felt just walking into that execution chamber was the catalyst that made me want to learn more.  As I've come to understand the significance of the space and its place in history, and as I've come to learn countless personal stories covering the spectrum from desperation to determination, Buchenwald has woven itself into my life as well.

Buchenwald is a cold place in April.  A damp, chill wind blows across the Ettersburg, always bringing a frigid rain with it.  It isn't hard to imagine how miserable a place it must have been for inmates in any season - no winter clothes, often no shoes and for some, no shelter to escape the invasive cold.

Many people died of the elements in Buchenwald; countless more died from starvation, illness, overwork and of course, by being intentionally killed by the Gestapo guards who ran the Camp.  The total recorded death toll of Buchenwald is 53,926.



But it's just a number.  Numbers can't convey human loss; they only numb us to the people and stories lost to man's inhumanity.

Every single survivor of Buchenwald can tell a heart-breaking story of their time in the Camp; of the horrors they experienced, the pain and humiliation they felt, how they were completely dehumanized or how they banded with others to fight back.  I don't think I've talked with a single survivor that doesn't carry the terrible, sometimes debilitating burden of survivor's guilt.

While Buchenwald is still the same physical location and even some of the original buildings still stand, it carries a different air about it now.



This is especially true at times like the commemoration, when survivors return, as they do in fewer numbers every year, to be celebrated for their endurance and embraced for their stories.



It becomes a bit of a media spectacle, with people like my grandfather getting scrummed by international media outlets all wanting a piece of their story.

The Memorial puts survivors up in nice hotels, buys their food, takes them on tours, has specially-trained guided to help make their visit as enjoyable as possible.  It's surreal; people who were dehumanized as inmates of Buchenwald get celebrity treatment when they return for related events today.

There are obviously and understandably part of these survivors who look forward to going back, to the superstar treatment they get and to see old friends.  At the same time, there is something validating about having their story actively listened to.



I know that for many survivors, including my grandfather, they were told to forget what they went on and not talk about it.  Telling a horrific story like that might scare off friends and hurt one's chances of employment.

Conceal, don't feel, keep calm and carry on.  It's a bit like expecting someone to ignore being hit by a car and carry on their lives no matter what injuries they've sustained without a proper healing/restorative process.  It just doesn't work.

One of my strongest memories from my visits back to Buchenwald is of another survivor, a friend who has since passed on.  He was a quiet man, friendly and funny in an understated way.  He loved to tell a good story and loved to pose for pictures with his grandchildren around the Camp.  We all got to know each other over repeated visits - it's like a community, the survivors, their family and friends.



One visit, we all decided to take a walk to the old Camp quarry to see what it looked like.  My friend's granddaughter had never been but knew he'd worked there and wanted to experience it first hand.

We got about half way there when my friend the survivor stopped dead in his tracks, almost like he'd bumped into a wall.



"I can't," he said, and burst into tears.  Thinking about the quarry had triggered a memory of pain and torture he'd probably suppressed for decades.  He seemed to shrink on the spot, physically reverting to the starved, beaten form he must have been when he worked there.

He could go no further.  His granddaughter brought him back to his hotel room, where he stayed the rest of the day.

At the height of its operation, Buchenwald became a very tribal place, and that by design.  The Nazis understood the value of that age-old mechanism of oppression - divide and conquer.  They separated and branded inmates by ethnicity and specifically targeted "undesirables" like Jews, Gypsies (Sinti-Roma) and Gays.  These were the minorities every oppressed tribe could look down upon, giving them an outlet other than rebellion.

Of course, the notion of "each man for himself" - Jedem das Seine, the phrase on the Camp's gate - didn't stick.  Even in the worst of conditions and faced with a constant struggle for survival, or perhaps because of this struggle, people came together for common purpose; to regain their humanity.



I stick to this point, because the reality of it haunts me.  Each man for himself was engraved in the door of a Concentration Camp where divide-and-conquer was a method of control.  Are divisive, partisan politics and micro-targeted campaigns not on this same spectrum?  Where will the path we're on lead us?  What state will we leave our nation in for our children?

I'm lucky my grandfather survived Buchenwald.  



At one point in his stay, he became very sick with pleurisy and was sent to the "infirmary" which, in practice, was really just a place of dying.  It was through the efforts of another inmate, a doctor, that my grandpa survived.



The doctor, at great risk to himself, found a syringe and extracted fluid from my grandpa's lungs.  That, and he helped him connect with the Camp resistance who got him out of the infirmary, got him listed as "deceased" and then hid him in one of the barracks.  It's really an incredible story - one of risk, redemption and heroic deeds in a dark time and place in history.

Stories like my grandpa's are common to Buchenwald - among the inmates, but even in some cases among the guards.  I've heard more than a few tales of Gestapo who conveniently missed when they were ordered to execute prisoners.



Why they did it, we'll never know, but part of me likes to think that those guards recognized that they were losing their humanity too and decided that was something too valuable to let go of.



This will likely be the last time I visit Buchenwald with my grandfather.  I don't say that with certainty, because my grandpa is one incredibly resilient man.  I've made the mistake of thinking "he won't be well enough to return again" a couple of times and he always proves me wrong.



Ed Carter-Edwards have proven  a lot of people wrong in a lot of ways.  He has every reason to be bitter, resentful and even hateful to Germans; he isn't.  Equally, he has every reason to despair the heart of darkness that many lies just beneath the surface of the human condition; he doesn't.



Most importantly, to me - he has never lost his belief that the world can and must be a better place and that only by working together can we, as people, make that happen.




Despite everything he has been through, Ed Carter-Edwards has escaped the horrors of Buchenwald unjaded.  I think of this every time I hear a tough-minded political operative or business person justify cruelty by saying "that's just the way it works."  It may be the way the system functions, but it doesn't have to be that way.



This weekend, a dwindling group of survivors will be going back to Buchenwald.  With them will be family and friends - people like me who have come to know and become part of the inescapable presence that is Buchenwald.



We will trade stories and develop new memories for the sharing.  Most importantly, we will remember the lessons that Buchenwald and all places of human atrocity echo throughout time:



Each to their own doesn't work.  What makes us resilient isn't our ability to compete against each other, or eavesdrop on each other or bomb each other from a safe distance - it's our ability to survive the ravages of history through the stories we create.



The past cannot be forgotten, but we are not doomed to live there.

The future?  Let's write that story together.

O Buchenwald, ich kann dict nicht vergessen, Weil du mein Shicksal bist.

Treatment For Holocaust Movie

This is a story I would love to see told on the big screen.  It's one that, unfortunately, is of incredible relevance as we slip back into the moral nihilism and selfish hatred that catalyzed World War II and the Holocaust.

My grandfather's story of survival began in a plane over Normandy, wound through the fields of Occupied Europe and into the street of Paris before taking an unexpected segue into Buchenwald Concentration Camp.  It's not a tale for the faint of heart, but then survival is never a pretty business.

Below is just the opening teaser; I have the entire treatment plus plenty of notes, contacts, references, so on and so forth.  What I need is someone with the courage and resources to bring this story to life.

Over a black screen:

 

“I pretended not to have seen, I pretended not to have heard, because I didn’t want to be responsible.”

-          Adalbert Lallier, Former SS Officer and retired Concordia Economics professor

 

June 8^th, 1944, 01:30 in the morning.  With the invasion of Normandy two days ago, the Allied Forces have at last gained a toe-hold in Europe.  Bombers are being sent over France to smash Nazi depots and train stations, disrupting their supply lines to the front.  

One of these, a Halifax bomber with a Canadian crew, has been deployed to take out a rail yard near Paris.  Compared to many of their previous targets, this is a light assignment – the crew doesn’t expect any surprises. 

They are wrong.

 

The Halifax’s four engines rumble in the pre-dawn darkness.  A voice whispers, “approaching target – get ready.”  The hum of the engines changes pitch as the plane descends, and is joined by the explosive thuds of anti-aircraft fire from the ground.  The muffled noises are swallowed by a near-to-ear eruption; the plane is hit.

The darkness is broken by the blink of the pilot’s eyes.  The pilot is a young man, twenties – he turns his head left, craning to see the impact site.  His eyes widen as he sees the entire port wing is on fire, and spewing black smoke.  He curses.  Within the tight quarters of the plane – chaos.  Airmen scream over the noise.  Shouting to be heard over the ruckus, the pilot gives the order to bail out even as he tries to put out the fires that have sparked up.  

Barely 21 years old, wireless operator Ed Carter-Edwards from Smithville, Ontario throws on his parachute pack and lines up at the hatch.  The man in front of him jumps – Ed freezes, stares blindly.  The moment, the commotion around him – for precious seconds, Ed is removed from everything, lost in his own mental space, as if something is trying to hold him back.  Behind him, his fellow airman, Tom, shouts – something.  When Ed doesn’t respond, Tom kicks Ed out of the hatch.  The sudden drop brings Ed back to his senses; he shakes off the shock and looks around as the others pull their ripcords.  The blazing Halifax lights up the sky as it drops, a smoke trail extending behind it.  Nazi fire bursts around the former occupants of the downed bomber.  Young Ed pulls open his own chute, which he has not tightened as well as he should – the force as he’s pulled upward nearly splits him in half.  Ed watches wide-eyed as, from the darkness, the plane that brought his down – a Focke-Wulf 190 – flies past like a shark circling its prey.   Looking down, the Canadian sees the outline of the River Seine, and nearby, the lights of a small village.   The Halifax crashes into the ground, sending up a fireball as the fuel and bombs ignite.

The young airman touches down hard in a pitch-black field, cracking his chin with his knees.  He has not been trained on how to land.  In the distance, the wreckage of his plane burns, a black plume of smoke reaching up towards the starless sky.   He’s deep in the French countryside, far behind enemy lines.  Completely alone, he realizes the Nazis must already be on the look-out for survivors.  Ed separates himself from his parachute, wraps it up to stow away, all the while scanning the horizon, trying to guess where his fellow airmen might have landed.  Ed double-checks that he has his emergency kit, then takes off at a run for the nearby forest.  He stops – running parallel to him but 20 metres off, silhouetted by the firelight from the plane, is another figure.

For a second, Ed stands, quietly.  Hopefully, the gunner figures it must be one of the boys, and shouts out, “Who is it?  It’s Ed!”  A relieved voice calls back, “It’s Tom!”  The tension is immediately cut in half – even one friendly face makes a difference.   They run to each other, slap each other on the shoulders – “Ed, what happened to you up there?”  “I dunno – I just.. froze.  Hey, we can talk later – let’s get out of here”. 

They make for the woods.  Under the cover of trees, they stow their chutes in the bushes.  The young men run through the woods in the direction of the village they saw from above.  They hear voices, freeze.  When the voices have passed on, the men decided to spread out – that way, if one gets caught, they can warn the other.  Tom runs first; Ed counts to ten, then takes off after him.  To the right, a light comes on, blasting the woods in a white-blue glow; it’s followed by loud voices.  Ed stumbles, drops.  Waits as long as he dares, then, running flat out, he rushes after his friend.  In the darkness, Ed comes to a fork in the road.

He looks to the left.  Looks to the right.  Back.  In as loud as a voice as he dares, Ed calls out Tom’s name.  No answer.  Again – silence.  Cursing under his breath, the lights and noise still behind him, Ed takes the right-handed path.   It’s a choice he will live to regret.

The Return of Ethnic Violence to Europe: The Greatest Trick The Devil Ever Pulled...

Sova’s promotion “raises questions” in light of his past statements, Vainer said. “It is hard to accept that a young, educated man would claim the Holocaust never happened in Romania,” Vainer, himself a Romanian lawmaker, added.

Vainer also said Sova’s promotion “did not send the correct message to young people.”

It's a funny thing, what a little time does to public memory.  A generation that is born without significant poverty, warfare or real-time experience of the consequences of ethnic hatred are wont to ignore the lessons history has to teach us on that score.  Which is why we are doomed to repeat it.

It's not too late, but time is running out.

                I shouted out,
                Who killed the Kennedys?
                When after all
                It was you and me

Captain Kirk and the Yin/Yang of Politics

In the Classic Trek, there was an episode called The Enemy Within that saw Captain Kirk split into two halves (best seen to be understood).  One of the halves was empathetic, patient, but indecisive; this Kirk lacked strength of will, authority, bodacity.  The other Kirk had all the things the other Kirk was missing; decisiveness, boldness, but also belligerence, aggression, and hyper emotionalism.  The message the episode tried to convey was that it was the combination of these two halves that made Kirk the leader that he was. 

To me, this is a great metaphor for the political spectrum.  To woo voters, Parties of the Left and Right will attempt to define each other as being at the extreme of the left-right political spectrum, as wholly separate creatures from themselves.  This is a conceit Parties and Party leaders sell to themselves as much as they sell it to us.

Truth is, the best and most successful governments hover around the political Centre.  When they move too far in one direction, they divide the country and impact voter intention.  This can be strategic, or not.


But is the left/right sepctrum the only way to look at our politics?  I tend to think otherwise.  Governments from the political left and right can be equally controlling and opaque.  In fact, a more reflective political spectrum might look like this: 

I look at politics through the eyes of an anthropologist - what I see more than the left-right divide is a selection-of-the-fittest vs a support of the collective divide. 

Little or no social support, little or no public education, tough-on-crime, gun ownership, pro-life and pro-capital punishment - these positions are all about empowering people to be naturally tough, able to survive completely independently.  It's a fun theory, but in a social context, the weak don't die off, nor can we simply ostracize them, round them up and lock them away or simply do away with them.  Weak people in a general populace leads to crime, epidemics, etc.  Plus, in a power struggle, there are always subjective decisions that get made about what traits count as more genetically fit than others.  That's not an approach that ever goes over very well.

On the other hand, complete social support doesn't work, either.  If you give people everything, they atrophy.  The don't develop the capacity to think critically or emotional and physical resiliency, etc.  The example I hear most often is the playground; if you ban monkey bars so that kids don't get hurt, how will they learn how to not get hurt in the concrete jungle?  Even more important - if everyone's on the receiving end, who's delivering?  Who's innovating?  Nobody, is the answer.  We've seen how poorly that plays out, too.

The best political advice one can offer, then, is hold to the centre - on both spectrums.  View your competitors not as enemies, but as essential threads of the fabric of what makes a nation great.  The whole is more than the sum of its parts, etc.

Opposites create each other – and the opposite of hate is not love, but indifference.  Wedge issues make for great politics, but seldom great policy.  People aren’t dumb; they pick up on the pandering and become disaffected and disengaged. 

And an indifferent society makes for a poor democracy.