i wrote this piece a few months ago, after my first visit to the museum of tolerance in los angeles:

i finally had the chance to go to the simon wiesenthal museum of tolerance today. i was surprised that it didnít have the impact on me that visiting the atomic bomb museum in nagasaki, watching schindlerís list or reading treblinka had on me, but the experience made me think deeply about the holocaust and the pain and sorrow that some people are capable of inflicting on their brothers and sisters.

one of the common themes in the holocaust exhibit was that it was common, everyday people that made the mistreatment and murder of millions of jews possible. even when a group of soldiers were told that they could volunteer not to participate in the execution of jewish women, children and elders, the overwhelming majority still chose to point their rifles at these helpless innocents and pull the triggers.

the victims of this almost unfathomable tragedy were also common, everyday peopleóthey were bakers and bankers, soldiers and scientists, teachers and tailors, school children and grandmothers. the lives of six million of the germanís neighbors–people who deserved to read the newspaper over a cup of coffee each morning, to laugh with friends and family over a sunday afternoon meal, to tuck their children in at night with a story, a prayer and a kiss, to love, and to grow old–all of these lives were cut tragically short. some lives were ended by starvation and disease in the overcrowded warsaw ghetto, others by bullets to their heads while standing in cold ditches they had dug themselves, and many more by the inhalation of poison gas as they stood naked and clung to each other in terror in those large concrete “showers”.

not all subjects of the german regime turned a blind eye to this attempted genocide. polish farmers sheltered their jewish friends in their barns and fed and clothed them. a moslem in yugoslavia hid his jewish boss in his home at the risk of his own life. catholic nuns in warsaw took the little sons and daughters of jewish families and distributed among their orphanages in an effort to save their lives.

the liberators, those who brought down the nazi slaughterhouses were also common, everyday peopleómostly americans and subjects of the british crown who were also college students, truck drivers, teachers, mechanics, sons and husbands and fathers. many of these never went home again, but rest permanently under the soil of the foreign neighbors they fought to save.

i think a lot about how i and my friends and coworkers would react in similar circumstances. things seem all right now, but what if we were to suffer economic catastrophe again, and a fascist regime took advantage of the insecurity and rose to power on the rhetoric of hatred? sometimes i feel that we would be all right and would not succumb to blatant bigotry. at other times, i look at the extreme violence on tv and in the movies, the millions of abortions performed each year in this country, and at stores and companies who willingly sell cigarettes to their customers, and i wonder what value is placed on human life in our society::