Arbeit macht frei: - Fredrick Töben

Chapter 5
CUI BONO – IN WHOSE
INTEREST?
With instant communications, thanks to Google, I do not have to dash off
to a library or newsagency to get information if I need to learn what’s going
on in the world. Information is available as long as I have a computer
connected to the Internet and my e-mail account. Then in the comfort of
my lounge chair I can read, read and read; flooding myself with information
while I must make a conscious effort to select items of interest.
If I do not discriminate in sifting through my e-mail box, I will then become
a victim of information overload; and then you have perhaps nine thousand
e-mails sitting there waiting, waiting … Dana Alvie reminded me some years
ago, until there’s an external intervention that saves you from making a
choice: the computer system crashes and all your saved mails disappear
without a trace – and wonder of wonders the world continues and no-one
cares or is hurt directly by such a technical failure. Except, of course, the
person who longingly and lovingly hoarded the mail because they could not
bring themselves to deleting any of them for fear any one may contain a
revelation of whatever nature.
A couple of days after the world was ‘shocked’ by the Auschwitz theft –
something else happened that was more a case of pushing the ‘shock’ into
the various communities which have been built up around the propagation
of the Holocaust. Bearing this in mind, Moti Bassok, writing in Israel’s
Haaretz, on 20 December 2009, raises an issue that most acute observers of
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