SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

During recent months, a historic calamity or catastrophe or tragedy -- I can't think of the word that is as bad as needed here, save the big one -- has been uppermost in my mind much of the time. So many books newly published in these recent months and years touch upon it and these are best sellers or have been. It seems so many people are writing about this huge calamity, and yet many younger people than my generation have no idea how big and how serious this calamity was at one time or that it can be repeated. Perhaps it seems that I'm talking in riddles, but I'm not. Let me set the stage for you. 

One such best seller is All the Light We Cannot See. Another is The Book Thief, each over 500 pages. They are about the same historic calamity. The central figure in this calamity is not drawn, in these two books, as horrible as he really was. Then the book I'm currently reading, Unbroken, had this horrible creature in the chapter I read last night. At the time of this chapter the world doesn't know much about this horrible creature, but in hindsight, one can determine what to expect from him in such books. 

Add to what these books have to say to what the news is reporting about the turmoil waging in France. Murders of four in a kosher grocery store in Paris, for one thing. All of Europe must be alert to what could happen. Does Europe remember more clearly than does America? Perhaps, for that is where the calamity occurred.

Of course, I am talking about the Holocaust. Don't let anyone tell you it didn't happen, for it did happen. And Hitler was the name of the horrible creature who brought this terrible crime about. 

What bothers me now about this calamity is the treatment of the name Hitler. It seems the Nazi leader today is sort of a joke from the people who didn't learn history. It's a well known fact that if you don't know history, you will have to repeat it. Instead of Hitler, will the next war be because of the demonic ISIS? Perhaps.