Friday, November 14, 2008

Edward R. Murrow Reports from Buchenwald

Tonight, for all my desire to castigate a misbegotten American party and their practices, I haven't the energy. I can't equate them with any genuine hate I'd feel without reservation. They might be on the wrong side of the future, but they are not yet on the purely malevolent side of history. That level of scorn and disgust, that apotheosis of horror, is reserved  both for the Holocaust, and Holocaust Denialists. They represent and elicit from me an entirely different level of hate.

Tonight, I listened to Edward R. Murrow's report on the liberation of Buchenwald:


I wonder: who would think he fabricated that? And why would he? And HOW could he, on the fly, reporting day-to-day? And where could he have got the resources for a fabrication such as that? And why? And how can there be such doubt and suspicion about such a godless, merciless, inhumane and—I can't even have words for it—unprodghghfhessgb-able disaster such as that?

How can anyone wish or deny away that — in good conscience or with any conscience at all?