1979 School Magazine

"tlfe is but a great mathematical problern, to be solv" ed by perpetual addition, subtraction, rnultiplication and division. Only the patient can make it all work out,tt Life. Existence. Are we really here? Are we a mystical illusion, and do only our thoughts exist? What does it hold for us when we finally accept our being here as a visible form, as a person with an already planned destiny? Once one has reached an inner peacefulness - that is, come to terms with oneself, to have reached total satisfaction, to be able to radiate an inner content- ment - is it then possible to say that we have found the solution to the "great Mathematical problem of Iife"? And does patience cause this, or does it walk hand-in- hand with this attainment of spiritual contentment? These questions and more. To be is to question. But to answer the question is to be patient. ls reaching an inner peacefulness enough to solve the "problem"? There is always perpetual addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. lt is experience. Life is experiencing. How can the mathematical problem of life be solved then? lf you were content and felt that your exislence in life was justified, wouldn't you die? Experiencing is living, and by living, the answer to the existence of the nature of man and life unfolds spontaneously "until death do us part". Why must life be likened to a mathematical problem? ls it a problem? Why must life be a problem? Life is a gift. Life is a garden, so "dig" it. lt is not for us to make it a pro- blem. lt is for us to exist, to experience, to be. Life is not a "great mathematical problem" to be pondered upon, year a'fIer year, until finally a very complicated equation results. That is being patient. Are you a better person? What has been achieved? You have turned the very basis of life into a sum, and explained it scientifically. Now it is easy to explain what is untouchable as solid, concrete matter. Look what patience has achieved!! It is only natural to try to explain the unexplainable as concrete fact, to give it form. The existence of the nature of man and his role in life, his destiny and what it means, forms the basis of everything man does. But any man may attempt to answer these questions. The.patient just have to wait a little longer. Once each man finds his own answer with which he is content, he is then able to say that he has found his solution to his question of ex- istence. lt is a very individualistic solution, and it could be very wrong. But it keeps him sane and happy. To say that only the patient will find a solution is perhaps unrealistic. lt would be better if one had said, "Only those who want a solution can make il all work out." Barbara Ainsworth, .1 2A.

TI"IE HOLOCAUST From the very beginning of time, man has shown his capacity for cruelty and persecution. Even in the ancient land of the Pharoahs his treatment of the Children of lsrael provided an insight into a human attribute that has never been eradicated, the very first chapter of Exodus telling us about our forebears: "And the Egyptians made the lives of their Jewish slaves bitter with bondage, in mortar and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigou r.' ' Today, we have the horrifying example of the Holocaust to prove that man's ugliest and most evil defect - his in- humanity - has not improved in fou,6 thousand years. lmplicit in the inhumanity of Nazi Germany was the horri- fying doctrine that there are amongst us sub-humans, "Untermenschen", who have forfeited the right to be treated as human beings. The stark horror of this men- tality was given expression by Heinrich Himmler, Hitler's Supreme Commander of the Death Camps. "We shall never be rough or heartless where it is not necessary," Himmler instructed his S.S. leaders: "That is clear. We Germans, who are the only people in the world, who have a decent attitude to animals, will also adopt a decent attitude to these human animals, but it is a crime against our own blood to worry about them and to bring them ideals. Most of you know what it means to see a hundred corpses lying together, five hundred, or a thousand. To have gone through this and yet have remained decent, this has made us hard." From the clutches of Pharoah, the Children of lsrael had fallen into the hands of Aryan monsters. Not only were spirits broken, and property and estates plundered in the name of the State, but Jews in Nazi Ger- many were imprisoned without trial, flogged, starved, and worked to death. Life was "bitter with hard bondage", but worse was to ensue as the war progress- ed, with the torture of the concentration camps, the human guinea-pig experimentation, and the mass exter- minations in the gas chambers. At Auschwitz, three million Jews were murdered;at Mauthausen, two million. It has been officially estimated that over six million Jews were murdered by shooting or by gassing, but some still believe that millions more could have been exterminated at the hands of the Nazis, perhaps even as many as twenty million - all presumably "human animals." The Holocaust has shocked the world, evoking universal expressions of outrage and horror. lt should provide a profound lesson for mankind, but Man fotgets easily. Already the catch-cry, "Let bygones be bygones!" is be- ing raised, the moral issue of man's responsibility to his fellow-man conveniently shelved. Hitler not only ostracised and humiliated a race but tortured and exter- minated over six million human beings. To forget atrocities of this magnitude is to condone inhumanity. Jenny F. O'Donnell.

Frantically we search for you - Anything to soothe that aching spot Your parting left us with. Yet in our confusion, We cannot see.

8t