Statement at Press Conference, April 15, 2015
Congregation Netivot Shalom, Berkeley
(see program: Genocide Before Our Eyes)

On Monday afternoon, I once again had the honor of attending the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day that has been sponsored by the Santa Clara County Supervisors for fifteen years. Each year, the event brings together people from across the community, including students, religious and community leaders, and those in our midst who survived the Holocaust that swept across Europe in the 1930’s and 1940’s, leaving six million Jews dead along with millions of other despised people—Gypsies, the mentally ill, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses and more.

The theme of this year’s ceremony was “Some Were Neighbors: Betrayers, Bystanders, and Protectors.” Students from Archbishop Mitty High School shared the stories of survivors they had met and interviewed about their experiences. They told of neighbors who had risked their lives to conceal their Jewish friends from those who sought to arrest and murder them. They spoke of other neighbors who had been all too willing to join in the attack, turning on their neighbors and reporting them.

But there was a third kind of neighbor—the neighbor who neither helped nor hindered, the neighbor who avoided speaking of what was happening, the neighbor who refused to believe things were truly that bad. “Indifference,” said one of the students, “was not passive withdrawal; it was an active choice.”

In his novel, The Town Beyond the Wall, Elie Wiesel tells the story of Michael, a survivor of the Holocaust, who feels compelled to return to the town from which he was taken to the camps. He realizes that what has drawn him back was the memory of a man in the village, watching from a window above the square where Jews are being rounded up for transport.

This, this was the thing I had wanted to understand ever since the war. Nothing else. How a human being can remain indifferent. The executioners I understood; also the victims, though with more difficulty. For the others, all the others, those who were neither for nor against, those who sprawled in passive patience, those who told themselves, “The storm will blow over and everything will be normal again,” those who thought themselves above the battle, those who were permanently and merely spectators—all those were closed to me, incomprehensible…

I felt neither hate nor anger toward him: simply curiosity. I did not understand him. How can anyone remain a spectator indefinitely? How can anyone continue to embrace the woman he loves, to pray to God with fervor if not faith, to dream of a better tomorrow—after having seen that? After having seen the precise line dividing life from death and good from evil?[1]

Many people are familiar with the story of the Good Samaritan, which comes from the gospel of Luke in the Christian Bible. Jesus tells a story of a man who is waylaid by bandits, beaten, and left to die by the side of the road. Two religious leaders pass by, see him there, and keep on going. A third man, from the despised Samaritans, is the only one who stops and gives aid.

Less well known is the reason for the story. Jesus tells it in response to a question, “Who is my neighbor?” After telling of this unlikely intervention, he asks a different question, “’Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?’”  The man replies, “’The one who showed him mercy.’” And Jesus says, “Go and do the same.”[2]

In this modern world, we are not merely staring out the window in our neighborhood watching those who live near to us being attacked. In this small world, we watch on our TV sets as thousands of Yazidis are driven from their homes, seeking shelter in the Sinjar Mountains without food, water or medical care, facing death by starvation, dehydration, or warfare. We look out our virtual windows at women and girls taken from their families, beaten and raped. We look out our windows at refugee camps, crowded with those who have managed to escape. Who will prove themselves a neighbor to these?

Awareness is the first step. But, as one young man said on Monday, “It doesn’t matter what you know, it matters what you do with what you know.”

Again, Elie Wiesel:

Indifference, to me, is the epitome of evil…The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of beauty is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, but indifference between life and death. [3]

The Silicon Valley Interreligious Council reaffirms its commitment to interreligious harmony and understanding and the rights of all to practice their religion or non-religion without fear of attack. We grieve for the suffering being experienced today by the Yezidi, and call upon the United Nations, our own nation, our friends, and our colleagues from diverse religious traditions to join together to bring the conflict to an end, offer humanitarian aid to those affected, and to work toward a peace in which all are given respect and freedom to exercise their religion. Let us all work together to create a more just and compassionate world.

Rev. D. Andrew Kille
Chair, Silicon Valley Interreligious Council
April 15, 2015

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[1] Elie Wiesel, The Town Beyond the Wall (New York: Avon/ Bard Books: 1964), pp. 159, 161.
[2] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), Lk 10:36–37.
[3] US News & World Report (27 October 1986)