Evening star., 1944-07-15
Statistics of Terror

0lSlGS 10 nOG nave tongues. lney
cannot cry out. The number 8 fol-
lowed by six 0's Is something created
by arithmetic-a mere statistic.
When we read 5000, 900" we do not
see. all in one place, the 100000
things or persons the figure repre-
sents; nor do we have contact with
them in any other tangible sense.
How can the reality be impressed
upon us? How can the enormity of
the thing be made to seem more
than some wild nightmarish imag-
ining? The statistics have been
repeated over and over again. Or
ganizations of the highest repute
have called them authentic. No
fewer than 100000 Jews have been
deliberately killed by the Nazis, and
an additional 100000 are in dan
ger of meeting the same fate. The
civilized mind may say this is in
credible, but there is every reason
to believe it nonetheless. Hitler
with lethal "gas chambers" and ma
chine guns-is Systematically en-
gagged in a cold -blooded effort to
annihilate the Jewish people of
Europe, irrespective of age or sex.
Lidice seemed incredible, too, but
the Nazis themselves openly admit
ted that crime of June 10, 1912.
And two years to the day later, ac-
cording to their puppet government
in Greece, to avenge the death of
80 Of their troops slain in a battle
with guerrillas, they marched into
the Greek village of Distomo and
butchered by machine gun all it's
1000 inhabitants. And now we hear
from both British and French
sources that on the same day in
France, at Oradour- sur -Glane, in a
similar vengeance move, they MUIR
dered 800 men, women and children,
the men being shot and the women
and children being locked up in a
church which was then dynamited
and set afire. This last atrocity has
not yet been officially confirmed,
but since the Nazis have frankly
confessed to Lidice and indirectly
to Distomo, and since their policy
toward hostages is we'll known, the
story of Oradour- sur -Glane is at
least plausible.
AS these frightful tales demon
strate, it is not only the Jews who
are being murdered But it is the
Jews, more than all the others, who
have been singled out by Hitler for
extinction. If there are some still
among us who cannot believe this
or who fancy it to be propaganda,
let them give thought to the official
Berlin threat to turn Europe into
a "maelstrom of destruction" Let
them ask themselves, too, why it
is that the ever-courageous Cath
olic bishops of Germany saw fit re-
Gently to direct this warning to the
Nazis: The slaughter of people
who have no personal guilt is in
itself evil, as for example against
innocent and defenseless mental
detectives, against the mortally
wounded, against newborn infants
with inherited disease, untitled for
life, against innocent hostages and
unarmed prisoners of war, against
men Of other races and origin"
1t has been said that statistics
do not bleed. BY itself, the figure
100000 obviously does not bleed.
But what the figure represents
men, women and children-they
bleed; they bleed and die. This is
the reality, the enormity that we
must try to comprehend when we
look at the cold, dumb digits of
terror before us. And doing that
we may come to comprehend as
we'll how truly dark and abominable
is the nature of our enemy.