The World War II was truly tragic because it annihilated forever the limits mankind had till then humanely imposed on its selfhood. The very Enlightenment dialectic the West paraded proudly consisted of the winning of the rational over the so-called 'animal', over the instinctual in the definition of the 'human'. The very narrative of 'progress' was from the cave man to the superhero, if Nietzsche is to be presented a little simplistically. In a way, it is clearly reflected in the colonial context as well, but it is too vast an idea to be contained in this blog.
The World War II demolished forever the (hi)story of human amelioration. Two terrors stand out in the multiple acts of inhumane inanities. The first and truly tragic is the Holocaust. It is a sad saga of racial injustice and discrimination born out of scapegoating an entire intelligent intellectual creative community. It shows how societal and religious misconceptions can be stoked against a weak prey, a sincere, sensible victim, an easy target.
The gypsies, too, were butchered precisely for the same reason, for standing out, for being different from the banal, for appearing to be a mystique that needed to be vanquished, given its allure. Extremely sad and cruel tales of horrific harassment and inhumane torture are the holocaust lives.
Yet two issues stand out in these horror narratives that can comfortably shame any Gothic novel. The first one of these is the gentle grace and winning wisdom of the survivors who continue to be generous and kind despite having to bear bestial brutality. The second point is that the victimiser is always a sadist with a solid inferiority complex that is externalised as crooked cruelty.
Hence after such crushing cruelties of multiple types, the victims' post traumatic tales are full of genuine decency and unfathomable (meaning both difficult to understand and countless) goodness. There are a few but equally heartening stories of some Germans who in every possible way, despite the dangers, helped the victims, the Jews.
The Hiroshima horror, however, is far more dangerous because it involves the eternal ethical issue facing every new invention, the human(e) value(s) lost, the price paid while furthering scientific advances. In the much publicised post "Eisenhower"era, we understand how inflated egos of inventors/scientists, how political ambitions and financial equations result in a tragedy whose civilian horrors haunt even after more than seven decades. The American Dream, at times I feel, was forever tarnished post the exposure of this ugly underbelly.
On August 6, the Hiroshima Day, this tribute to commemorate the ever resurgent human spirit that rises from ashes the phoneix way!
Pratima@ "Crazy crude cruelty, thou better be exterminated" is the message of the World War II, especially the Hiroshima and Holocaust horrors.
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