Vandaag 60 jaren geleden schreef Mahatma Gandhi een brief aan Adolf Hitler, de toenmalige kanselier van Duitsland.
Gandhi, in al zijn goedheid, riep hem op tot redelijkheid en vrede. Dit was des te verwonderlijker, als je weet dat Hitler niet veel eerder aan het Engelse bestuur van India voorstelde om Gandhi uit te schakelen.
Kill Gandhi, if that isn’t enough then kill the other leaders too, if that isn’t enough then two hundred more activists, and so on until the Indian people will give up the hope of independence.
Helaas bracht z’n brief weinig verschil. Enkele maanden later, in september 1939, viel Hitler alsnog Polen binnen en begon de Tweede Wereldoorlog.
Transcriptie
As at Wardha,
C. P.,
23-7-’39Dear friend,
Friends have been urging me to write to you for the sake of humanity. But I have resisted their request, because of the feeling that any letter from me would be an impertinence. Something tells me that I must not calculate and that I must make my appeal for whatever it may be worth.
It is quite clear that you are today the one person in the world who can prevent a war which may reduce humanity to a savage state. Must you pay that price for an object however worthy it may appear to you to be? Will you listen to the appeal of one who has deliberately shunned the method of war not without considerable success? Any way I anticipate your forgiveness, if I have erred in writing to you.
I remain,
Your sincere friend
M. K. Gandhi
HERR HITLER
BERLIN
GERMANY.
Bron: Wikimedia Commons.
