Cantina Quote o' the Week: Hermann Langbein

The concept of a leader, a furehr, must never be accepted.  Blind obedience to a leader can never be adopted as a defining identity.  Everyone must accept responsibility for whatever he does.  Even in critical situations.  This is something that still applies today.

-Hermann Langbein

I was watching a documentary on Auschwitz or some such on the History Channel - I can't remember what it was, alas.  I just remember having it on, nominally paying attention, and being pulled to full awareness by the quiet, intense voice of a very intense old man.  His words hit me like a thunderbolt.  So I paused the program and wrote them down.

Listening to the survivors of death camps like Auschwitz is harrowing.  But they are memories we must not forget, and words we must not only hear, but take to heart.  There are some pieces of history that must never be allowed to repeat themselves.  Not if it's within our power to stop it.