Forgiveness and Blame

Today is the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht.  I don't really know why we strive so hard to remember dates like this except maybe to remind us of past travesties so that maybe, just maybe, nothing like it will happen again.

I'm not a historian and I obviously don't know all the events leading up to November 9th, 1938.  You can read the history on the link above.  We have a habit of blaming "people" for stuff like this.  It creates racism in the worst kind of way.  Because this particular travesty happened in Germany, Germans should be punished.   This way of thinking is bad, bad, bad.  You could argue that this type of thinking is what lead up to the travesty in the first place.  Because they were blaming the Jewish people for something that maybe one Jew did or maybe one Jew was blamed for, or maybe just instigated by someone controlling the media.

After the past 7 years, we have to be particularly careful of this kind of attitude.  There is a growing hatred and suspicion regarding people of middle-eastern descent or Islam religion.  There are persons who claim to be Islamic that have done horrible things, but we can't blame the people.  People, for the most part, are good regardless of their background.