It took Elie Wiesel ten years to write his memoirs of the Holocaust. School children across America read Night (1960), one of his many books. Elie Wiesel did not want the world to forget about the horrors of the concentration camps. His work led him to international fame for his teachings and writings. He wanted the world to know so it wouldn't happen again, and yet so it does.
As I am writing this and looking at a biography of his life, I have just learned that his wife's name was Marion Rose. They had a son named Elisha.
I understand his passion. I shall never forget about the loss of life in our schools. And I connect the dots to abortion because abortion victims, as were the holocaust victims, are targeted and not random. Abortion supporters send the message that it is okay to kill. Abortion has ties to the mentality that led to the Holocaust. Do the school shooters?
The Nazi's targeted youth to help do their dirty work. So, to whom are the teen killers listening? Do they create their scenarios without researching others. Reporters and researchers are finding the shooters research previous mass shootings. One in particular is the Columbine massacre. Cruz in Parkland, Florida (used guns) and Hribal, Murrysville, Pa ( used knives) idolized the Columbine killers.
After I left teaching, I did read all sorts of documentation and resources. Before I left, I paid attention during the 1997-98 school year, which is one reason why I spoke out for my own class and school. I was given one book to read on dealing with children with oppositional defiance disorder (catch all term). None of the recommendations involved using happy faces. Most of the recommendations involved extensive therapy and hospitalization.
I was not familiar with the word "copy cat" as it came to school shootings during the 1997-98 school year.. I just felt that the child with whom I worked fit the profile of children who were shooting in their schools.. I now understand the term, "copy cat." Many of the school shooters reference the Columbine killers. Nineteen years after their horrific plans of violence (that did not come to full fruition), the Columbine effect is a valid term.
The Columbine massacre happened just four days before I was supposed to speak at NJEA event for an appeal. I brought the newspaper to my testimony. Students and one teacher dead and others injured seriously. I remember the young man dangling out of the window waiting for help. And one fat man at the talk on April 24, 1999 had the nerve to laugh when I spoke. My child asked me why.
I had no explanation other than his ignorance. We can't afford to be ignorant.
Elie Wiesel had a world stage with his message. He wrote, taught and spoke to get the message across. He had victim impact testimony as did Anne Frank.
As people turned to gun control as a main way of dealing with the Columbine massacre, there were those who actually were doing research and then those, like me, reading the information. I had lots of newspaper articles saved for many years, then I started clearing them out. But the web is full of information.
As the ignorant blame the guns and are marching for gun control, they are not reading the history. Trains were a weapon used in Nazi Germany... how else would they transport millions of people to their deaths? Elie Wiesel did not advocate the banning of trains.
So through the years, Columbine has been a steady subject of interest in the news. Other posts have additional articles.
2013:
https://www.cnn.com/2013/09/18/us/columbine-high-school-shootings-fast-facts/index.html
In 2001, after a "America has witnessed a wave of shootings at its high schools", 60 Minutes did an update. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-really-happened-at-columbine/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/columbine-were-there-warning-signs/
Slate Magazine in 2004 had this expose. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/assessment/2004/04/the_depressive_and_the_psychopath.html
A section of the piece:
"School shooters tend to act impulsively and attack the targets of their rage: students and faculty. But Harris and Klebold planned for a year and dreamed much bigger. The school served as means to a grander end, to terrorize the entire nation by attacking a symbol of American life. Their slaughter was aimed at students and teachers, but it was not motivated by resentment of them in particular. Students and teachers were just convenient quarry, what Timothy McVeigh described as "collateral damage."
The killers, in fact, laughed at petty school shooters. They bragged about dwarfing the carnage of the Oklahoma City bombing and originally scheduled their bloody performance for its anniversary (which was April 19). Klebold boasted on video about inflicting "the most deaths in U.S. history." Columbine was intended not primarily as a shooting at all, but as a bombing on a massive scale. If they hadn't been so bad at wiring the timers, the propane bombs they set in the cafeteria would have wiped out 600 people. After those bombs went off, they planned to gun down fleeing survivors. An explosive third act would follow, when their cars, packed with still more bombs, would rip through still more crowds, presumably of survivors, rescue workers, and reporters. The climax would be captured on live television. It wasn't just "fame" they were after—Agent Fuselier bristles at that trivializing term—they were gunning for devastating infamy on the historical scale of an Attila the Hun. Their vision was to create a nightmare so devastating and apocalyptic that the entire world would shudder at their power.
Harris and Klebold would have been dismayed that Columbine was dubbed the "worst school shooting in American history." They set their sights on eclipsing the world's greatest mass murderers, but the media never saw past the choice of venue. The school setting drove analysis in precisely the wrong direction.
Fuselier and Ochberg say that if you want to understand "the killers," quit asking what drove them. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were radically different individuals, with vastly different motives and opposite mental conditions. Klebold is easier to comprehend, a more familiar type. He was hotheaded, but depressive and suicidal. He blamed himself for his problems.
Harris is the challenge. He was sweet-faced and well-spoken. Adults, and even some other kids, described him as "nice." But Harris was cold, calculating, and homicidal. "Klebold was hurting inside while Harris wanted to hurt people," Fuselier says. Harris was not merely a troubled kid, the psychiatrists say, he was a psychopath. "
April 20 is Hitler's birthday.
As at the high school in Parkland, Florida, a "deputy and six other policemen took positions but none of the entered the school." ( CBS article) Training after Columbine was supposed to fix that. As did the sheriff in Parkland, Florida, the sheriff of Jefferson County, Sheriff Stone said his deputies did as they were trained to do. So, don't expect success when the Swat team is called in.
The news is constantly full of success stories too in which people did speak up and tragedy was prevented. But we tend to listen to the people who failed to prevent the shootings. Knowing warning signs and speaking up- persistently.
These articles listed above, and the many articles published already about the high school in Parkland, Florida, show the complete failure on the part of the schools and the police to do their jobs. Students from Parkland, Florida are marching to the wrong drum beat. They should be attending every school board meeting and city counsel meeting in their own community to get answers and demand change.
Holocausts and massacres happen on the world stage when people don't pay attention to what is happening in their own homes and communities. "Hitler youth"- alive and well and living in our schools, planning the next massacre. Some of them use guns.
Two years after Columbine, a small group of terrorists actually succeeded in pulling off part of the Columbine killers' plan. That was deemed to be a massive failure to read the warning signs too.
The whole world is a stage, some actors are deadly. We held the German citizens and the terrorists families and countries accountable for letting the holocaust and 9/11 happen. Yet, we allow the school personnel and police keep their jobs despite their failures. We make the failures "voices of reason". School personnel should be held accountable for not speaking up before a shooting.
The leaders are charging, while the leadership sleeps. There isn't a happy face sticker in the world which can stop the bleed. But making sure there is accountability for following the many laws on school safety may be motivation to do more then protect the guilty.
Many of the victim's parents who wanted answers after Columbine were ostracized for speaking up.
The trains took the victims and people looked on. There are Holocaust deniers today.
Like Marion Rose (Wiesel), I will never forget. I will be persistent in speaking up.
Marian Rose Carlino
June 17, 2018
