"Did you eat?"

When I taught in Gunsan, I was sent to do a two-day English class in neighboring Iksan.  Upon arrival, I was asked “Did you eat?”  Were they offering me a snack?  I said no, since breakfast had been a few hours before.  They looked startled at my honest response.

Turns out they didn’t really care whether I’d eaten.  Asking someone if they’ve eaten is simply a greeting.  How did such strange greeting come about?  During the Japanese occupation, Korea suffered years of, among other things, hunger.  So it became customary for people to greet each other with this question.  When one is starving, food becomes an all-consuming thought.  When people met, it was the foremost thing they talked and worried about.

In the same way that, in the West, when we ask “How are you?”  We usually expect to hear “Fine,” not a rundown of someone’s current physical/mental/spiritual state.  In Korea, when asked this question, they expect to hear yes, which explains the Korean teacher’s reaction when I answered truthfully. 

What’s crazy is that the Japanese occupation was 1910-1945.  Very few people are alive now who experienced it firsthand.  However, a greeting from that era remains in use and, in this case, is being translated to English without thought to its origin or whether it even makes sense in another.

The Righteous Gentile

The Righteous Gentile is about the life of Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish architect and businessman who saved thousands of Jews in Nazi-occupied Hungary during World War II much like Germany’s Oskar Schindler and Japan’s Chiune Sugihara. Author John Bierman did hundreds of interviews and reviewed reams of documents and files from that era in several countries in order to complete this detailed biography. It boggles the mind how he did such exhaustive research before the internet, or even word processors came into use. 

It’s frightening to know that the Nazis had many willing accomplices during their cruel reign of terror. It’s horrific enough that they decided to systematically exterminate a huge chunk of the population, it’s even worse when one reads accounts of how many low-level people performed their ghastly duties with zeal and pleasure. The human potential for evil is heartbreaking. It makes one wonder who could be trusted in a moment of crisis. However, before plunging into utter despair, one’s heart is lifted by the human capacity for courage and compassion displayed by a few brave people driven to do the right thing despite its danger and unpopularity. While I pray that nothing like this ever happens where I live, I hope that I will be fearless and courageous enough to help my fellow humans.

To anyone who has the slightest urge to say, “Why do you care about the holocaust? You’re not a Jew. Other genocides have happened since,” I am well aware that other, more recent, genocides have taken place in Africa, the Americas, Asia and Europe. However, that’s not the topic of this book. I will write a review about those atrocities, when I do read a book that covers them. Besides, it’s not about Jews, it’s about humans. Also, be reminded that Jews were not the Nazi’s only victims----they were merely the largest group. Among others, The Nazis also targeted Jehova’s Witnesses, members of the LGBT community, mentally and/or physically disabled people, political prisoners, race defilers (Aryans who married/had sex with Jews), rescuers of Jews, Roma people, Seventh-day Adventists and trade unionists. If you or anyone you know can be categorized into one of the above groups and was alive in Europe during WWII, you could have ended up in a concentration camp. I happen to fit into several of the above groups. 

November 24, 2018