View attachment 63318
You pray. I'll do something about what is needed
In a disaster, it is good to be strong. Strong people can lift heavy weights and rescue people.
What if things are so tough that the muscle-bound men decide to kill themselves because they just can't go on?
But, they are strong. If they will be dead, they won't be strong anymore.
Perhaps there are other forms of strength? Muscles are one form of strength. But perhaps
perserverence is another form of strength?
Feeding the body is one way of alleviating stress, but is that enough? What about cheering up someone, and giving them hope that the world might get better?
Jews in Nazi concentration camps were incarcerated, starved, tortured, and watched their comrades die like flies.
Robert Clary (an actor in Hogan's Hero TV show, was a real life French Jew prisoner in a German concentration camp). He said that the Nazis just stopped feeding them, and every morning they woke up and another one of their friends was dead. Their
faith kept them going...they had little else.
General
Burkhalter's actor had a scarred face from being hit, as a Jewish child in a Nazi concentration camp.
Sergeant
Schultz's actor (Johann Banner) was an Austria-Hungary (now Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine) Jew who had ben a supply sergeant in the US Army Air Forces. He had posed for a recruiting poster.
Colonel
Clink's actor was a half Jewish German.
Hogan's Heros showed that the abusive Nazi regime was more scary to its own citizens than the enemy. Constant
fear of being sent to the Russian front. Constant fear that if anyone
sees an escape, authorities will pin the problem on them. . . so they "see nothing." (same response of Nazi war criminals...."I saw nothing."...Is that why they were called
"not sees?)"
Army chaplains are thought to do nothing. But they give
hope and comfort. Soldiers will believe that their souls won't rot in hell if a chaplain gives them the last rights.
The theme song from Mash is about watching your fellow soldiers die, one by one (or sometimes many at a time). It's about believing that the only way out of the war is death, and it is better to die mercifully, than getting blown apart and dying slowly over days.
THEME SONG FROM MASH:
Through early morning fog I see
Visions of the things to be
The pains that are withheld for me
I realize and I can see
That
suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it
If I please
The game of life is hard to play
I'm gonna lose it anyway
The losing card I'll someday lay
So this is all I have to say
Suicide is painless (suicide)
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it
If I please
The sword of time will pierce our skins
It doesn't hurt when it begins
But as it works its way on in
The
pain grows stronger, watch it grin
Suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it
If I please
A brave man once requested me
To answer questions that are key
"Is it to be or not to be?"
And I replied, "Oh, why ask me?"
Suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it
If I please
And you can do the same thing
If you please
These powerful words were written by the teenaged son of the producer of Mash. How can such a young boy have such powerful thoughts? For one thing, he was facing that type of life...draft age.
It took exceptional writers to make a comedy amid such pain and tragedy. All In The Family had good writers make comedy of bigotry.
Having survived cancer (and survived treatment for cancer...a battle of its own), and survived telling my loved ones that I have a 15% chance of living (very sad), I realize that
one must feed the soul (perk up emotions) in addition to feeding the body. Soul food and regular food must both be the right food and nutritious.
Cancer is a battle of the body and the mind.
So, even
if God does not exist, we still must overcome our own thoughts.
