"Kermit Gosnell Reminds Of the Necessity Of Bearing Witness to Truth"

The Washington Examiner ^ | May 15, 2014 | Melanie Sturm

[Aspenhuskerette]

There are childhood memories so penetrating that they run like movie reels in the mind’s eye, molding our character.

My vintage 8mm features my European-born grandmother turning tearful and tongue-tied upon mention of her family, lost in the Holocaust.

Her heartbreak, and the gruesome photos I ogled in my parents' edition of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, were mind-boggling.

When I was 13, Holocaust survivor Gerda Klein appeared often in my thoughts, helping me process the unfathomable.

Like a narrator, she recounted her death-defying odyssey from an idyllic childhood through ghettos, slave-labor camps, and a three-month “death march” en route to liberation by the American officer who became her husband.

Her story teaches that hope is powerful and morality is a choice — even in the face of monstrous evil. Most importantly, bearing witness to good and evil is the way a moral people deliver a better world to our children.

As fellow Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel stresses, "without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future."

[Aspenhuskerette]

Bearing witness -- it's how we promote the truth to the powerful and hold the powerful accountable to the truth.

Truth-telling is also how we overcome the conformist tendencies of people who don't consider the consequences of their actions or inactions, for as Hannah Arendt famously said in her commentary on the Adolf Eichmann trial:

“The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.”

We must aspire to a culture where people know the difference between good and evil and choose good.