Mr. President re: Auschwitz and the lessons of that agenda

[willam]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz-Birkenau_State_Museum
 
of terorrism and genocide and express hatred toward a targetted people - 70 years, forever.
 
You cannot dictate or legislate the parameters of pain and suffering post historic reglious genocide and deliberate human impacting terrorism, people. You cannot. Expressly so when religion is intermixed in the POLITCIZED reasons for extolling an agenda of discriminatory hatred and trauma and torture and killing and economic ruination mandatorily upon a targetted population such as was born upon the Jewish population in Europe by "Christian" expousing Adolph Hitler in the 1930's and 40's.
 
What has been learned by the Christian church (on behalf of Adolf Hitler?) post World World II in regard to trying to interject Christian religious symbols and even a church on the site of forever sacred and reverent Auschwitz? Not a lot of healing, people. Not even if the Catholic Church tries their most deperately to suggest as much. Not even....
 
Left alone it (Auschwitz) should be - forever. Reverently. Sacredly. A testament to what very really and truly "was". Because of religious persecution  and deliberate human pursuit.
 
As I believe (sorry Mr. President) the site of 9/11 and the blocks surrounding it should be. Left alone in regard to religious "agendas", politicized pursuits.  Forever. Not politicized. Not religiously prostituted. Not any of that. Forever. No mosque. None. Just as no "church" exists within the parameters of Auschwitz. To this day. For a reason.
 
70 years out what have we "learned" from Hitler's terrorist reign? - that sites of his horrific religious persecution and terror are indeed humanly sacred. Literally and figuratively no man's land. Enough already with the "justifications" trying to suggest otherwise ... enough. About Auschwitz or The World Trade Center.
 
Perhaps it is time for U.S. President Barack Obama to visit Auschwitz - or golly gee - google Auschwitz on his Blackberry from his latest vacation venue - as I did? Ya think....
 
 
 
 

[caserio1]

perhaps it's time to lern how to make a point

[willam]

After reading that historical wikipedia contribution I posted - pretty simply written all - and stopping to think about the parallels between moral, political and religious lessons learned post Auschwitz and 9/11 - what IS your opinion, case?
 
Never mind mine - which you clearly "get" and just don't want to validate (just like clear thinking President Obama) - what's up, case? I am all ears...
 
 

[caserio1]

so now muslims are typified by auschwitz ?
 
perhaps you should learn about auschwitz first

[willam]

We LEARN from the past or we repeat not only the selected atrocities of the past - but the contemporary politicitized and agendized hypocrisies of the present as we try to move forward from it  - this select group of Muslims which do not represent ALL MUSLIMS included - which is a blatant, unnecessary, uncalled for and callous action of disrespect in regard to the overt and deliberate catastrophic terorrism that occurred. On that site. In the name of religion. And persecution based on religion of the most catastrophic order.
 
It is what it is. What it was.
 
In regard to a select group of Muslims proposing to put a community center and a gym, too in this proposed Mosque - I am incredulous. None of that honors any of it. Or justifies this mosque in close proxmity to ground zero one bit. Of that I am certain.
 
As I also honor thesacred undeveloped site where Auschwitz sits today - in solidarity forever with - and in reverent recognition of the pain and suffering that went on in its midst.
 
Not deserving one bit the energies of the Christian Church for the past 70 years trying to interject their presence on this site or near this site, one bit. No matter what any current Papal authority tries to say. No matter if the Pope himself stands up and suggest if only we had included a gym and a community center in any of it... as this select group of Muslims are trying to promote in regard to 9/11/ground zero.
 
 
 

[julianne]

Are there any strip joints in the near vicinity of Auschwitz?

[captain_kook]

What has been learned by the Christian church (on behalf of Adolf Hitler?) post World World II in regard to trying to interject Christian religious symbols and even a church on the site of forever sacred and reverent Auschwitz? Not a lot of healing, people. Not even if the Catholic Church tries their most deperately to suggest as much. Not even....



The attitude toward - and the treatment of - Jews throughout the history of the Catholic Church made the message clear to the Jews.

They've been lectured - and far worse - for centuries about how being a Jew was being damned and how the only way to salvation is through "Christianity"; and those nuns were there openly praying for the "salvation of the Jews"  in the same tradition and that was indeed offensive to the Jews.

I know you will imagine a similar description of the intent of the Cordoba House

but you'll be delusional.

[willam]

Kook -  Interresting how you refuse to entertain the topic I am bringing to the forefront which is to look critically and crucially at the actions post Auschwitz of the Catholic/Christian Hierachy and how they parallel this Muslim group's request. And how the Catholic Church pains for (and after the fact) tries time and time again to demand a Cathoilc presence at or near the express site of just one of the planned and deliberate ongoing AND PUBLICLY KNOWN atrocities against all Jews during Hitler's long reign in Europe.
 
And now not even ten years out from 9/11 a group of contemporary Muslim only wants to open a gym at or near 9/11 that include a community center too (and sort of but not really a mosque in there too) - and are only pure intentioned in this pursuit?
 
Come on - the discussion needs to be more open and honest than any of that. Really. 
 
And I mean OPEN AND HONEST, Mr. President - you intellectual fool.
 
The good people audaciously and cruelly impacted by planned out and carried through terrorist actions on 9/11 demand as much. And if those good people in the end - just like the good people impacted by Auschwitz - say no. Than it should be NO. End of subject.
 
 
 
 

[captain_kook]

  Interresting how you refuse to entertain the topic I am bringing to the forefront which is to look critically and crucially at the actions post Auschwitz of the Catholic/Christian Hierachy and how they parallel this Muslim group's request.
 
I entertain it.
 
I'll do it again
 
There is no parallel.
 
That's bullshit.
 

[captain_kook]

read this:

.."On reflection, though, I don’t think that these differences in themselves invalidate the parallel between the Park51/Cordoba project in 2010 and the Auschwitz nunnery in the mid-1980s.

Other factors, however, do undermine it—maybe fatally.



One, as noted (and as confirmed), is that the building that the Carmelite nuns planned to turn into a permanent convent
  "...is situated just outside the camp fence and was used by the Nazis to store poison gas for the extermination chambers. It is clearly visible from inside the camp. "

In addition:
1. The convent at Auschwitz was to be a purely Catholic institution, with none of the interfaith aspects or broad community-serving purposes that mark the Park51 project.


2. In their fundraising appeal, the convent’s sponsors
  described the convent as “a spiritual fortress and a guarantee of the conversion of strayed brothers from our countries as well as proof of our desire to erase outrages so often done to the Vicar of Christ.” 

Whether or not “the strayed brothers” requiring “conversion” is a reference to Jews—it might refer to fallen-away Catholics—it’s hard to interpret the reference to “outrages” supposedly perpetrated against the “Vicar of Christ” as anything other than an allusion to the well-documented charges that Pope Pius XII was, shall we say, less than fully engaged in trying to prevent the Nazi slaughter of the Jews of Europe.

3. The institutional context is decisively different. The Catholic Church is a “continuing body,” way more so than the United States Senate. The Church is a hierarchical, even authoritarian institution, with a self-perpetuating bureaucracy and, via the Vatican, the diplomatic and political status of a state. The papacy that failed to struggle against the horror of Auschwitz is the same papacy (though not the same pope, of course) that exercised ultimate authority over the Carmelite convent at Auschwitz.

There is no such authority structure within Islam and no such institutional connection between Al Qaeda and the sponsors of Park51. Nor is there even an ideological connection. To demand that an Islamic cultural center run by Muslims opposed to terrorism not be built two blocks from the WTC site is like demanding that a Unitarian church not be built two blocks from an abortion clinic bombed by the “Christian” murderer of the late Dr. George Tiller.



4. The geopolitical context is decisively different. When the Carmelite/Auschwitz controversy surfaced, the Shoah was forty years in the past. The struggle over lethal anti-Semitism within Christian Europe is over. The struggle over lethal terrorism within Islam is not. In that worldwide struggle, the conflation of 9/11 terrorism with Islam per se—a conflation that is at the heart of the anti-Park51 campaign—is a huge, unearned, dangerous strategic gift to Al Qaeda. (And the American politicians and pundits who are busily giving the breath of life to this so-called issue are the biggest givers.)




One final point. The rhetoric of the Carmelite/Cordoba parallel seems to assume that it was automatically wrong for a Catholic institution to locate itself in the vicinity of Auschwitz. I’m almost as skeptical of that as I am of the supposed corollary—that it’s automatically wrong for an Islamic institution to locate itself in the vicinity of Ground Zero. At Auschwitz and in lower Manhattan, the murderers saw their victims as abstractions, as nothing but emanations of an identity. Yet every single victim was a unique person, a multifaceted human being whose life was much more—and meant much more—than the flat category that was all their murderers chose to see. That slope of that kind of thinking is, to put it mildly, slippery.

Read more <A href="http://http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/hendrikhertzberg/2010/08/cordoba-and-the-carmelites.html#ixzz0wsxhMktA">


http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/hendrikhertzberg/2010/08/cordoba-and-the-carmelites.html#ixzz0wsxhMktA

[willam]

Nothing cleans up or justified 9/11. Then or now. The geographic land in and near 9/11 will require our country's upmost reverence and sacred attention forever  - as Auschwitz will always require people never, ever forgetting what happened to innocent undeserving people there, too. By a then complicit Christian population in Europe.
 
Quit demeaning any and all peripheral Muslims by suggesting they can't simply and respectfully abide by Americans (and all of us are collective victim of 9/11 - not just some of us)  having a right to not tolerate a Mosque/ball bouncing venue within this sacred ground's midst. 
 
I don't have to nor will I ever apologize to anyone, my President included for my opinion about any of this.

[captain_kook]

I wouldn't expect you to
 
I'm just glad people who don't connect well with reality have the internet to dissipate their delusional lives