The Final Solution was approved and implemented by the German Government in 1942, entailing the extermination of the Jewish race and some other minority groups. Auschwitz 1 was the first labour camp to open in 1940, built on the grounds of an abandonned Polish army camp. The steel banner above the entrance gate is still there: it promises "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work brings Freedom) - the epitomy of irony. I visited this past winter. Also on view are the fences, the red-brick barracks, personal possessions, including inmates' shorn hair, and recreated ovens where the corpses were burned. Nearby Birkenau (Auschwitz II) was opened in 1941, accessible by trains from all over Europe. On arrival and selection, three-quarters of prisoners were led straight to their death in the gas chambers. Between these two slaughterhouses, an estimated 1.1 people were murdered, 90% of them Jewish. The camp commandant Rudolf Hess was hanged on an especially erected gallows in 1947.
World War II was called 'the war to end all wars', provoking the creation of the United Nations in a global effort to resolve conflicts without bloodshed. Alas, this was not to be. Speaking in Boston in December 1969 before the International Student Society, the Hare Krishna movement leader Srila Prabhupada provides a practical, simple, yet profound solution for world peace and harmony, involving a transcendent spiritual interest. Noting the increasing number of flags at the United Nations building in New York, he stated that inter-nationalism was failing because "your international feeling and my inter-national feeling are overlapping and conflicting. We have to find the proper center for our loving feelings..." The Hare Krsnas - The Philosophy - Writings of A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada
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As part of an introduction to the 15th anniversary edition (2004) of his ground-breaking book on mindfulness Full Catastrophe Living, Jon Kabat-Zinn cites many locations of war in the world: Chile, Beirut, South Africa, East Timor, Afghanastan, Darfur and so on, as well as September 11, 2001, when "we all would instantly nod our heads in recognition of the magnitude of what has been unfolding in the interim. What we have called here"world stress" has only grown over the intervening years, and while the salient names that dominate our news and foreign policy have changed and will continue to change, the themes are depressingly familiar, and the weeping goes on even in the face of all the beauty and good that has also been unfolding during that time. The world itself is weeping and begs for us to bring an entirely different level of attention and resolve to its suffering, based on our inherent beauty, goodness, and creative imagination as human beings..."
A recent documentary film, Death in Gaza, provides major painful insights into the world of Palestinians who feel colonised by the Jews in Israel and by a world who took sides. Death in Gaza (2004)
An album by a Palestinian musician living in Ireland, Sami Moukaddem, also reveals the trapped and life-threatening conditions endured by some communities there - http://www.samimoukaddem.com/files/musicsamples/palestine/The_Facts_Of_Life_For_The_Palestinian.pdf . The misery lasts a lifetime there, and like cornered creatures, they strike back, destroying themselves willingly in avenging a life without liberty. This album and the documentary previously mentioned were created before the onset of the current full-on aggressions.
"Perhaps", reflected Kabat-Zinn in the remainder of that section, "mindfulness can play a significant role in the healing not only of ourselves but also of our world in ways little and big, and yet to be imagined".
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