[pondering about it couple of times. today watched tv.]

it's a quite an accident. there were not many jews in czech republic - in comparsion with many other countries. but - same as in all the neighbour countries - of these people a very very little percentage survived the nazism nightmare. and even those who survived were persecuted during the communist era, many of them left for izrael. and in spite of all above written, there were three schoolmates of mine, that had some jewish ancestors. in two cases i was told about after spending a couple of years in one class. only one of them was proud on her roots...

but that's not the important: i think most of the people really can't imagine what it was like. i mean, we know the numbers. the huge numbers. but it's very hard to transform the numbers into people. stories. so many innocent people, whole families... with scientific methods and maniac enthusiasm. when i see my friends i can't resist feeling guilty. you can't say it was the nazis. there's blood on the hands of the whole world: nazis at first, but the others are guilty too. they didn't prevent it. czech people didn't help (there are exceptions). the alies recieved messages about what's going on. but they didn't trust it. they thought it was impossible. 20th century. you cannot mean it - pogroms took place in middle ages. yes. this wasn't kind of pogrom. this was a destruction of a nation. we are dancing on the graves still.

the fact is: i was thinking 'how would i live if i were a jew?' - and no answer really. would i be turned back? would i be an atheist? would i be a mystic? how could those people who survived live without one huge neurosis? i'm often down because of it: and i'm not one of them.

and yet something. everyone knows at least something about all that. about holocaust. but there were other massacres: less scale, but the same terror. armenians - and it was in the 20th century as well... and ethnic conflicts few years ago? the blood is still fresh in the former yugoslavia. i met a girl from sarajevo last autumn. she studies in london, but in '95 she was shot by a serbian sniper. 'funny fact': her mother is bosnian, her father serb.

too bad. it's our task. don't get trapped. esperanto. freundeskreis international.



          adamm