We Didn't Start the Fire

 It is after midnight, so I am a little late in writing this post, but a friend of mine posted a picture on his Facebook page today that really made me think. 52 years ago on November 22, 1963, an event occurred that rocked the entire world. I don't personally remember the event as I had been born just 3 weeks prior to it. It wasn't a happy event. It was the day John F. Kennedy, the President of the United States, was shot and killed. It happened in broad daylight while he was riding in a convertible car in a parade. The picture posted today, I'm sure, was taken moments before the shots rang out. He is there with his wife. Both are smiling and so happy. They were American royalty. And in an instant EVERYTHING changed. This is not a post about politics or conspiracy. It is about life and the world we all live in. It is about the past and the future. It is about good and evil. It is about our time on this earth and how we choose to spend it. Look at the picture above. Look how happy President Kennedy looks. Do you think that when he got in that car that day he had any inkling of what would happen? No, of course he didn't. If he had, he would have never ridden in the parade that day. Someone wanted him dead, and so they killed him, pure and simple. Those are just the facts. When things like this happen, we know we can't prevent them, but we find ourselves asking over and over, Why? I'll tell you why. Evil exists, my friends, and it always will. Caligula, Stalin, Hitler, Amin, Lizzie Borden, Jack the Ripper, Son of Sam, The Boston Strangler, The Unibomber, Timothy McVey, Joseph Mengele, Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, Osama Bin Laden, ISIS...Unfortunately, I could go on and on. We cannot control the evil in the world. Truthfully we cannot control anyone's behavior but our own. We watch everything that goes on in the world, and say how awful things have gotten, but this did not happen overnight. My grandmother used to tell me, "You have to answer for yourself." At the end of the day, what have I done to make my world a better place? What do I have to answer for? Because, truthfully, people, it's the only way anything will ever change. "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Evil cannot drive out evil; only love can do that." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr. When everything happened in Paris just days ago, there was a picture posted with a huge Banner that said WE ARE NOT AFRAID! Do not let the power of evil control you by taking away your freedom to be the person you are meant to be because when it comes right down to it, you cannot control how long you will be here, you can only control the action you take while you are here. Don't waste your time in fear and hate. If you do, you have given power to the EVIL, Don't fuel the fire!

Then They Came For Me

Survivors

70 years! What a very long time. 70 years ago, it would still be almost 20 years before I would come into this world. My mother was only 5 years old. My grandparents were 34 and 36. No, I am not writing this so that you will know the ages of my family in 1945. What happened 70 years ago today changed the world as we know it. Auschwitz, one of the Nazi's concentration camps was liberated on January 27, 1945. I cannot imagine what the remaining prisoners must have felt after the horrors they had seen and made to endure daring themselves to believe that it could all be over. How could they even imagine waking up on a morning and not wondering if this would be the day they would die or be killed? We can read memoirs and articles and books, and see movies and television shows and be absolutely shocked, but none of us will ever know what any of those people endured.
What allows someone to survive such unspeakable treatment? How can such evil exist? How can one human being treat another human being so terribly simply because they are different? I wish I had an answer. I don't. It is unfathomable to me that people could be so cruel and actually enjoy it.
This day has been designated as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. REMEMBRANCE DAY. Webster defines remember as to have or keep an image or idea in your mind of (something or someone from the past) to think of (something or someone from the past) again. According to this definition, there are very few left who can remember. I wish it were called something else. Remember seems too trivial to me. I want it to be called International Holocaust this happened, and we can never forget that it happened Day. I am so lucky to have grown up in relative comfort and without fear. So many don't. What these people were forced to do on a daily basis would have made me want to run just so that some SS guard's bullet would put me out of my misery, but so many endured, and lived to tell the story the Nazi's tried so hard to cover up. Thousands of people killed a day, a day, and one man convinced a nation it was the right thing to do. That scares the hell out of me! " The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." ~ Edmund Burke
What would have happened if one person had stood up for the right when it first started? We sit back and say, Well, it's not here. It's not happening to me. What can I do? I'm only one person?

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.