Reading about the holocaust a forgotten memory emerges from a grade school class in west Texas. We had finished reading number the stars, and were engaged in a discussion about the book and the story. The teacher was young and full of energy, and if I remember correctly it was her 2nd year to teach. She made an observation about the classroom of students that I will never forget. While discussing the section of the book where the main characters friend is poised as have dead sister (due to her late sisters hair and eye color), she remarked how many students in the classroom could be mistaken as Jews during that time period. (I think she was not thinking about what she was saying as she spoke). She pointed me out to the class along with another girl and stated, “Look! Sarah and Candice are both blonde with light eyes; they could have passed for Germans.” I analyze this remark, as I do most topics in this class to be a sign of the times. People are hard pressed to ignore the reality of a situation in the present and from the past to be able to bypass what they believe to be unnecessary empathetic emotions. This can go hand and hand with relating the holocaust to factory farming. Millions of animals are slaughtered, being chosen for their demise based on the form they were born into. J.M. Coetzee quotes from his mothers’ lecture, “Though I have no reason to believe that you have at the forefront of your minds what is being done to animals at this moment in production facilities… I will take it that you concede me the rhetorical power to evoke these horrors and bring them home to you...We have only one death of our own; we can comprehend the deaths of others only one at a time.” (63) She continued in her lecture to address the holocaust and the absence of concern from those living near to concentration camps stating, “They might have known, in another sense they did not know, could not afford to know for their own sake...because of a certain willed ignorance on their part.” (64) The fact is that people in a sense know what was going on around them in Germany and Europe the same as people knowing where their food comes from; the fact is they choose not to address this ethical dilemma and continue living in the dark.
In this modern world people want convenience, and shelter; shelter from the horrors faced by those who came before us. In this current world, people have been affected by the recession. They have chosen the word recession as to not relate to the great depression. Though circumstances and the times are different, the fact remains that people have/and are suffering. Regarding my teacher in grade school, she did not live during World War II, therefore has no direct contact to the emotions felt for those affected. Her words seemed cold to me at first, and I am sure to you the reader, but if we take a closer examination on her knowledge reference she did not see what was wrong with her statements. Though she was informed about the holocaust, the direct images were not in her memory frame of reference. To quote Coetzee from his book Elizabeth Costello in regards to understanding another’s point; “the problem of calling evil a problem,… because a limit has been reached, the limit of what can be achieved with a body of balanced, well-informed modern folk in a clean, well lit lecture venue in a well ordered… city in the dawn of the twenty-first century.” (175) The modern person cannot relate to the actions of others, since they have not given time to ponder of the implication actions of others. A modern person finds a hard time relating to the actions of the Nazi’s yet they do not see the correlation in their actions against animals. Animals are literally being lead to the slaughter without any chance of speaking out against these actions. They have been pulled aside and marked for death for the body they process, all the while to serve the hungry appetites of humankind.
You are probably asking yourself, “Is she really relating the holocaust with the modern factory slaughter of animals?” and my answer for this blog is yes. David Sztybel explains the correlation in his article Can the Treatment of Animals Be Compared to The Holocaust? “
“’Holocaust,’ originally denoted ‘a Hebrew sacrifices in which the entire animal was given to Yahweh [GOD} to be consume with fire’ (Sax 200, 156). In a twist of history, then, a form of animal exploitation became a metaphor for what happened to the Jews at the hands of the Nazis. It is asked if the Holocaust can be compared with animal exploitation, even though the very term involves such a comparison, albeit metaphorically.” (732) Animals are being oppressed for how they look, think, and feel without being given the chance to just exist. Humans have been around only a fraction of time in the grand scheme of things. What gives us the right to overtake the lives and existence of other creatures that have populated this planet longer than us? It is true that animals eat other animals, and I do not find fault with humans eating meat. What I find fault with is the nature by which we prepare and consume our meat. Meat in modern times is not from the spoils of the hunt, but rather the all mighty super sized combo wrapped in a nice yellow wrapper.
Does this photo need a caption? Does a person need a hamburger this size? No! Or any proportion of food this size? NO. Is this what a single animal died for? Yes.Images:
1. http://photos.igougo.com/images/p395354-Miami_Beach-Holocaust_Memorial.jpg
2. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/gallery/2009/05/18/GA2009051801392.html
3.http://www.grimmemennesker.dk/ugly-people-74.htm
