Our class watched a movie about Denmark's nonviolent resistance during the Holocaust. Every time I learn a bit more about the Holocaust I feel so uninformed. In my understanding this was the single biggest act of overt violence in the long tragic history of this world. I say overt because other maladies kill more individuals than the Holocaust indirectly, but the Holocaust was malicious. I always want a better answer to this question: why did the Nazi's kill the Jews, the gypsies, the gays, the unable, and all of these prescribed group? If the Danes could resist Hitler in solidarity and oppositional defiance, why couldn't the German Nazi's and the other troupes that joined that hate spreading army, why couldn't these people stop the war before it was a war? WWII was not all about Hitler. It was about people with names on both sides. It was about power too, power that those German Nazi's forfeited to Hitler when they picked up a gun or drove a tank. When I think of these things, my heart sinks. I don't want to worry about these things. I can put on headphones and walk on by. My last name is Hess. Someone in my family might have been on either side. We don't know our European ancestors. Our immigrant family members moved to the US before all of the war and madness of the early 1900's. But what if my great great uncle was killed in the war? Or what if some distant cousin killed someone? I am just exploring those thoughts, though both make me cringe and teary. Our class reading said that the Jews and others killed did not have enough brute force to drive out the might of the Nazi army's. But in Denmark, the entire nation drove the Germans Nazis out with little deaths until the war ended. In Denmark, there were subversive attempts at printing newspapers and informational fliers, Danes blew up train tracks and worked intentionally slow on Nazi factories so as to sabotage things, Danes froze stiff for two minutes on the hour in similar attempts, and had singing days in the open like in Estonia. They were unified. It is spring and I have been watching flocks of sparrows and commenting on the collective conscience they seem to have. I think people think too little for themselves, but in Peace and Justice I am coming to wonder if maybe group think is inevitable. If so I want to use my group thinking for good. So when am I in a group? For one, in the Peace and Justice class. In the class discussion, Meta asked us to all think if we are pacifistic. I said I want to be, but I can b verbally belligerent and that my purchasing habits contribute to war mongering all over the world. When I said these things, I put them aside and forgot them, but doing that is in itself being violent by not acting to stop the killing. You see, my purchasing power includes buying petroleum, plastics, and other items that were shipped long distances to get to me. And oil is reaped from the environment almost always because of a strong arming country that puts a small developing country in hardship if they do not comply. Not the mention the fact that I read in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver and Steve Hopp that the average item eaten by US Americans travels 1,500 miles to get there. There are so many problems like this in the world. It makes me think that the human obligation is to find an issue that needs you and devote your life to that issue. I cannot say I have yet done that. Writers are in a debatable grey area, for sure. But if I can focus more of my writing on Peace, Justice, and Environmentalism, I am heading in the right direction at least. We may be herd or flock animals, but we are also free thinkers, and we get to decide what we do with our lives.