Like listening to Ben Ferencz this morning and me remembering that even at the Kunstakademie (Academy of Fine Arts) in Münster while I was studying there, some of my fellow students called out for war. Their point was that people nowadays cherish values far too less and a war because of its scarcity will teach them to appreciate the luxuries and beauty of life once again. I was not alien to this thought that people would see something good in a war, another point often heard that it would provide a chance to build up a country from scratch, yet I was irritated to be confronted with this sentiment there. So I yelled at them:"People die in wars, really and actually!" My response was so strong because I was thinking of all the atrocities committed in wars. War is when everything is turned upside down, when there is no more decency and even no more common ground. This is well reflected in the history of my home, a small village on the German-Dutch border. In November 1591, when war was raging between Spain and the newly established Netherlands, this village was pillaged by Spanish soldiers. According to the chronicles those people being on the payroll of a Catholic nation slaughtered more than one thousand five hundred Catholic people in a Catholic church, where they had fled because they thought they were save there. This is war to you and sadly it happened and happens time and time again. P. S.: Later the soldiers even had the nerve to demand a ransom for the bodies of the slaughtered, else they would them into the local river, the Rur/Roer.
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