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156 Andersonville
This is the site of one of the great atrocities of the American civil war. It was here at Camp Sumter, better known as Andersonville Prison, that nearly 13,000 Union prisoners of war suffered and eventually died.
The encampment was built hastily with limited resources, and within six months was already holding more than three times the number of inmates it was designed to hold. There is so much death and destruction in our history now buried beneath us.
It is one of the things we have in common. I’d say there’s a 99% chance that no matter what race, religion, or nationality you are, somewhere, at some time, your ancestors did horrible things to some other group of people who looked different or thought different than they did.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. I’ve noticed that the less you know someone, the easier it is to hate them. I imagine that a few Confederate soldiers posted here had conversations with the Union soldiers they were guarding. The more they talked with each other, the more they probably recognized that they shared more similarities than differences. The more they realized how similar they were, the harder it probably made it to want to kill each other. Except that here, life was so bad that killing would have been a kindness.
My granddaddy was an American soldier stationed in North Africa and Europe during World War II. I once childishly asked him if he ever killed anybody. He said he never saw anybody that he thought needed killing. That has stuck with me as one of the wisest things I’ve ever heard.
Especially at this time in our society, we need to take a good, hard look at each other. We need to have some conversations with the people we think are different than us. We need to start recognizing the similarities instead of manufacturing the differences. Then, maybe, we won’t see anybody that needs killing, and we won’t see anybody that needs hating either.
安德森维尔监狱
这是美国内战中最大的暴行之一。正是在萨姆特营地，也被称为安德森维尔监狱，近 13,000 名战俘遭受痛苦并最终死亡。
营地是在资源有限的情况下仓促建造的，在六个月内已经容纳了超过设计容纳人数三倍的囚犯。我们的历史中埋藏着许多死亡和破坏。
这是我们的共同点之一。我想说有 99% 的可能性，无论你是什么种族、宗教或国籍，在某个地方、某个时间，你的祖先对其他一些看起来与他们不同或想法不同的人做了可怕的事情。
但它不一定是那样的。我注意到，你对某人的了解越少，就越容易讨厌他们。我想，一些驻扎在这里的南方邦联士兵与他们看守的美国囚犯进行了交谈。他们彼此交谈得越多，就越可能认识到他们之间的相似点多于不同点。他们越是意识到自己有多么相似，就越难互相残杀。除了在这里，生不如死。
我的祖父是二战期间驻扎在北非和欧洲的美国士兵。我曾经幼稚地问他是否杀过人。他说他从未见过任何他认为需要杀死的人。那是我听过的最明智的事情之一。
尤其是在我们这个社会的这个时候，我们需要以一种好的、诚实的眼光看待彼此。我们需要与我们认为与我们不同的人进行对话。我们需要开始认识到相似之处，而不是制造差异。那么，也许，我们就不会看到任何人需要被杀死，我们也不会看到任何人需要被憎恨。
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