The Anne Frank's House

For those of us who have read about the Holocaust, The Rise of Evil - Hitler and The Diary of Anne Frank, the visit to Anne Frank's House in Amsterdam is not just about historical facts. It is filled with emotional and provoking thoughts.

When the Holocaust ended in 1945, Hitler's racist ideas had ended in genocide and the Nazi had killed six million Jews. In her diary, Anne Frank posed difficult questions. Why is there war? Why are Jewish people hated and discriminated? What is the importance of being cared and caring for others? What is freedom to you?

A fight, a bully, an accident, an injustice, someone in a difficult situation needing a helping hand..... What will you do? Everyday we are confronted with such dilemmas. Some affect us personally and some are so huge that it is hard to know what to do. Do you walk by or do you stop and help? What does it make you feel? Standing up is not always easy but what if you were the one in need of help?

Who is right and who is wrong? What is freedom to you? To be able to speak the truth, to admit your mistakes, to lay down your life for others? Why do some people judge others on their colour, age, sex, religion etc? We do stereotype people and make snap judgment based on little details. Isn't it stupid? Yes, we are all victim of society but that is no excuse for violence and revenge.

Anne Frank wrote in her diary on 6th July 1944... "We are all alive but we don't know why or what for; we are all searching for happiness; we are all leading lives which are different and yet the same."

Today, people are still being persecuted and murdered because they, like Anne Frank are not only "different" but also "want to be". Obviously, there are elements in the diary that are universally recognizable by both the young and old of this generation. Otto Frank, 1967 ...."To build up a future, you have to know the past" but why did people allow history to repeat itself even in this present age? Why are there still so much discrimination, prejudice, war, social injustices, self righteous etc? These make the visit to The Anne Frank's House meaningful even in our times. The Secret Annex - a story of unimaginable horror but also one of great courage indeed gave me more courage and the conviction that to live an authentic and fulfilling life, love and courage is what we need the most.

The perfect murder

The Ice Man - Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer, by Philip Carlo describe even the very minute details of the most morbid account of Richard Kuklinski’s killing spree. He was one of the most diabolical self-confessed contract killers in American history taking credit for over 200 murders.

Richard Kuklinski was born to Stanley and Anna Kuklinski. Stanley was a severely abusive alcoholic who beat his wife and children. Anna was also abusive to her children probably resulting from her own abusive childhood. When Richard was 5 years old, he witnessed the beating of his older brother, Florian resulting in his death. Stanley and Anna hid the cause of the child's death from the authorities, saying he had fallen down a flight of steps. By the age of 10, Richard was filled with rage and began acting out. For a start, he would torture animals and by the age of 14, he had committed his first murder. Although he was dyslexic, Richard had no problem reading True Crime magazines about criminals, upon which he based his actions.

He lived a double life as a dedicated family man and cold blooded hit man but he would never kill woman and children. Over a period of forty-three years, he killed numerous people, either by gun, strangulation, knife, or poison. He favored the use of cyanide since it killed quickly and was hard to detect in a toxicology test. He would variously administer it by injection, putting it on a person's food, by aerosol spray, or by simply spilling it on the victim's skin. One of his favorite methods of disposing of a body was to place it in a 55-gallon oil drum. His other disposal methods included dismemberment, burial, freezing the body or placing it in the trunk of a car and having it crushed in a junkyard. He left bodies sitting on park benches, thrown bodies down "bottomless pits" and fed alive victims to giant rats in caves in Pennsylvania.

What struck me most is that Richard didn’t seem remorseful about the people he killed per se but he was genuinely upset and sorry that it affected his family after his arrest. If his childhood was filled with love… would he be capable of such multiple atrocities? When he was asked what he would like to say for the ending of his story, he said:” I’d rather be known as a nice man, not the Ice man. I was made. I didn’t create myself. I never chose to be this way, to be in this place. Yeah, I for sure wish my life took another turn, that I had an education and a good job, but none of that was in the cards for me”.

100 billion cells make up the brain that communicates electrically with 1,000 trillion neural connections at up to 250 miles per hour. This sparking of electrical power creates man’s personality and behaviour. Human being has an armory of instincts to help him/her stay alive and violence certainly has an enormous impact that will reshape one’s life and give rise to evil. What is inside the mind of Kuklinski and Hitler and Stalin……?Alas, it is truly difficult to understand the power and complexity of the brain.

Believe it or not, I actually felt sorry for him. Without doubt, Kuklinski is another victim of society. Personally, I view his life as a classic case of a severely abused child, filled with seething rage, becoming an abuser and turning into a remorseless killer. What a sad, sad way to live......