Voices and Visions

VOICES AND VISIONS: A COLLECTION OF PRIMARY SOURCES To many people history was something that they took in school because it was mandatory. Cultivating a love of history was never the intent of secondary education and unfortunately, post secondary education as well. Now, history teaching is redirecting its focus to the people who lived and died. There is no more powerful tool that the personal recollection of one who lived during the time period. This is why a book like Voices and Visions is so important. Today, like no other day in history, the reality of the past is challenged and rewritten for masses of people in the world. Deniers of historical events seem to rise in various parts of the world to add their discordant voices to the babble which has not been witnessed on this planet since the confusion of tongues at the Tower of Babel on the plain of Shinar. The history of the European 1930's and 40's is interwoven with atrocities which demand to be remembered and never to be repeated. These are realities which countless men, women and children endured as the non-European world governments chose to ignore. Unfortunately, the beginning of the pogrom against the impure blood lines, variant religious beliefs and sexual orientation of citizens was allowed by the Europeans and non-Europeans. History has showed since the beginning that scapegoats have been made of various individuals and groups who happened to fall in disfavor of new leadership-be it a village, town, city, state or church government. Human nature looks for someone to blame for the woes of life-economic, natural or religious. What played out in the European theater was a sad spectacle as the world listened on radio and read in newspapers. It does not take much effort to ignore or forget human misery on such a national scale. We see this demonstrated today. If you have an interest in reading personal accounts of such things, then Voices and Visions is a good place to begin your journey. It is a powerful testimony to the past. This book is classified as a children book. However, adults would gain from reading it as well. To remember the past is to keep a vigilant eye on the present. For the horrors of the past must never be allowed to repeat themselves. I would like to let one of these voices have the final word: "I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness. I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us, too. I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again." Anne Frank, page 67 Unfortunately, Anne Frank never saw her wilderness become civilized again. The approaching thunder of the past is more prevalent now in the world.