The Struggle to Improve the Human Lot
By Mowahid Shah
Washington, DC
I am currently visiting Albania where my younger sister heads the World Bank. It is a unique country in the European heartland completely isolated from the rest of the world until 20 years ago and was the world's first officially-decreed atheistic state despite its Muslim-majority populace. Remarkably, the Bektashi creed--a Sufi order, continues to flourish and remains vigorous.
We flew from Germany where my wife, Dayna, forebear originally emigrated from in 1752, and visited her ancestral village where impeccable genealogical records have been preserved tracing her lineage to 1450. A dark side of the trip was our visit to the Dachau concentration camp 40 minutes away from Munich. Mind-boggling how an erudite literate culture could be the hatchery of such systematic and clinical state-organized crimes against humanity. So education alone is not the answer after all. Inside the concentration camp itself there are two plaques dedicated to World War II heroine Noor Inayat Khan (a kin to Tipu Sultan) who was executed by the Gestapo and is a recipient of the George Cross -- the highest civilian award given for gallantry.
The Munich Hofbrauhaus Beer Hall where Hitler launched his Nazi Party 90 years ago is still intact -- but predictably no memorial plaques there because the Germans are very bashful about their Nazi past and World War II history. I guess the struggle to improve the human lot and be a better human being shall remain never-ending.
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