by
Damien F. Mackey
“Towards the end of his life [Primo Levi] was beginning to worry about precisely what Alastair writes about: that memories would fade and the horror of the holocaust – the greatest evil ever inflicted on man by man – might fade as well”.
Fraser Nelson
Forgetting the major lessons of history can have dire consequences for humanity.
Hence the wise among the Hebrews were forever reminding their people:
“Do not forget the works of the Lord!”
“That they might not forget the works of God”
(3) "That they might not forget the works of God"
For instance, according to Psalm 77:11-15 (Douay) /Psalm 78:
And they forgot his benefits, and his wonders that he had shewn them. Wonderful things did he do in the sight of their fathers, in the land of Egypt, in the field of Tanis. He divided the sea and brought them through: and he made the waters to stand as in a vessel. And he conducted them with a cloud by day: and all the night with a light of fire. He struck the rock in the wilderness: and gave them to drink, as out of the great deep.
A modern prophet had bemoaned the consequences of such forgetting:
“Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened”: Solzhenitsyn
(3) "Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened": Solzhenitsyn
Although Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn here was thinking essentially about his own Russia, what he said has applications for the whole world.
War, torture, starvation, death camps.
“… orchestrated famines, deportations, civil wars, terror campaigns, forced labor, concentration camps, and mass killings” (see below).
“Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened”
Fittingly, on the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, a Marist priest in Sydney told of one Primo Levi, himself a prisoner, who had feared that the holocaust, in time, would be forgotten.
The priest urged the congregation to obtain a copy of Primo Levi’s book, The Drowned and the Saved:
On a far lighter note, the same Marist priest had told a joke.
An Italian lady had approached him and told him: ‘You look like Padre Pio’.
He replied to her: ‘I look like Padre Pio because I am Padre Pio’.
‘Noooo’, she said. ‘Padre Pio very holy’.
Remembering what the priest had said bout Primo Levi, I looked him up on the Internet and found this article by Fraser Nelson (Times and Spectator):
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-primo-levi-s-warning-about-the-young-forgetting-the-holocaust-resonates-now/
Fraser Nelson
Why Primo Levi’s warning about the young forgetting the holocaust resonates now
• 30 March 2018, 12:00am
One of the most thought-provoking pieces in The Spectator this week is from Alastair Thomas on why his generation don’t get so upset about anti-Semitism. He explains the phenomenon and offers an explanation: the years have passed, the memories of the holocaust have dimmed. It’s no longer the experience of someone’s grandparents’ generation, but further back. Since then, there are more recent memories: of the Israeli Defence Force and Gaza. The conflation between Jews, Israel and Zionism has restored the idea of the Jews as being suspiciously powerful – the oppressors rather than the oppressed.
This certainly stands to reason. Memories of the holocaust were kept alive for my generation by films like Schindler’s List. But there are few left to tell the story first hand.
Reading Alastair’s essay made me think of a book I read years ago: The Drowned and the Saved, by Primo Levi, who was arrested for being a member of the Italian anti-fascist front and sent to Auschwitz. Towards the end of his life he was beginning to worry about precisely what Alastair writes about: that memories would fade and the horror of the holocaust – the greatest evil ever inflicted on man by man – might fade as well. When I first read it, I thought he was wrong: that the holocaust was taught in schools world over and films like Schindler’s List would keep the nightmare vivid for new generations. But perhaps he was right after all. That film is now a quarter-century old. A new generation will have new reference points. ….
Levi’s writing is incredibly vivid, yet hard to track down in the digital era: The Drowned and the Saved, even If Not Now, When? are not on Kindle, not Googleable. So we have posted an extract from the book on Coffee House (here) to give a taste.
For those who haven’t come across his writing before, you can find it all here, many for under £1. It’s dangerous, he says, to think that the evil of the holocaust sprang from the blackness of Nazi hearts and died with Hitler. It had all-too-human beginnings, and one of them was the general idea that the Jews are suspect, which can come back anytime, anywhere.
At church services world over this afternoon, Christians will be saying the Good Friday prayer for the Jews. There’s plenty to think about after a week where Jewish leaders were driven to protest in parliament. But this is about more than Corbyn, or the recent attacks in France: there’s a general sense that anti-Semitism is back – partly because it doesn’t appal a young generation and the scenario that Primo Levi described is now coming to pass.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_theology#:~:text=The%20well%2Dknown%20Lithuanian%20Jewish,religious%20observance%20for%20the%20enlightenment.
“The well-known Lithuanian Jewish leader, Rabbi Elazar Shach taught that the Holocaust was a divine punishment for the sins of the Jewish people, and for the abandoning of religious observance for the enlightenment”.
This is getting to the crux of the matter, not just for Jews, but for Russians, Germans, and indeed for the whole world.
Our Lady’s Prophecy Fulfilled: Spreading Errors of Russia
….
Our Lady of Fatima warned that if mankind did not stop offending God, and if her messages were not heeded, a worse war was yet to come. To prevent the evil of World War II, Our Lady requested both the Communion of Reparation on Five First Saturdays, as well as the consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart. As we have seen, the request was not heeded in time. World War II erupted, and the errors of Russia were spread throughout the world.
________________________________________
Our Lady appeared to the three children in Fatima eight days after Pope Benedict XV’s piercing cry for her intercession for an end to the war. Yet that was not the only providential reason for Our Lady’s appearance to the three children at that specific time. Something dangerous was also happening in Russia which would have a devastating impact on the world.
The Russian Revolutions
Russia suffered greatly from the negative effects of World War I. The high number of casualties, combined with economic stagnation and food shortages, caused the people to grow angry, restless, and critical of the country’s governance.
This national instability culminated in the overthrow of the one thousand year-old Christian monarchy, and the execution of the Russian Tsar and the ruling Romanov dynasty.
This revolution occurred in February 1917 (March on the Gregorian calendar), and a provisional government was established in its place. Seeing the Russian monarchy toppled, Vladimir Lenin, who had previously been exiled from Russia due to his revolutionary political agitations, saw his opportunity to return and once again involve himself with the nation’s politics.
Lenin was fully committed to the economic, social, and atheistic philosophy of Marxism and sought to implement it in Russia. He banded with other leftist political revolutionaries to form the Bolshevik party, and he became its leader. The discontent about the ongoing war and the instability under the provencial government allowed the Bolsheviks to quickly rise to power, and they seized control of Russia during the infamous October Revolution (November on the Gregorian Calendar). Lenin became the head of Russia, and the Bolsheviks became the Communist Party. This was the keystone event that led to the founding of the Soviet Union. The country once called “Holy Russia” by her people, a land rich in faith and tradition, was overthrown.
Our Lady was appearing in Fatima during this critical period in Russia’s—and by extension, Europe’s—history; the first and last of her apparitions corresponded closely with the first and second Russian revolutions in March and November of 1917.
The Persecution Of The Church And The Family
Essential to the realization of Lenin’s goal to implement his Marxist ideals and transform Russia into a communist country was to eliminate the influence of Christianity, especially the Russian Orthodox church.
The following year, Russia implemented the law of separation of Church and State, “In order to ensure genuine freedom of conscience for the working people,” that is, freedom from the moral restraints that religion brings. The law of separation of Church and State was, in effect, a law imposing State atheism.
Although religion was not officially banned, its influence on society was intentionally and aggressively attacked. The Marxist revolutionaries knew that to undermine religious practice one must first corrupt the morality of the people. In addition to weakening the Church, they also worked to upend the social unit of the family in order to realize their ideal of a classless society ruled by an authoritarian State.
To further this goal, the Bolsheviks instituted no-fault divorce, thus supplanting sacramental marriage with civil marriage. Divorce was made swift and easily obtainable, with no provisions for the support of children. Laws were passed stating that there was now no such thing as an illegitimate child, a revolt against the natural right of children to be born into the stability of wedlock and raised by their mother and father.
The result was utter moral decay among the people. Previously a deeply religious people, many Russians became promiscuous and literally began to divorce and remarry with the seasons. Women who were divorced by their husbands while pregnant sought to abort their children out of the fear of abandonment. Under Communist rule, Russia became the first country in the world to legalize abortion, and eventually the nation with the highest rate of divorce and abortion in the world.
Before these disastrous laws were implemented, it was the Church who governed marriage, family, and the moral life of the people in the name of God. The Bolshevik Revolution was not merely a political revolution, it was a revolution of the fabric of society itself, and ultimately a revolt against the divine and natural law of God.
If the Bolshevik Revolution is—as some people have called it—the most significant political event of the 20th century, then Lenin must for good or ill be regarded as the century’s most significant political leader. Not only in the scholarly circles of the former Soviet Union but even among many non-Communist scholars, he has been regarded as both the greatest revolutionary leader and revolutionary statesman in history, as well as the greatest revolutionary thinker since Marx.
Encyclopedia Britannica
Once Lenin defeated every political enemy which threatened his power, the Soviet Union was formed in 1922 under Secretary Joseph Stalin. Lenin then became the first dictator of the world’s first Marxist state, although briefly, as he died in 1924. His ruthlessness against his political enemies established precedent for his successor, Joseph Stalin, to preside over a campaign of brutality against his own citizens, especially Christians.
Although Our Lady mentioned the need for the consecration of Russia during her apparitions at Fatima, she did not formally ask for it at that time. This request was not given to Sr. Lucia until June 13, 1929. Once again, the timing was providential as there was a significant event transpiring in Russia at that time.
In 1929 Russia began a new wave of anti-religious persecution under the dictatorship of the infamous Joseph Stalin. Previously the Orthodox Church was persecuted indirectly; Christians were imprisoned by being labeled as enemies of the State. Now, an official political campaign was begun to actually destroy the Church. Ecclesiastical property and wealth was confiscated, religious activities were prohibited, churches were destroyed, and nearly all clergy, along with many laity, were killed or sent to concentration camps. Christianity in Russia was forced underground.
In addition to unleashing a severe persecution on the Orthodox Church, Stalin turned on his own citizens in other evil ways. In the 1930’s Stalin forced a man-made famine on the Ukraine. This genocide killed an estimated 7-8 million people. During the famine’s worst period from 1932-34, it is estimated that nearly 30,000 Ukrainians were dying from starvation every day.
Meanwhile, Stalin denied the existence of the famine while exporting Russian grain to other countries. Such was the brutality that would become the manner of rule for atheistic communist dictators throughout the 20th century: orchestrated famines, deportations, civil wars, terror campaigns, forced labor, concentration camps, and mass killings.
Perhaps Jacinta, who often received visions of the future chastisements that Our Lady of Fatima prophesied, beheld the devastating Ukrainian famine when she said to Lucia,
“Can’t you see all those highways and roads and fields full of people, who are crying with hunger and have nothing to eat? And the Holy Father in a church praying before the Immaculate Heart of Mary? And so many people praying with him?”
Russia Spreads Her Errors
The central error of Russia was the modern atheistic Marxist-Communist State and its attacks on morality, the natural order of human society, and the Church.
This diabolical revolutionary spirit spread to other countries like an infectious disease, starting with the Eastern bloc countries, until more than half of the globe was ruled by communist dictators. Their brutal regimes which severely persecuted the Church and killed millions of their own citizens.
….
The Russian Bolshevik revolutionaries … however, actively pursued a global atheistic communism. The Bolsheviks implemented Marx’s Communist Manifesto and became the world’s first communist state. The Soviet Union then became not only a dominant world power, but also a flagship for the rise of atheistic dictatorships around the world. These brutal regimes and their insidious philosophies threatened and slaughtered their own citizens in a heinous manner never before seen in history.
The 1997 book, The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression by Stephane Courtois places the death toll of communism in the 20th century at 94 million, making atheistic communist regimes more deadly than the first two World Wars combined:
People’s Republic of China: 65 million
Soviet Union: 20 million
Cambodia: 2 million
North Korea: 2 million
Ethiopia: 1.7 million
Afghanistan: 1.5 million
Eastern Bloc: 1 million
Vietnam: 1 million
Latin America 150,000
International Communist movement and Communist parties not in power: 10,000
In addition to the shocking death toll, the suppression and persecution of the Christian faith and the institutionalization of immorality was the most devastating for the salvation of souls. Without the light of the Christian faith to guide souls to the worship of the One True God, many souls under Communist regimes were lost for eternity.
Looking back on this devastation, we are reminded of what Lucia said to the Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, on the eve of the anniversary of Our Lady of Fatima in 1982:
“The third part of the secret is a symbolic revelation, referring to this part of the Message, conditioned by whether we accept or not what the Message itself asks of us: ‘If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, etc.’
Since we did not heed this appeal of the Message, we see that it has been fulfilled, Russia has invaded the world with her errors. And if we have not yet seen the complete fulfilment of the final part of this prophecy, we are going towards it little by little with great strides. If we do not reject the path of sin, hatred, revenge, injustice, violations of the rights of the human person, immorality and violence, etc.
And let us not say that it is God who is punishing us in this way; on the contrary it is people themselves who are preparing their own punishment. In his kindness God warns us and calls us to the right path, while respecting the freedom he has given us; hence people are responsible.”
Again, it is incredible to consider that the Mother of God offered a means to prevent this disaster for humanity, with the responsibility of averting it given to the authority of the Vicar of Christ as the shepherd of the world’s souls.
