A Lot of Guys Named “Joe”

“But the manner of death seemed unimportant. Murder had been done at Buchenwald.”

Edward R. Murrow, Visit to Buchenwald

We live in a confused world. I suppose much of the variety and confusion arises from our very diversity, but much of it arises from our ignorance and fear of people and things we don’t take time to understand. This confusion causes me to reflect upon the nature of good and evil but without any expectation of having any new or startling insights on a subject of ancient human concern.

The particular source of these thoughts comes from the dissonance I am suffering between (a) current news accounts about thwarted plans of white-top-hatted-and-tailed skinheads to kill Barrack Obama in a grandiose drive-by shooting, and (b) my attendance today at the annual luncheon of the Washington State Holocaust Education Resource Center (WSHERC). Ironically, the two items couldn’t be more disparate or more closely linked. Both speak to the ongoing, innate capacity of mankind for hatred and cruelty by one member of our species to another, while the first bespeaks the continuing need for the efforts expended by the second.

At the WSHERC luncheon, we heard from a survivor of the Holocaust and one of the soldiers that first reached Buchenwald where that survivor was incarcerated. The then 19-year-old soldier, Leo Hymas, was clearly unprepared for what he found after helping to blow the Buchenwald front gate with explosives on April 11, 1945. One has to assume that prior to his gate blowing exploit he was a typical American boy of the period – slightly innocent, yet world weary from fighting in a great war to preserve democracies from Nazi domination; in short, an American citizen soldier on whose backs the US portion of the war was fought. What he found that day were the seeds of change that eventually made him into a man well deserving of our respect, acclaim and sympathy.

I am not going to make an attempt to describe what Mr. Hymas found, smelled and heard that April day at Buchenwald. It is well beyond my powers to do so, and I have not the imagination to try. If you want some idea, some picture of the conditions there that day, you must listen to Edward R. Murrow describe Buchenwald following his visit there on April 12, 1945 – the day that Franklin D. Roosevelt died and a single day after Mr. Hymas helped liberate Buchenwald: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYVn0hzcSs0. Only a man as capable as Murrow could create a tone poem to inhumanity and bring it to life in a way that a video never could. As you near the end of the tape, listen for the quaver in the voice of this very strong man. It is palpable and he seems near tears at times. The piece says as much about his humanity as it does about the perils of genocide – a term not yet in use at the time of his short wave broadcast.

Mr. Murrow must have had some minimal preparation for his visit to Buchenwald. Imagine, however, Mr. Hymas’ reaction – a young man lacking Murrow’s sophistication and resources who, along with two other members of an advance infantry patrol, was merely acting in response to a direction from his commander to “find out what that barb-wired compound is over there.” Following directions and in the last several moments of his innocence, he walked several yards to meet what would prove to be his fate. If you have an ounce of empathy, perhaps you can barely begin to understand the impact Buchenwald must have had on Mr. Hymas’ life, but if you or I presume to really understand, we can only be lying to ourselves.

Sometimes, the presence of profound evil generates the greatest good. For years after that April day, Mr. Hymas struggled to rationalize what he had seen, smelled and heard, apparently living with anger and depression. And then, sometime in the 1980’s, he met a Buchenwald survivor and his healing began. Eventually, Mr. Hymas connected with WSHERC and they asked if he would be willing to visit high schools in our state to tell his story. WSHERC is dedicated to keeping the lessons of the Holocaust alive and real to a generation for whom it is only a story in a book. Mr. Hymas then began a long career of teaching about the Holocaust in the company of numerous Holocaust survivors living and residing in our region.

Mr. Hymas was quietly crying while being introduced by Robbie Waisman, the Buchenwald survivor who was 15 when Mr. Hymas and his fellow American soldiers blew open its front gates. As I watched the introduction unfold, I began to understand that I was in the presence of simple goodness. For Mr. Hymas wasn’t crying over the honor he was about to receive from WSHERC. He was crying about a statement Mr. Waisman made during the introduction – that had Mr. Waisman known, on April 11, 1945, that his entire family and home had been destroyed by the Nazis, he would not have gone on. Mr. Waisman’s survival of Buchenwald had been based upon his belief that he would be reunited with his family when the war was over and he had exercised his extraordinary will to survive to achieve that goal, only to be subsequently, and cruelly, disabused of his hopes. Mr. Waisman’s will to live drove him onward, however, and now he lives in Vancouver, British Columbia amid the family he created for himself after the war, and spends his time helping others understand the lessons of the Holocaust.

Just being in the same room with Mr. Hymas and Mr. Waisman and being able to hear the barest outlines of their stories was a true privilege for which I thank WSHERC. I need these reminders as a guide for my own, personal behavior.

It is only through our personal behavior that we can help prevent future occasions of genocide, for the seeds of the Holocaust and of genocide lie within our individual actions and thoughts. While I am personally unable to deny the skinheads now under arrest in Virginia the success of their wicked dreams and must leave that to the civil authorities, I can control what I think, what I say and how I act. I can teach my children; I can behave in a manner consistent with my beliefs; I can, perhaps with luck and time, serve as a role model to a few. I can also speak up and speak out.

And, so I will. And I don’t have to look very deep into today’s news to do so.

For example, the latest case of stupidity by dint of public celebrity comes from the mouth of Sarah Palin. Without the slightest attempt at verification, she reads lines no doubt penned by a Karl Rove clone to assert that Barrack Obama is palling around with a college professor she denominates as a former spokesperson for the Palestine Liberation Organization. At a campaign event in Ohio she says: “It seems that there is yet another radical professor from the neighborhood who spent a lot of time with Barack Obama going back several years.” When asked if she isn’t calling Mr. Obama un-American, she blithely dissembles and claims that it “is not negative campaigning to call someone out on their record.”

What record? The record doesn’t support the statement. The statement is nonsense. The only possible reason for making the statement is that it is the last minute in the campaign, the Republicans are behind, and just maybe, if they can smear the muck fast enough and thick enough at a moment when there is barely time for the Democratic campaign to respond, they might get votes. And the appeal is to our dark side – references to the “radical professor” who is “from the neighborhood” can only be intended to raise the issue of race in the campaign in the only roundabout manner deemed acceptable by the campaign powers that be – by sly innuendo followed by a “who me” look of innocence when questioned by others regarding your intent.

Ms. Palin would do well to remember Mr. Murrow’s words in summarizing a CBS News report on Senator Joe McCarthy, the communist baiting 1950’s Senator from Wisconsin:

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men — not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.”

When our public officials behave in this manner, they are playing with fire. For in statements like these lie the seeds of racism which, if planted firmly and well enough, may eventually grow into a further evil. And, if evil is allowed to sniff around in the corners of our lives, it only does so in its ceaseless attempt to find center stage where it can blossom into the conflagration it fervently seeks to become.

Mr. Hymas and Mr. Waisman know this about evil, and this is why they do what they do without thought of pay or other personal gain. Mr. Hymas was then, and is now, one of those whom Mr. Murrow, in that same broadcast, called “a lot of guys named Joe” who did what they did, and who still do what they do, simply because it was and is the right thing to do. Mr. Waisman is another such Joe, and is living proof that evil is alive in our world, but that it can be successfully resisted by one person – one Joe or one Jill – at a time.

Thanks again to WSHERC for the privilege and honor of being able to associate, however remotely, with those for whom personal honor is a lodestar. They represent what it really means to be a guy named “Joe.”

About Gavin Stevens

Humptulips County is the wholly fictional on-line residence of Stephen Ellis, a would-be writer, an avid fan of William Faulkner and his Yoknapatawpha County, and a retired lawyer.
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