Dear Marion,

Thank you for your letter about Cambodia and genocide. I read
the Wikipedia essay on the Khmer Rouge and was impressed with
how little I know about the tragic history of Cambodia.
Any comments or observations of mine will be projections of my
own fears and fantasies, only tenuously related to the factual
circumstances I purport to address.

Thank you for your solicitude for my sensitivities, but 
although and perhaps because I shy away from histories and
documentaries about Hell and its contemporary analogues,
my mind has insulated itself with complex explanations for
what human beings do to one another. It's been decades,
I believe, since I have encountered a description of cruelty
by which I was surprised or shocked.

Not surprisingly, I've found no one, except perhaps to some
extent Klemens, who evinces sympathy for my interpretations.
Dare I resort to the word "understanding"? The emotional and
intellectual confrontation with "mass murder", with genocide,
is isolating, I suspect not only for me, but for everyone in
whose thought it preoccupies. I'm reminded of a simple poem
of Rilke's:

Ernste Stunde

Wer jetzt weint irgendwo in der Welt,
_           ohne Grund weint in der Welt,
_           weint über mich.

Wer jetzt lacht irgendwo in der Nacht,
_           ohne Grund lacht in der Nacht,
_           lacht mich aus.

Wer jetzt geht irgendwo in der Welt,
_           ohne Grund geht in der Welt,
_           geht zu mir.

Wer jetzt stirbt irgendwo in der Welt,
_           ohne Grund stirbt in der Welt:
_           sieht mich an.


which links my awareness of the emotional experiences
of others, with my own. I have often asked myself:
Is not the tragic death one one individual sufficient?
Why should the heinousness that I deplore be a function
of number?  Relevant to this issue, it seems to me, is
the Christian mythology of the crucifixion of Jesus,
where the suffering and death of one person becomes
emblematic for the suffering and death of all humanity. 
It's not out of Jeremy Bentham's book; nonetheless it
invites reflection.

"Holocaust denial", as you know, is the political crime
du jour. Did it occur to you, after you had watched that
documentary about Cambodia, that your persuasive account
of Thet Sambath's friendship with Nuon Chea, translates 
"holocaust denial" into an unexpected, startling dimension.
Under what circumstances, if any, would you consider that
friendship a betrayal of the memory of Sambath's martyred
family, under what other circumstances, might you consider
that friendship an expression of quasi divine generosity,
love and forgiveness. And if on these grounds you forgive
Sambath his Holocaust denial, should you deny forgiveness
to less sophisticated Holocaust deniers? And why? 
I'm just asking.
Jochen