Still not learning from history

Correspondence

By Morris Engelson

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I look at a picture of murderer Samir Kuntar as he gestures in what appears to be a Nazi salute amid the festivities in Lebanon on the occasion of his release from an Israeli prison last month.

I listen to the news broadcasts which announce a prisoner exchange with Israel. Seldom is there mention that the Israeli “prisoners” are the bodies of two kidnapped Israeli soldiers. Never—in my hearing—is there mention why Kuntar was in an Israeli prison, and I wonder. I wonder at a repetition from a time over 60 years ago.

Rabbi Oshry writes in his book “Responsa from the Holocaust” about a German soldier who saw a pregnant Jewish woman in the Kovno ghetto and immediately shot her. This was near a hospital where doctors thought that the child might be saved. But this would surely kill the mother if she was not already dead. Rabbi Oshry happened to be there, and he was asked whether the procedure was permitted by Torah law. He said yes, and a live child was delivered. But the German walked into the hospital, saw the child and cracked its skull against the wall. Says the Rabbi, “Woe to the eyes that saw this.”

Kuntar was in prison for, among other things, killing a mother in front of her 4-year-old daughter, and he then killed the child by cracking her skull against the wall. Woe to the world press that calls this murderer a freedom fighter.

We frequently quote from George Santayana that “those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” History has repeated itself. What have we learned? Perhaps it would be a rearrangement of Santayana’s words—Those who cannot learn from a repetition of history are doomed.

Morris Engelson
Portland