Anna Breslaw Hits Bottom, Digs
Since I was 12 I’ve had an unappealing, didactic distrust of people with the extreme will to live. My father’s parents were Holocaust survivors, and in grade school I received the de rigueur exposure to the horror—visiting geriatric men and women with numbers tattooed on their arms, completing assigned reading like The Diary of Anne Frank and Night. But the more information I received, the less sympathy the survivors elicited from me. Each time we clapped for the old Hungarian lady who spoke about Dachau, each time Elie Wiesel threw another anonymous anecdote of betrayal onto a page, I eyed it askance, thinking What did you do that you’re not talking about? I had the gut instinct that these were villains masquerading as victims who, solely by virtue of surviving (very likely by any means necessary), felt that they had earned the right to be heroes, their basic, animal self-interest dressed up with glorified phrases like “triumph of the human spirit.”
I wondered if anyone had alerted Hitler that in the event that the final solution didn’t pan out, only the handful of Jews who actually fulfilled the stereotype of the Judenscheisse (because every group has a few) would remain to carry on the Jewish race—conniving, indestructible, taking and taking. My grandparents were not excluded from this suspicion. The same year, during a family dinner conversation about Terri Schiavo, my father made the serious request that should he fall into a vegetative state, he would like for us to keep him on life support indefinitely. Today he and I are estranged for a number of other reasons that are all somehow the same reason.
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14 comments
Aw…they are estranged. I wonder why. God, I beg that my two daughters will grow up to be wise, compassionate, and charitable…unlike this idiot who is so jaded that she now sees virtue as a vice.
[1] Posted by All-Is-True on 7-17-2012 at 02:48 PM · [top]
She still feels the need to be “justified” - by Whom or What, I wonder?
But the desire to be kept on life support will consume the family jewels and all of her too-little sympathy will be drained by the emotional demand in less than a week.
Better her grandfather should break bad, I wonder?
[2] Posted by dwstroudmd+ on 7-17-2012 at 03:05 PM · [top]
That is…jaw-dropping.
[3] Posted by David Fischler on 7-17-2012 at 03:45 PM · [top]
“Hits bottom, digs,” Greg? Try hits bottom, digs, strikes bedrock, buys really expensive drill and drills through to magma. Read the comments; the ones I saw were absolutely outraged.
[4] Posted by Christopher Johnson on 7-17-2012 at 05:00 PM · [top]
CJ -
Spot on, but our blog software allows only 128 characters in a headline
[5] Posted by Greg Griffith on 7-17-2012 at 05:06 PM · [top]
I hate it when self-absorbed people learn to write.
[6] Posted by Words Matter on 7-17-2012 at 05:44 PM · [top]
#6: You need to read that first sentence again. I’m not sure she ever did.
[7] Posted by David Fischler on 7-17-2012 at 06:00 PM · [top]
Sounds like this is really about unresolved father-daughter issues, and she should go sort them out (or not) without bothering the rest of us.
“...I’ve had an unappealing, didactic distrust of people with the extreme will to live.”
What does that mean, exactly?
If somebody wants to kill me, and I decline to co-operate, is that just “a will to live”?
But if somebody extremely wants to kill me, and I decline to co-operate, is that “an extreme will to live”?
Beats me.
[8] Posted by MichaelA on 7-17-2012 at 08:55 PM · [top]
By no means do I support this person’s ivory tower analysis which obviously bears no connection to real life, but I will say that I was kind of relieved to read Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz, which explores survivor’s guilt very interestingly. As an Italian, chemist, and born writer, he seems free of American politics to explore his personal experience all the more directly. If I recall correctly, he doesn’t sugarcoat anything but his concern for human dignity still shines through all the more heartbreakingly.
The fascinating book for conservatives is Under a Cruel Star by Hedda Kovaly. She survived the Holocaust as a Czech Jew then had to deal with the Commies. Shockingly, she gives the impression that the commies were worse. It is the ultimate liberal utopianism/Pegalianism antidote.
[9] Posted by The Plantagenets on 7-18-2012 at 03:45 AM · [top]
Yes, this is a jaw-dropper.
Maybe I’m getting to be a cranky old man, but it seems that nowadays evil is more proud of being evil than in years past.
[10] Posted by Newbie Anglican on 7-18-2012 at 07:30 AM · [top]
Oh, btw, the link is now dead. Maybe the host had enough and took out the trash.
[11] Posted by Newbie Anglican on 7-18-2012 at 07:31 AM · [top]
Link is working now.
[12] Posted by David Fischler on 7-18-2012 at 08:52 AM · [top]
I wish it wasn’t! Where’s the Mind Bleach?
[13] Posted by elanor on 7-18-2012 at 06:08 PM · [top]
<block>in the event that the final solution didn’t pan out, only the handful of Jews who actually fulfilled the stereotype of the Judenscheisse (because every group has a few) would remain to carry on the Jewish race—conniving, indestructible, taking and taking. My grandparents were not excluded from this suspicion. </unblock>
“Judenscheisse” is certainly insulting. Where does she come up with that image of survivors being “conniving, indestructible, taking and taking.”? What were her g’parents like to be “not excluded from this suspicion”? How old is she now that her conflict w/ her father took off when the Terri Schiavo mess happened?
She describes it as “a gut instinct” earlier - therefore it’s worth trusting? Isn’t there a thing or 2 in the OT and NT that recommend Scripture being the trustworthy source, not the “gut”?
I hope the Holy Ghost will be after her and win her over. At least she recognizes that the various reasons she and her father are separated are all the same reason.
[14] Posted by maineiac on 7-18-2012 at 11:04 PM · [top]
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