International Dialogue
Holocaust in a Can: Conscience, Community, and the Nuclear Threat
Kathy Kelly
Thank you, Dr. Michael Sonnleitner, for that kindly
introduction. Lovely to be with all of you. Dr. Siby Joseph, thank you for
welcoming us and for putting us in the mindset of the ashram where Gandhi
helped so many people desire that true prayer for peace. On this day to
celebrate the independence of India from the colonial rule of Britain, we do
have reason to find great hope in much of our history.
I would go back and forth to New York from where I live in
Chicago from time to time and almost every time I would visit there, I'd get a
chance to spend some time with a woman named Maryanne Goldscheider. Maryanne
has since died, but toward the end of her life, this woman recounted how she
escaped Nazi Germany after being sent to a concentration camp.
She would sometimes ask me or ask whomever might be joining
her in conversation, "Why didn't people stop Hitler? He was a madman. Why
didn't people who were still in Germany try to stop him?" I think we now
should ask ourselves the same question. Why don't we stop the madness of
nuclear weapon proliferation in our time when you might say that each one of
the nuclear warheads that Dr. Siby Joseph mentioned the world possesses is like
a holocaust in a can? If there's one exchange of nuclear weapons, it could mean
omnicide for the entire planet.
So, I asked to begin our time together today to orient us
with the first two minutes of a concert that was called Songs Against Genocide.
In these two minutes, you'll hear a young woman who is representing Anne Frank,
the young girl who was killed by the Nazis in a concentration camp who
experienced hunger and fear and forcible dislocation. You see this young girl
with the yellow star on a prisoner's uniform singing her longing for people to
understand one another—that her blood is the same as the blood of her
Palestinian sister, her Palestinian brother. Then she summons up the desire for
millions of people to say, "We are one humanity."
The young woman is singing to say that they took away her
dreams. They took away her food. But she believes that the capacity of humanity
continues and millions could rise to say we are all part of one another.
There was a speech that the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King
gave in which he called on people internationally to become maladjusted. Dr.
King said he never intended to become adjusted to racism, to segregation, or to
accepting nuclear war. In Dr. King's vision, being maladjusted was a very
positive dimension.
At American University, President John Kennedy in 1963
delivered a speech in which he said that basically where we would find our
peace and our security would be in respecting the human rights mutually between
ourselves and our so-called enemies, but really of people all over the world.
What we see now is that countries that had been neutral
countries, countries like Sweden, have now been racing very hastily to join
NATO, saying, "We are so afraid of Russia that we now have to get
entangled in these military alliances that could mean we end up acquiring
nuclear weapons." As a result, we're in an even more dangerous time as
more and more countries start to say, "We want the bomb."
That's why it's so important to show support for the treaty
for the prohibition of nuclear weapons, and to keep pressing every nation to
rid themselves of any armaments, and to press toward non-violent ways to solve
problems.
I've been part of an effort for some years really that's
called the ploughshares movement. I have to confess that when I first engaged
in what involved a challenge to a nuclear weapon, we didn't do damage to the
weapon itself. We decided that our group would go to silo sites, underground
nuclear weapons buried underneath the ground, and we would try to do something
similar to what the farmers did in that area. They would plant corn. We planted
corn on top of nuclear missile silo sites. For my corn planting action, I was
sent to federal prison for one year.
Please recall with me that day in August—it was actually
1988, so it was a long time ago—when I and a group of friends fanned out to
different nuclear weapons sites. There were 150 intercontinental ballistic
missiles surrounding Kansas City in the Midwest of the United States, and there
were 1,000 in the entire Midwest. We went out to various sites and I went by
myself to one of those missile silo sites. My heart was pounding. I was
actually kind of nervous because I'd never done this before. But I had six pellets
of pink corn in my pocket and a tablespoon. When I got into the nuclear missile
silo site, I hung some banners that said, "Farms, not arms," and,
"You can't hug a child with nuclear arms." Then I planted my corn
with the tablespoon, trying to plant it reasonably.
Afterward, I calmed down and noticed it was a beautiful day.
The birds were chirping, the crickets were creaking, so I hummed a little tune.
Not long after that, a car was speeding down the gravel way toward where I was.
It skidded to a stop, pebbles were flying, and out came four men in full
military garb with helmets, rifles, walkie-talkies, and combat boots. One said
into his microphone, "All personnel, please clear the site." Then he
told me, "Stand up, put your arms in the air, step to the left."
They handcuffed me and I was instructed to kneel on the
ground. Three of the soldiers left in the vehicle and they left one soldier
with me with his weapon. He was behind me and I never really turned around. I
just sort of stared into the distance and started talking to him. I told him
why we did what we did, expressing our hope that our action might affect
children that he loved, as well as innocent children in what at the time was
the Soviet Union.
I told him about the neighbourhood where I lived, where a
lot of people were hungry and homeless because we were choosing to spend so
much of our country's resources on taking care of nuclear weapons like the one
that was beneath where we both were. Then I asked him, "Do you think the
corn will grow?"
He said, "I don't know, ma'am, but I sure hope
so."
I asked him, "Would you like to say a prayer?"
He said, "Yes, ma'am."
So, I said a memorized prayer, the prayer of St. Francis: "Lord,
make me a channel of your peace. Where there is darkness, let me sow light;
where there is despair, hope; where there is sadness, joy. Master, grant that I
may never so much seek to be loved as to love with all my soul."
He said, "Amen." Then he asked me a question:
"Ma'am, would you like a drink of water?"
I said, "Yes, please."
He said, "Ma'am, please tip your head back."
I did. All I can tell you is I noticed he had two hands on
his canteen as he poured water down my throat. What did he do with the gun? I
think that soldier, in order to perform an act of kindness, disarmed himself.
His question, "Would you like a drink of water?"
should be our question. Would we prefer to make sure that every child around
this world has access to clean water and has their right to a safe future
guaranteed, rather than protecting these nuclear weapons? I remain throughout
my life intensely grateful for that experience. Right now, in my life, I am
also feeling intensely grateful to Korean brothers and sisters, people who are
themselves second and third-generation survivors of the radiation sickness that
occurred for their ancestors who were in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, undergoing a
kind of double punishment.
They had been taken as conscripts into the cities of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, forced to labour in munitions manufacture and in
factories inside Japan. When the bomb hit in Hiroshima, they were doubly
affected by their imprisonment and by the radiation sickness that survivors
experienced. This was passed on to second and third-generation Korean people.
Rather than saying we just have to adjust to this, this group of Koreans is
compassionately maladjusted.
They have been working intensely to develop a tribunal that
will come to fruition quite soon in Seoul at the Hanshin University's Graduate
School of Theology from November 13th to 15th. The Korean A-bomb survivors will
hold their tribunal and hear testimonies, which they hope will lead toward an
approval of their insistence that an apology be issued by the United States,
along with reparations and a commitment to abolish all nuclear weapons. I want
to uphold our Korean brothers and sisters as they plan and work to bring about
this tribunal, a project they have built over two and a half years.
I also want to draw attention to the International Campaign
Against Nuclear Weapons plans for both a September action at the United Nations
and then an initiative from November 29th to December 4th. They will be
upholding the treaty for the prohibition of nuclear war.
I've had an opportunity through most of my adult life to
join with Michael's spouse, Chris, in trying to show our resistance to nuclear
weapons by challenging our government's insistence that we pay for these
arsenals. I lowered my salary beneath the taxable income tier for many years.
Any time the Internal Revenue Service wished to come and collect from whatever
salary I was earning, I would just quit the job and finish it out as a
volunteer. I successfully resisted payment of all forms of federal income tax
for 40 years. That was a blessing because each of us longs for a chance to
resist what we believe to be deeply wrongful in our world.
One of the most important components of that resistance is
community. That's exactly what you are forming in these monthly meetings—an
ongoing sense that you can catch courage from one another, learn from one
another, and orient yourselves the way that little girl's voice orients me, and
I hope you as well, to believe that we are all part of one another. At this
point, when India is still trading with Israel and helping Israel to acquire
more and more weapons, we have a profound responsibility in our world today to
say we want to liberate all of our countries from any kind of entanglement in
genocide and any kind of preparation for nuclear war.
It is a monumental task. One of the places from which we can
draw great encouragement is actually in India when we see what the Cockroach
movement was able to accomplish. Young people who were dismissed as being like
a group of cockroaches took that very image, turned it around, and with great
colour, display, and flair, showed the world we can make a difference. Special
thanks go to all of the people who have helped to enable that kind of
transformative energy and hope.
I want to close with a mention which I know I've referred to
before, but one of the greatest hopes for non-violence I am seeing in our world
today is the Gaza Freedom Flotilla movement. This miracle on the Mediterranean
is going to happen again. They are organizing right now for a new set of boats
to converge in October, trying to open up a humanitarian corridor into Gaza. I
hope we can all join in our different ways to support the Flotilla movement.
I also want to offer a special invitation to everyone on
this call to consider forming a local chapter of World BEYOND War. I've been
incredibly grateful for all that we've been able to learn from the African
chapters who are increasingly celebrating their capacity for Pan-Africanism,
showing they don't have to be bound by borders drawn by colonial powers in a
previous era when people were stealing from them and enslaving them. We have a
profound capacity to learn from one another.
We are now seeing an Afghanistan chapter of World BEYOND War
form, comprised of people who are far-flung all over the world. Everyone in
this Afghan chapter is actually an Afghan in diaspora. I hope we can see more
of these chapters form, and I think World BEYOND War would be fortunate if
anyone who is a fellow or a part of this alumni association considers tuning
into our efforts.
Thank you for this time. I look forward to our discussion
and to continuing to learn from you.
Acknowledgement:
This is the transcribed text of the speech delivered by Kathy Kelly during the
inaugural monthly International Dialogue of the online Fellowship Program on
Nonviolence and Peace. The event was organized by the Sevagram Ashram
Pratishthan, India, in association with the International Centre of Nonviolence
, Durban University of Technology, South Africa, Academic University College
for Non-violence and Human Rights (AUNHOR), Lebanon, Gandhi International,
France, and Portland Community College, USA. The text was edited by Dr. Siby K.
Joseph, Director of the Program. This first International Dialogue, held on
August 15, 2026, centred around the theme, "Nuclear World: Hiroshima to
Now."
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