It was an extraordinary moment of historical memory this morning: Barack Obama and Elie Wiesel at Buchenwald, the German Chancellor Merkel behind them, and a kind of deep groan of remembrance for the evils of the death camp, as well as acknowledgement that acts of kindness and goodness occur even in the midst of savagery. The camps remain a traumatic memorial to all that is horrid in mankind's shadow nonsense: racism, mass murder, and the net result of a race-hatred that killed millions. The awful stupidity of it all and, as Elie Wiesel reminded us, the continuance of such horrid recurrences in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and elsewhere. It is a high inducement to us all to become aware of the Holocaust and its offspring in world ignominy, and attempt in our own processes to become conscious of our own capacities for cruelty and wrongdoing, as well as the ongoing commitment to achieve a revolutionary conviction and determination to create a more peaceful world.