Perspective

Three young Jewish women converse at a mass demonstration in Hyde Park 

to protest against the Nazi persecution of German Jewry.* 1933  USHMM

I've been thinking about the hatred and rage we experience when we are on the sidewalk in front of Planned Parenthood.  Sure, lots of people give friendly honks and thumbs-up.  I appreciate those, even if the support is weak.  (It would mean more if people actually joined us.) The opposition on the other hand is emotionally fierce, and it sticks with you.

The other evening Edie and I watched the Martin Scorsese film “Silence”, based on the novel by Shusaku Endo.  I read the book years ago after seeing it on Marvin Olasky’s (editor of World News Group) essential reading list.  The story is about the horrific persecution of Christians in 15^th Century Japan.  What we go through in front of Planned Parenthood is laughable compared to what Christians endured then, and in other times and places around the world.   Still, we have time on the sidewalk to reflect on the daily bellowed “f___ yous” and up-thrusted middle fingers from passersby.  It’s not hard to interpret these as intended to be meant literally.  The ugly, vile, violent reference to what our Creator intended for human procreation is entirely consistent with the ugly, vile, violent response to the unwanted result of human procreation.  You almost view those people who do this to us as being of the same spirit of the inquisitors in medieval Japan.  I believe that if unrestrained by the law and encouraged, some of those bird flippers and shouters would attack us physically.  You see that sort of thing with the present so-called Antifa, or antifascist movement, who themselves use fascist tactics.

I don’t want to leave the impression that we are at great risk out there.  It is tense, but so far actual threats are almost non-existent.  We are able to focus on our purpose, which is reaching out to abortion bound people.

*The photograph has been cleaned up from the original, to remove specks. And cropped a little.To see the original and the documentation, go to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.  I considered using this photo in my novel, but getting permission to use a high resolution image was burdensome. The photo is in the public domain.

The Swastika of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice

This is a detail of the old logo of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice in Berea College blue.  Willie Parker is a member of the board of this evil organization-the RCRC.  Watch an HD video showing the old and current logos HERE.

Echo Tourism in Images

These images are of Asheville, North Carolina sites where people aborted hundreds and thousands of pre-natal children.

The first is 900 Hendersonville Road, now a parking lot attached to an office building owned by Mission Hospitals.

The second is a view from 93 Victoria Street, a building now owned by Asheville Buncombe Technical Community College.

The third is off Reed Street Extension at the edge of Biltmore Village. All that's left of the last place, which closed in November, 1998, is the dilapidated fence you see here, some roofing material used for siding, and some masonry.

[Click to enlarge.]

More images to come. 

Echo Tourism

The Coliseum in Rome, from inside the wall.

by M. Hunt

If you’re quiet and listen, you might hear their voices.

When I looked across the arena at the Roman Coliseum during a torrid August afternoon in 2009, I tried to imagine the scenes of death from so many centuries ago. I tried to hear the echoes of blades on shields and the mobs cheering as blood flowed into the sand.

I imagine people feel the same somber wonder and horror when they visit other certain historical sites around the world, death camp sites such as Dachau, Auschwitz, and Mauthausen, and the transport camp, Terezin.

At least two such tragic historical sites are located within Asheville, and the city is about to add another to its recommended tours.

One: The corner of 900 Hendersonville Road is now only a parking lot for a spiffy office building, but during the ‘80’s and into the early ‘90s, they aborted pre-natal children there in a low, squat building. Thousands of pre-natal children died in this sleazy, sordid place. The state of North Carolina tore it down to widen the road, and the business moved to the edge of Biltmore Village.

Two: Train tracks surrounded the new building that was located in an industrial zoned area. It featured a narrow waiting room on steel girders spanning a dirty, limpid creek. Weeds grew up the walls of the building, and on one side, old roofing material made the siding. Steel bars guarded broken window. The abortionists drove in from Tennessee and South Carolina. It was a back alley abortion mill with a sign hanging in the front alley.

On a Saturday afternoon in November, 1998, I showed up as usual with my “Let Your Baby Live. We Will Help!” sign, but no one else came. No other pro-life people, no abortion workers, and no victims. I was alone. A sheet of white paper had been taped to the front window. For the first time ever, I walked onto the property and to the front porch. The note said the place had closed permanently.

I remember months later seeing a monster garbage truck parked in front, rocking back and forth. An industrial shredder on wheels. A few years later another business moved into the building, a non-profit called Save the Children. That’s right. I stopped once just to look around inside, and I asked the people there a few questions. I wanted to, but didn’t ask if they ever heard the echoes of screaming children. Sometime later, the owner tore the building down, leaving rubble, and piles of weed-covered earth, now in view of nearby spiffy office buildings.

Three: Apparently, the abortion center on Asheville’s Orange Street is closing now. A volunteer escort recently said so in an article titled “The Last Shift” that appeared June 15 in an online publication called The Asheville Blade. So, by the end of this month we’ll have another historical site of sorrow and death to add to the itinerary. Maybe “Save the Children” will buy the building and move in. Maybe someday this terrible place will end up like all the others, in rubble and fading memories.

My late acquaintance, Kentucky poet laureate James Still and I once ate lunch together nearly every day. I could never find his source, and I may not have the quote down perfectly, but he one day he said, “Birds sang, the sun shone, flowers grew, and prayers rose up, but the laws of nature were not violated.” He was talking about Dachau, which I know he visited. Maybe the quote was his own, a fragment of an incomplete poem.

My friends and I spent many, many hours on the sidewalk in front of Femcare--when thousands of people ignored, dismissed, ridiculed, or cursed our offers of help and appeals to moms and dads to let their babies live. Thousands of mothers carried their children passed us into the doors to be killed.

An independent observer watching the passers-by might suppose the middle finger to be an international sign for “choice.” But many people expressed support, too, as they walked or drove by. Our presence was always, usually, more a quiet vigil than a protest. I’ve watched and listened to starlings, crows, doves, pigeons, and hawks. Last Saturday, a noisy mocking bird entertained and annoyed us with his crazy song list, more of cacophony than symphony.

Prayers rose up. But not enough prayer and not enough people praying. On occasion a mother changed her mind and left with her baby alive.

Femcare is closing. A better name for it is Femkill. Though, what you call it is irrelevant now because it’s closing. What’s important is the killing probably is moving to another place—to a building on McDowell Street owned and operated by Planned Parenthood.

North Carolina law says it’s a felony to “destroy” “unborn children” unless the act is done by a licensed physician “in a hospital or clinic certified by the Department of Health and Human Services to be a suitable facility for the performance of abortions.” We often bring posters to the sidewalk depicting a 10 week child who was destroyed by abortion. This is what Planned Parenthood intends to do in its new building. It’s bloody, violent, and evil. There is no suitable facility for this.

So, are we nostalgic about our upcoming last shift at Femcare? Are we jubilant? No. Just feeling sadness and resignation. We’ll be shifting to McDowell Street, if necessary. Unique human beings, persons in embryonic or fetal form, will be destroyed in that place. And someday even it will be a ruined historical site where, if you’re quiet and listen, you might hear their voices.

Echoing in your conscience.

The Genocide Awareness Project @ Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, April 4, 2008

These TU students set up their educational notification early and soon afterwards, wind and rain took the brown paper banners down.
Dr. Fletcher Armstrong, SE Director of the Center for Bio-ethical Reform, talks with a TU student.

Notes on TU GAP of April 4, 2008

Transylvania University ( TU) is the first private campus I have been on . Since we were there by the indulgence of the U and not necessarily under the First Amendment, we took pains to be on our best behavior.

That week was wet much of the time and the one day, a Friday, on TU was no exception. The day was warm and not terribly rainy, but windy. Due to the smallness of the campus and weather conditions, we set up eight signs instead of the full compliment of 17. This did not compromise our effectiveness.

Some TU students organized an impromptu protest. I photographed them before the wind took its toll. A small gathering formed about midday, and by the end of the day, most individuals in it had moved to the display to observe and discuss. Frequently, students and some profs gathered to debate with us. The discussion was often intense and on a relatively sophisticated level.

Three Conversations: Early after the display set-up was complete, two professors appeared nearly at once. Professor One is “Chair, Division of Social Sciences; Professor Of History.” Initially, without words from me, he began bellowing as loudly as possible a foot from my face that our display was an outrage. He was extremely loud, and I do not wish to understate this, except that it lasted only a few seconds. I remained calm and asked him if any of his relatives had died in the Holocaust. He said, “Maybe” in a way that suggested that he did not know, or that maybe he did not wish to tell me. At some point he said that he taught a course on the Holocaust and I asked him for a course outline. He said that I couldn’t possibly understand what he was telling me, because I was “a blank wall.”

Professor Two said she taught in the Psychology Department. She insisted that no medical textbook said that an individual human life began at fertilization. I asked her to bring me a medical text, and she returned with a Developmental Psychology book that referred to the entity soon after fertilization as an “organism” I asked, what kind of organism? “Not a plant or animal, but human,” I said. I said that her text did not deny that human life began at fertilization, but was simply unclear. And then I showed her the text we carry with GAP, the page with a chart headed “prenatal human development” that indicates fertilization as the beginning. Somehow she did not understand this and did not really know what “prenatal” meant and said that she was “disappointed” that I could not discuss “responsibly.”

The History professor returned later with his course outline and we talked further. His main point then was that he questioned whether or not the victims of the Holocaust and the other atrocities would support the use of their photographs. To show him I wasn't’ a blank wall, I said, “When Schindler’s List came out, I read the book before the release of the film. And whenever I heard the music from the film, I cried.” He said quickly, as if he were sarcastic, “I’m touched.” When I told him that I could learn from him, he said that I would misuse the learning. When I returned home after GAP I sent him an e-mail. (See post below. Note that the prof never answered my e-mail.)

Conversation Three was with a Philosophy/History student. This was challenging because of the intelligence of the student, my fatigue at the end of the day at the end of the week, and because we spoke fast and furious, though civil. The student was more open minded than the profs and we were able to interject some humor, except he gave me a fake e-mail address after saying it was real, which leads me to doubt his sincerity. His main point was that an act is evil solely to the degree it inflicts suffering. I said that an act can be evil even if no one suffers, for example, abortion is evil because it robs a human being of life, though no evident suffering occurs.

The e-mail to a Transy Professor

Dear Dr. S... ,

Thank you again for the course outline you gave me on Friday. Some of the books and films are new to me and I will add them to my To Do list. One of my recent interests in Holocaust study is the partisans of Vilna.

I noted your work on Soviet guerillas of World War II. This is a subject I've never thought of before and it seems that Stalin’s treatment of them fits a familiar pattern—though not as extreme as how the Soviets regarded Red Army POW’s. My most recent venture into Soviet History was reading Anne Applebaum’s book, Gulag. A more or less hero of mine is Natan Shcharansky.

In conversation with you, I mentioned the PBS documentary “Memory of the Camps.” It’s an amazing film created from footage taken by allied forces during the liberation of the death camps. A script was composed for the film after the war but the project was never completed until 1985. Here’s a link to the site: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/camp/ . Perhaps it can be a resource for your students.

I will hazard here to quote the concluding words of this documentary as an explanation for the use of the images in our Genocide Awareness Project.

“The dead have been buried; it remains for us to care for these, the living. It remains for us to hope that Germans may help to mend what they have broken, and cleanse what they have befouled. Thousands of German people were made to see for themselves, to bury the dead, to file past the victims. This was the end of the journey they had so confidently begun in 1933. Twelve years? No, in terms of barbarity and brutality they had traveled backwards for 12 thousand years. Unless the world learns the lesson these pictures teach, night will fall, but by God’s grace, we who live, will learn.”

Sincerely,
Meredith Eugene Hunt
Asheville, North Carolina
828-545-2284

April 7, 2008

Resistance v. Collaboration

What is the proper response to atrocity, in particular when human beings are being murdered under the protection of government? When you, your family, and your neighbors are being murdered? This last instance is certainly the case of abortion. Other than merely speaking, if a person attempts, even peacefully, to interfere with aborting children in this country, he or she will be arrested and punished. All of us would agree that Christians, or any human beings with consciences, should try to save the lives of the victims. Where there is disagreement would be the means we should use. Without discussing every ramification of this subject, I wish to compare two opposing methods by telling a story.

Studying the Holocaust is looking through a window to our present day. The Holocaust is one of the most documented, analyzed and examined human atrocities in history, and abortion is one of the least. Because the Holocaust is in the past and because nearly none of us lived in the environment where it took place, we can look at it objectively. But because abortion is an integral part of the culture in which we live, most of us accommodate it; and we breathe a fog of confusion, as did many Europeans when the Holocaust was taking place. The story I wish to tell about resistance and collaboration is from the Holocaust. There are detailed accounts of this story, but I will limit myself to the basic thread.

Partly because of the historical presence of outstanding Jewish scholars, the city of Vilna had been called the Jerusalem of the Lithuania. Vilna had drawn Jewish students from all over Europe and at the beginning of the 20th century, half the city’s population was Jewish. After World War I, both Poland and Lithuania claimed the city, but Poland took control in 1920. Under the terms of the German-Soviet Pact, Vilna, along with the rest of eastern Poland, was occupied by Soviet forces in late September 1939. In October, the Soviet Union transferred the Vilna region to Lithuania. The Germans invaded and took Vilna in June of 1941, when at that time some 70,000 Jewish people lived there, both residents and refugees.

In July, 1941 German Einsatzgruppen squads, helped by Lithuanians, killed 5,000 Jewish men at Ponary Forest a few miles outside of Vilna, and this was only the beginning. The Germans established two ghettos in Vilna and forced the Jews to relocate to them—the weak and the infirm into one ghetto which was liquidated after a few days. By the end of the year 1941, the Einsatzgruppen had murdered about 40,000 Jews in Ponary.

The techniques the Germans used for pacifying the Jews are well known—one being that they spread the lie that those taken from the ghettos were being resettled in labor camps, and the Jews did work in construction projects outside the ghetto, but periodic roundups and killings of those who had no work permits continued until the spring of 1942. Young men were particularly selected for being shot, because they were most likely to resist. The remaining Jewish people, for the most part, went along rather than resisted, in the hope of survival. Resistance, they believed, would mean death. Compliance meant perhaps that they could live another day, even if under tremendous hardship.

Two Jewish figures emerged as representing opposite poles of response to the atrocities.

Jacob Gens rose to a position of respect among the Germans and was appointed chief of the Judenrat—the Jewish police in September, 1941. Gens so pleased his masters that he eventually was appointed chief of the ghettos in all of Lithuania and White Russia.

The next section on Gens is an extract from
The Holocaust Chronicle,
www.holocaustchronicle.org/,
and the Holocaust Research Project.

“Jacob Gens, leader of Vilna (Lithuania) Ghetto's Jewish Council, ruled his community with almost dictatorial power. Derisively called ‘King Jacob the First,’ Gens decided who would live and who would die. Convinced he could save Jews by demonstrating their value to the German economy, he selected those capable of ‘productive’ labor and surrendered to the Nazis those who were ‘unproductive.’ During the 1941 Einsatzgruppen roundups, Gens personally inspected each Jew's work permit. Those too old, too weak, and too ill to work,
or not in possession of the prized ‘yellow card’ were delivered by Gens to the SS, who then executed them.”

“When reproached by Jewish religious leaders for his tactics, Gens defended his philosophy: ‘When they ask me for a
thousand Jews, I hand them over; for if we Jews will not give them on our own, the Germans will come and take them by force. Then they will take not one thousand, but thousands. With hundreds, I save a thousand. With the thousands that I hand over, I save ten thousand. I will say: I did everything in order to save as many Jews as possible…..to ensure that at least a remnant of Jews survive.’"

Yitzhak Wittenberg, a communist in his mid-thirties, and members of other political organizations, including Zionists, began meeting within the ghetto to discuss what they were certain of, that eventually all of the Jews of Vilna would be killed. The Zionists had the goal of fighting to form the nation of Israel, but they concluded that the dignity of the Jewish people imposed upon them a greater demand—that they remain and fight to defend their people in the event that the Germans would attempt to liquidate the entire ghetto. Others argued that it would be better strategically to fight the Germans in the forests. But in the end they all agreed to arm themselves and to resist from within the ghetto while trying to arouse the remaining 20,000 Jews into resistance, though they knew that military success was without hope. In late January of 1942 they chose Wittenberg to be their leader. The organization was named the Fareynigte Partizaner Organizatsye—the FPO.

From the spring of 1942 until September 1943 there was a lull in the killings at Vilna, and Gens attempted to restore a sense of normalcy. During that time the Gestapo discovered the name of the FPO resistance leader, Wittenberg, and demanded to Gens that he be turned over to them. Gens requested a meeting with Wittenberg with the purpose of arresting him, but backed by FPO fighters, Wittenberg escaped with through the inaction of Judenrat police. The story is dramatized in the book Treblinka. What follows are excerpts from conversation between Wittenberg and Gens, and ruminations of Gens.

Wittenberg: “Listen to me, Gens. I know you believe you are acting for the good of the Jewish people, but you are wrong, for the Germans have condemned us all. All your acts of cowardice, all your betrayals may postpone the end, but the end is inevitable. We have always suffered greatly, and pogroms have been our daily bread, but what is happening now exceeds the worst we have ever known. Before, they killed us with hatred and without method; today they are exterminating us without hatred but with method, and this is serious. It is no longer men we are up against, it is machines. If they still hated us we might try to talk to them, if they had something in particular against us we might try to show them that they are wrong, but they no more hate us than you hate spiders. Our only fault in their eyes is that we exist. We are all dead, Gens—you, me, your son and mine. It is merely a question of chronology. But we still have one thing left to save: our honor.”

Gens: “The future may prove you right, Itzak, and my name may be cursed; and yet something tells me you are wrong. You talk about honor like a Gentile, not like a Jew. Honor for a Jew is honoring God, as Moses us commanded us to do. In Spain when the Gentiles tried make us deny our God, we died at the stake. But today it is not our honor that is being threatened, it is our lives.”

“Therefore, Itzak Wittenberg, I say that you are wrong, because you are mistaken when you talk about Jewish honor. Why God has imposed this punishment on his people, I do not know. But one thing I do know, and that is that God can not want His whole people to be exterminated, for if He wanted that, He would be denying His own Word. He would be breaking His Covenant. This is why I know that I am obeying Him, even when I betray you to save Jewish lives. Moses delivered the Jews from Pharaoh’s clutches, and Esther from Haman’s; perhaps God has chosen me.”

Wittenberg: “You are mad, Gens! Mad with pride! You are nothing but a puppet in the hands of the Germans, and you think you are the savior of the Jewish people!….”

“Gens did not sleep that night. He saw his own strategy collapsing because of one man, when 40,000 had been exterminated in Ponary. What was one man compared to the 40,000 already dead and the 20,000 who were going to die?
He did not care about his own life, he had already sacrificed it for his people, but all his efforts reduced to zero, the ghetto liquidated because of this imbecile who should have gone to the forest if he was so determined to fight! Since he could not count on his police, he considered setting the ghetto against him, but he remembered what the sages had written: ‘When the idolater says, “Deliver one of your people to us, we will kill him, but if you refuse we will kill you all,” let all consent to perish and let not one soul of Israel willingly be delivered to the idolater,’ and he was shaken for a moment.”

Gens believed that by betraying Wittenberg he could save the Jews in the ghetto, and those Jews were persuaded of this also, turning against the FPO. Even many of the partisans agreed—and, disheartened, Wittenberg said to them, “We don’t even have the right to die fighting. We were children; all of this is too big for us” and turned himself over to Gens and the Judenrat. The next day, July 16, 1943, Wittenberg died, though the stories conflict about how this took place. Wittenberg apparently requested cyanide so that he could take his own life rather than be subjected to German torture. Some stories say that he was denied the cyanide; one story says that Gens supplied it to him.

In September 1943 the Germans completed the destruction of the Vilna ghetto. The FPO revolted and some fought to the death, while others escaped. Most Jews did not resist. Gens was shot by the Gestapo on September 14. One source said that Germans had accused him of aiding the underground. Most Jews that had remained in the Vilna ghetto were sent to forced labor camps, death camps, or they were shot at Ponary Forest. About 2,500 Jews were kept in labor camps near Vilna.

On July 13, 1944 Soviet forces liberated Vilna, but in anticipation, the Germans had already murdered those Jews in the labor camps. A few hundred Jews escaped the massacre and hid in the forest. Of the original 70,000, only between 2,000-3,000 Vilna Jews survived the war—they who fled during the German occupation, or found hiding places in the city. A few of them survived in concentration camps in Germany.

Sources:
Beth Hatefutsoth, Museum of the Jewish People, www.bh.org.il/Communities/Archive/Vilna.asp

Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team,
www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ghettos/vilnius.html

Noar Family, www.noarfamily.net/Vilnaghetto.html

U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, www.ushmm.org/

Shoah Resource Center,
www.yadvashem.org/

Treblinka, by Jean-Francois Steiner, 1966

For further study, see the “docurama” film, Partisans of Vilna, 1986, available on DVD and featuring interviews with the real person of Abba Kovner, Israeli poet and leader of the Vilna Jewish resistance after Wittenberg’s death. The surrender of Wittenberg, Kovner declared, was, “one of the greatest acts of heroism of the Jewish fighting underground in the ghetto.” Also, you may wish to study the paintings of Vilna child-survivor Samuel Bak.

End Note: I believe that there are many parallels between what happened in these events and what is taking place now with abortion, especially with regard to the “Blue Moon Group” here in Asheville, featured in the Time magazine cover story of February 26, 2007. Of course, there are differences. But, I will leave you to consider your own conclusions. -MEH