A silent sermon on tolerance
Six million people.
It’s a figure I never could wrap my head around, at least until
last week.
I’ve been at the ballpark with 42,000 people, so that’s a number
I can grasp. As a kid, I’d sometimes lay awake at night trying to
tackle the notion that the universe is infinite. Couldn’t be done
then, can’t be done now.
A silent sermon on tolerance
Six million people.
It’s a figure I never could wrap my head around, at least until last week.
I’ve been at the ballpark with 42,000 people, so that’s a number I can grasp. As a kid, I’d sometimes lay awake at night trying to tackle the notion that the universe is infinite. Couldn’t be done then, can’t be done now.
That’s the way it was with 6 million. But last week, we visited a memorial that stands on a street median in downtown Boston. Six glass towers are arrayed along a walkway etched with inscriptions. Each tower is frosted with neat rows of numbers – the numbers that were tattooed on the wrists of 6 million people sent to their deaths by the Nazi party.
The effect is dizzying in its impact. There, standing between lanes of swirling traffic, people slow their pace, their voices dropping to whispers. If you’re like me, the enormity of the horror is made real for the first time.
As we entered the memorial, we paused to read a timeline depicting watermark events in Nazi history. It’s one of several inscriptions that invite visitors to pause and consider.
One entry on the timeline struck home with particular force.
“Books declared contrary to Nazi beliefs are publicly burned.”
We all remembered news accounts that indicate one of Gov. Sarah Palin’s first acts as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, was to ask the town librarian to remove books she found objectionable from the shelves.
When the librarian refused, Palin reportedly ordered her fired, a demand she had to withdraw in the face of public outrage.
I would be the last to suggest that Palin is a Nazi.
But it’s hardly less troubling that she reportedly once sought to squelch ideas that were not in accord with her own.
The notion that a lively marketplace of divergent thought leads to the best outcome is at the bedrock foundation of American public life, and I’d bet Gov. Palin would agree. It propels academic life. It entertains and talks back to us through talk radio and letters to the editor pages.
And I hope it’s not going too far to say that tolerance for others’ ideas and beliefs might even have prevented the holocaust.
That memorial standing on a median strip gave us all ample food for thought in its quiet eloquence. More important, it gave us some things to think about that we all might be well served to ponder from time to time.
