 |
|||||||||
     |
|||||||||
 |
|||||||||
| You are here: 2000 / Workshops, Panels and Seminars / Workshops on Education / Workshop 5 on Education, "Religious and Ethical Teachings and the Holocaust" / Presentation by Dr. Elisabeth Maxwell | |||||||||
|
|||||||||
|
Participants Countries and organizations Conference documentation Conference programme 
|
|
|
|
Report from Workshop 5 on Education: "Regigious and Ethical Teachings and the Presentation by Rabbi Irving Greenberg Presentation by Dr. Franklin H. Littell Presentation by Dr. Elisabeth Maxwell Presentation by Dr. Stanislaw Obirek Presentation by Dr. Didier Pollefeyt Presentation by Professor John K. Roth Presentation by Dr. Elisabeth Maxwell Maxwell, Elisabeth Presenttation by Dr. Elisabeth Maxwell Presentation by Dr Elisabeth Maxwell for the second part of the session chaired by Professor John Roth on Religious and Ethical Teachings and the Holocaust. The first part of the session considered: What can be learned from Failure? My presentation addresses the second part: What should be done? This is a tall order, on which some of the best scholars in the fields of Ethics and Philosophy have pitted their brains and erudition and I do not claim to come here before this awesome assembly with any effective or original solutions, for I am not a theologian. What I would rather do is take the few minutes at my disposal to share with you some of the knowledge I have recently acquired from some 250 communications to be discussed and then published for Remembering For The Future 2000, the international scholarly conference taking place in 5 months' time in the United Kingdom, in Oxford and London, from 16 to 23rd July 2000. An original feature of RFTF 2000 is that the themes suggested to participants were left fairly wide, the idea being that we wanted to see what topics related to the study of the Holocaust and other Genocides were of major interest to scholars at the moment, whether in the fields of History, Religion, Ethics or Education. We took the risk that there might be gaps in the final programme but gained a good insight into the scholars' main areas of interest and research. The results of our call for papers therefore are representative of a general trend of scholarly research in our field of study. It is clear that the increasing secularisation of Europe and the Western World and the search for a global ethic are the basic preoccupations of most thinkers today, whether they be historians, philosophers, scientists, lawyers, educators, religious or lay people, political leaders or simply concerned and enlightened individuals, and this was confirmed unmistakably yesterday in the speeches of the Prime Ministers and Heads of State who addressed us. We may well be under the illusion that our world has been progressing morally at the same speed as its technical advances, but alas this is not so. My generation, who still went to bed by candlelight and was warmed by log and coal fires, witnessed numerous 'firsts' - the explosion of the car industry, radio, television, telephone, Lindberg's Atlantic crossing, Gagarin's orbit of the planet, Neil Armstrong's moon landing, shuttle refuelling in space, the arrival of the silicon chip and the computer. All the wildest dreams of a Leonardo da Vinci or a Jules Verne have indeed come to pass; man's aspirations of the 19th century and before seem to have been fulfilled. Yet our ancestors did not envisage the invention of the atom bomb or the destruction of mankind by other human beings. They could not imagine Auschwitz and the Holocaust; that evil concept was a product of my own times. I feel ashamed to have lived through these times and to think that we have bequested that legacy to our children and grand children. But there are lessons to be learnt from such tragedies. I would greatly encourage the coming generation of young scholars to take heed of the recommendations of our generation, for we lived through these most traumatic times. We thought we were the grandchildren of the Enlightenment and prided ourselves on our degree of civilisation, certain that education such as we had received was the solution to the ultimate peace of the world, and that if we were to spread the teaching of the Humanities and Declaration of Human rights far and wide, we would achieve our goal. Our fate was to suffer the greatest indignity that damaged the world irretrievably; we discovered that our "civilisation" was paper thin, that not a single element of human civilisation can be taken as solid; that after 10,000 years, or even 30,000 according to recent archaeological discovery, what we take to be the ascent of man through the great civilisations, came to an abrupt stop in the middle of the 20th century and plunged into an abyss of cruelty and evil, such as had never before been seen on our planet. What we have learnt is that man's humanity is most precarious and that in the right conditions it can be swept away in just a few years. We must beware of the culture industry which tries to make the world easily comprehensible and brandishes single formulas which "explain it all". It is a trend which the philosopher Theodore Adorno disdained as a major obstacle to understanding and "to guiding newcomers into areas of thought they have not previously visited and to a style of thought they have not practised before."1 Following the guidelines given to us by our chairman, I will confine my presentation to three points: 1) Given that not a single element of human civilisation can be taken as solid, and that the most sophisticated civilisation can be swept away in a matter of years, we must look towards other more solid frameworks to prop us up, and look around for some other means of defeating evil by clinging more tightly to Eternal Good: God for those who have religious faith or to Common Absolute Good for those who are atheist or agnostic. 2) Serious theologians have advocated not cosmetic changes but radical surgery to make Christianity relevant to our times: I propose more humble and attainable ways of teaching the courage to care. 3) I will suggest that our disillusioned youth today is in search of heroes and finds them mostly in the worlds of football, boxing and pop music, a transient glory if ever there was one, whereas the Holocaust offers an entirely new set of heroes whose example will last for ever as part of a universal legacy of what is best in human behaviour. Yesterday, the Prime Minister of Sweden was widely praised for being the initiator of this conference, of its concept and implementation, and I concur totally. It is all the more remarkable when one considers the religious history of this country, nowadays one of the most secular countries in the world. From 1527, Sweden was a no-go area for anyone who was not a member of the Lutheran church and until 1781, it was forbidden on pain of death to be a Catholic. It was not until 1951 that a law of religious liberty was promulgated and some restrictions affecting Catholics only disappeared totally in 1977. The numbers in the Catholic Church have risen from some 4000 in 1940 to 160,000 today and there is now a Swedish Catholic bishop.2 At a time when study of the Holocaust had left me profoundly anxious about the tenets of my own Huguenot Protestant faith, I was seeking reassurance from one of my mentors, the American Protestant theologian Roy Eckardt. A most outstanding and original thinker, a man of great modesty and total integrity, Roy was, in my eyes, a righteous gentile of the finest quality and a model of moral and intellectual courage, both in his rejection of the aspects of Christian theology which he could no longer accept and in his defense of the Jews, at a time when neither of these stances was acceptable, let alone fashionable. I also discussed with him what could be done to counteract the ignorance and apathy of the masses in Europe and how the results of Holocaust scholarship could be more widely disseminated. How could we ensure that the world was never allowed to forget? Roy answered my questions and calmed my anxieties with great simplicity and wisdom. "The real issue", he said, "is what is the right thing to do? The challenge is not whether to be labeled as a Christian or non-Christian; it is how to be human, how to be responsible. Just do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord. To accomplish the task you have set yourself, you need anger and you need courage". Thus, Roy was largely responsible for my 'conversion' (the right word in this context), not to Judaism as the media erroneously reported, but to a 'reformed' and enlightened Christianity from which all forms of antisemitism and supersessionism have been removed. From that moment, all became clear to me and Roy and Alice Eckardt's wholehearted support and encouragement were crucial to the birth in 1988 of Remembering for the Future (RFTF), the first international congress in the United Kingdom, which went down in the annals of Holocaust studies as a meeting of immense significance. Since religion as we were taught it failed not only to prevent the catastrophe of the Holocaust, but contributed largely to the climate that made it possible, it is now undergoing a serious crisis of credibility. In Europe. general dissatisfaction is gaining ground and this is easily visible in the empty churches and extreme difficulty experienced in recruiting men to train for the priesthood. I propose that whilst we wait for Christianity to put its own house in order, we should turn our minds to a global ethic derived from all the great religions of the world and from religions stemming from them. It seems to me that the time has come when "small ecumenical", ie gatherings of various denominations of Christians and Jews, should become "truly ecumenical" and extended to other religions: Buddhism, Islam, Confucianism, Hinduism and others, not in order to dilute our own faiths but to discover what unites us in the pursuit of Absolute Good. Do not misunderstand me, I am not advocating a "new kind of religion", but rather a coming together of representatives of all religions so we can beenriched by other traditions and find common denominators for a universal acceptance of basic human rights, to which all the countries of the world can agree. Then in turn we can teach the children of the world to respect life and act according to basic human rights for the common good. Thorough research for a global ethic with the help and presence of all denominations might reveal solutions which have eluded us up to now. It may seem an immense task when you realise for instance, that this great forum here in Stockholm did not manage to have a single official representative from the Eastern Orthodox church, a Christian Church, neither from the main continent of Orthodoxy nor from the active religious thinkers of their Diaspora, from whom we have much to learn despite the myth that surrounds them. Returning to a Global Ethic, I would suggest that this great host country should put such a plan on its agenda through the International Task Force which Sweden has recently set up, for there are peacemakers out there, waiting to join us in this concourse of goodwill and we need them. 2) As to radical surgery to enable the Churches to square their old theologies with post-Auschwitz faith, I leave that to the theologians. It was Elie Wiesel who added, when talking of the indifference of the world during the Holocaust: "the world was silent, a silence compounded by the failure of even modest action". This country can take pride in the extraordinary accomplishments of Raoul Wallenberg, a rescuer of immense daring and courage who took great risks and gave his life so that others may live. Such spectacular examples have tended to overshadow the more modest achievements of thousands of people who took part in rescuing others: that invisible army of people who just opened their doors and let in a stranger in distress, the identity card forgers, those who foraged for food in order to feed those they were hiding, those who were in the know but did not betray, those who saw but did not talk. It is well known that in occupied territories, it took at least ten people to save one Jew, often an entire chain of people was needed, and those who started the rescue only knew the next link in the chain. These are considered to be modest actions, but they made all the difference to the survival of a hunted fugitive. What is demanded of each of us is rarely heroic actions, it is modest, human action, simply the courage to care, and that leads me to my last point. 3) The need for heroes. I have often talked about the courage to care and been told that it was not something you could teach, that it was a gift your received at birth, that some had it but most were not so blessed. I have come to disagree with the latter statement. Most of us have had role models, people we loved or admired and have wanted to emulate. A long time ago, when I was a child in France going to elementary school, we were given lessons in morality. The teacher read to us or made us read aloud stories recalling the exploits of heroes or the more humble acts of courage of children. We were inspired by those stories and imagined ourselves in the place of the hero in the tale. Nowadays, no such course exists, and patriotism and lessons in citizenship are no longer taught in our schools. But we have new role models to propose to our young people: the heroes of the Holocaust whom we are learning about through testimonies of survivors who will never forget the people who saved them: their rescuers, the Righteous. It is imperative that whilst there is still time, we encourage every survivor to consign his story to writing or a tape if it is not already done. Here I would like to take the opportunity to commend the vision of Stephen Spielberg's Shoah foundation and the man who implemented it, a colleague and friend of mine, Michael Berenbaum. "The history of the old religions and schools, like that of the modern parties and revolutions, teaches us that the price of survival is practical involvement, the transformation of ideas into action and domination."3 Let us make sure that we pass on to the coming generations the right ideas, derived from consultation with the wise people of the world, and aim at a global ethic on which sound teaching can be built. The powerful example of the righteous, who as we know can be found in any country, any religion and any race, will provoke a desire to emulate them. This would seem to be a way of attaining a universal, uncontroversial basis of absolute good which could counterbalance the absolute evil which has plagued the last century. >> Back to top |
|
|
|
Introduction Opening Session: Messages and speeches Plenary Sessions: Messages and speeches Workshops, Panels and Seminars
Other Activities |
|
|||||||||
|
|||||||||
| For information about this production and the Stockholm International Forum Conference Series please go to www.humanrights.gov.se or contact Information Rosenbad, SE-103 33 Stockholm, Sweden | |||||||||