Date: Tue, 9 May 1995 15:59:54 -0500 Reply-To: H-NET List on German History Sender: H-NET List on German History From: H-GERMAN EDITOR Dan Rogers Subject: Re: Victimization Submitted by: Douglas R. Skopp I must admit that I write the following unconvinced of my ability to change an iota of the opinions expressed by David Neal Miller. But my silence might be construed to signify support of those opinions, and so I must write something. Roland Wagner , posed the question: >>Should we really not feel moved by those who died at Dresden? David Neal Miller replied: >For the very many dead of Dresden who were committed national socialists, >we should feel moved to grim satisfaction: grief for dead Nazis is >misplaced, displaced from grief for their innocent victims. The >not-yet-corrupted very young are exceptions, nearly the only exceptions. Like mercy, the quality of grief is not strained. If only one mother mourned her dead Nazi son, her grief should not be mocked. If only one child mourned her dead Nazi father, her grief should not be dismissed. I have grief with those who grieved, regardless of the deeds or misdeeds of those whom they grieve. Isn't this the lesson we must derive from that horrible period. The death of even one diminishes us all. Yes, we must not condone their crimes. But if we condemn without grief or compassion, we are all too likely to justify horror. We become too much like those whom we condemn, too merciless and arrogant to feel another's suffering. Then what will ever keep us from those very horrors we hope to escape? As to David Neal Miller's statement: >Better to apprehend the destruction of Dresden as a small moment of >exemplary rightness in the massive wrongness of which Dresdeners were >co-authors. I can only pray that he (and all of us) will always be in the right place at the right time. Respectfully, Douglas R. Skopp SKOPPDR@SPLAVA.CC.PLATTSBURGH.EDU .