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Welcome to December at the Cybrary. PC Computing picked the Cybrary as one of the top 1001
Sites on the Internet. All due to you, our audience. Thanks.
They were just words on a piece of paper...or were they?
Before I get to that, I want to thank all of the people who have made the Cybrary in 1995. To Harold Gordon, survivor and author of The Last Sunrise for inspiring the Books by Survivors section; to Stuart Nichols, whose virtual tour of Auschwitz provides a moving testimony of dealing with the Holocaust today and who contributes his HTML skills to put pages together. To Joey Korn, who created the Children of Survivors section and whose energy with his father's book, Abe's Story, has provided an inspiration to educators to use the Web as a forum of discussion. And finally to the newest friend of the Cybrary, Louis Brandsdorfer, who created the banners for the Viewpoint page and for the New Jersey Statutes page, a grateful thanks for sharing your talents.
To me, all of you are part of a message for peace that keeps me believing. And in those times when belief is challenged, look around to all the people who strive to live in peace and tolerance.
Last month the Cybrary had an influx of visitors around the time of Yitzhak Rabin's assassination. The specter of hatred spurs on the need to discover, to understand something that is not "understandable."
I'll remember the image of the paper with the "Song of Peace", the last song Rabin sung, stained with his blood. They may have killed the man, but they can't kill the message. Peace. It's so easy to accept being cynical, that there is no change. Accept that and "Never Again" becomes "Over and Over Again". Education takes time, as does change.
What does this have to do with the Holocaust? Everything and nothing. As Yehuda Bauer shared with me in an interview, there are the universal and unique aspects of the Holocaust. The Holocaust was a unique in history. But historians like to equate current events with the Holocaust, making "Holocaust" a code word for civilization. One that sparks a reaction. But if you focus on the universal aspects, you run into hopelessness, into acceptance that there can be nothing else.
The universal aspect is an illusion, an attempt to justify. By learning about why the situation in the Holocaust was unique, we understand more what happened, never why it happened, just know that it did happen. And try not to let it happen again.
Which leads us back to the Song of Peace. Rabin's murder has nothing to do with the Holocaust, but it has to do with creating a world where violence, hatred, and murder don't dominate. Where acceptance and tolerance are as praised as brutality.
Perhaps that world doesn't exist...yet. But it never will if we don't keep singing that same song Rabin sang, the Song of Peace. Forget the hatred and remember the message. To all of you during the Holiday season, a message of Peace.
Peace
MDD
Past Issues:
July: Cybrary Learning Lab
August: Online Education and Why We Call This a Cybrary
September:Education as Dialogue: Learning With the Web
October: Online Education Begins With You
November: Feedback
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