Here is an interesting set of photos of an annual procession to the Monument of Freedom in Latvia. The Latvians who march in the procession (and fought under the Nazi's) say that they are commemorating compatriots killed in the war, while protesters accuse them of whitewashing history and having Nazi sympathies. Interesting debate could be had here about humanity. Does the life of a fallen soldier amount to less if they were fighting for the bad guys? Is the Pope a bad guy, he was a Nazi Youth after all. At what point does history cleans us of our mistakes or misbeliefs? Wolfboy has often posted photos and posts about War Veterans and the respect that he has for them without any one of us really countering his position. Do the photos of this event change our perception of things? I don't know, I guess I just started thinking aloud.
5 comments:
I love it when you think aloud Denis!
My belief is that any death, whether on the good or bad side of history, is generally unwarranted, and that it is a tragedy.
Even the most evil deserve empathy, that is why I do not believe in capital punishment, but that's a tough one, especially if I was part of a family who was victimized, or the victim myself. Things might change if it was my sibling or parent that was killed, or myself that was maimed or something.
Wars are awful, pure and simple, and are they avoidable so that we do not have these debates, I'm not sure, there's lots of anthropology to show that wars are part of us, whether symbolic or not. In my Masters I read an ethnography about a series of tribes that fight as part of their belief in a cultural cycle, i.e. it's time to fight, whether we like it or not b/c that's what happens next in our culture, no questions asked. It was shown to maintain a significant balance in a place where there were limited resources, meaning we fight every so often to establish new alliances and relations of sharing, and if we didn't, it would be a g-d damn free for all, resulting in more strife if we didn't.
That being said, today, not so sure any war is warranted, especially in relation to the fact that we do have enough resources for everyone, I think (don't snap at me Roberts).
Cool question(s) Denis.
There is a war between the rich and poor, a war between the man and the woman.
There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say there isn't.
Why don't you come on back to the war, that's right, get in it, why don't you come on back to the war, it's just beginning.
Fascinating questions - and the Baltic states are a particularly interesting context in which to think about them.
Debating or even asking people about their family's history with either or both sides (as many fought/collaborated/accepted/complied with both) during the war is likely to end a discussion, even relationships. I learned this lesson several times doing my master's degree fieldwork in Estonia and Lithuania.
Perhaps who, and how, we choose to mourn and remember in the context of war is a bit like Noam Chomsky saying 'I may not agree with what you're saying, but I will defend your right to say it'. That being said, the message on the sign in Russian on the 1st picture (paritally obscured) might be enought to get you arrested for insiting hate in some countries. So, there's remembering your heroes and there's causing new divisions.
No easy way out of these questions, but ones that are imperative for more than just historians to talk about.
i wrote a comment yesterday that vanished. oops.
first of all, it was ME who insisted there WERE enough resources for everyone in the world, which is why we're all here. and everyone disagreed with me on that. but i'm not snapping at you.
beyond that, as far as war goes, we teach our kids not to get in fights in the schoolyard as a way of solving problems, but then somehow when it happens on the national level we glorify it.
war is bunk, as far as i'm concerned, and while i realize too that it's always been with us, so have a lot of other things that we've grown or thought our way out of.
i have yet to see an example of a single war pretty much, in all of human history, that was fought for any reason other than conquest/control of resources. i.e. greed. and yes, i'll include WW II in that camp.
as far the veterans go, while war pretty much sickens me, i still can't help but feel like the individual solider is a victim in many ways. Having read a bajillion memoirs, letters, diaries, bios, and novels about war, and having interviewed a number of veterans personally, i tend to have faith in the nobility of their intentions, if that doesn't sound crazy. By that, i mean that i don't think very many people join the army because they want the chance to shoot people in the face (though some probably do). Especially in large-scale mobilizations of the citizenry like WW I and WW II, the vast majority of the people in uniform were not professional soldiers by any stretch-- they were teachers, artists, farmers, writers, labourers, etc. In any case, a large number of vets come home with serious psychological damage, which in and of itself deserves compassion/pity, regardless of how it was brought on.
This is an interesting story. I wonder when it will become acceptable for Germany to have more public displays of national mourning for all the men killed in WW II. Sooner or later, when the dust of history settles, the camps and gas chambers of WW II will be thought of separately from the individual German soldiers, the vast majority of whom had nothing to do with the genocide, and were mostly regular people who were given a gun and told to go shoot at someone or other.
Amen.
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