Religion can be found at any point in history and can either bring people together or break them apart. In history, we can see that millions of people gave up their lives because of their faith. Religion can be a complicated topic, but it can also be a topic that brings people together. At one point in time, people used the Church to hide behind it. There was only one time where the Catholic Church rebelled against the Nazis. Hitler wanted to get rid of Jews and people with disabilities. Nazis tried to find the best way to kill a human being. That is when they began to kill people with autism. Morphine was being injected into their bloodstream and they just slowly started to die. The Catholic Church rebelled against this and, eventually, the Nazis found different methods to end someone’s life. That is when the real destruction began. Millions of people were just slaughtered by the Nazis. Religion can be a difficult topic to talk about because of everything that has happened around religion. People don’t think about this, but your religion can determine your future unless we change that.
The person I decided to interview wanted to be left unknown, so her nickname will be eight. Eight was born in Vietnam and is 100% Vietnamese. “I moved here when I was 5 with my family. My dad died when I was a month old, and my mom got remarried when I was like 4,”(00:11). Her mother wanted to move to the United States to give her and her siblings a better life than she has had in Vietnam. Eight’s stepdad was an immigrant, but he was able to receive his citizenship. That is how Eight and her family were able to get their citizenship and come to the United States. One of the hardest points in her life was losing her father. If her father was still alive, then she would have had a different life and she probably wouldn’t have had her daughter. “I have been through a lot. I really have. I am way older than anyone in my classes because I took two years as a gap year after high school. I didn’t really like that because people my age or people I used to go to high school with that now come here aren’t in classes that I am in. My old friends from high school are all in a different time schedule, and now I don’t get to see them as often. It was funny because while I was in high school, I felt like I was younger than everybody else and now I am older than everyone else [laughs],”(22:27).
Eight believes in religion but “I don’t put a label on anything,”(14:00). Eight’s mother will be known as Maria. Her mother wanted Eight to become part of the Catholic Church. After her first husband had died, Maria wasn’t sure what was going to happen. A couple of years later, she became a Catholic to get accepted into her new husband’s family. After Maria had remarried, her husband decided to try to give Eight’s family citizenship in the United States. Eight wasn’t sure about what religion she believed in at that point. Maria and her husband would try to push her into Church School, but Maria didn’t have any idea of what religion was. That is when she began to dislike all types of religion. Maria wanted her to go to Church School on Sundays for five hours, and I just thought that was just too much for a little kid. The topic of religion can be hard to explain, and it can be interpreted in many ways, good and bad. As time went on, she slowly stopped believing in God. Eight had completely closed God out when she was 16 years old. There were times where Eight felt like she was never left alone, at any point in time in her life.
Eight’s mother wanted to find new opportunities for her kids, and to be able to provide for her kids. Eight and her family didn’t have enough money to buy a house, so they had to move around a couple of times. Throughout Eight’s life, elementary school was the most difficult time. She wasn’t able to live the “normal life” everyone else had. When there was any type of event at school, no one was there for her. She remembers when it was Valentine’s Day and her school had an event. Maria and her husband were supposed to come to the party, but her parents showed up. Her parents were always working and never had time for her. During high school, she began to have a better relationship with her step-father. During this time, it was very difficult for her to communicate with her parents. It was even harder when it came to talking about religion. As time went by, Maria and her husband began to understand her. That is when Maria realized that she was the one that was wrong the whole time. Eight’s relationship with her parents has gotten better and she tries to keep an open relationship with her parents now.
After Eight’s high school graduation, she received a weird feeling in her stomach. The feeling was something unexplainable. Eight went out to eat McDonald’s with a friend after graduation. They both started eating and driving around the neighborhood they were in. After a while, they realized that they had gotten lost. Eight kept driving, hoping that they would see something that was familiar to them. At a stop light, they realized where they had been the whole time. They were just a few blocks away from her high school. They both knew exactly where they were. Eight said, “I felt a spiritual feeling that I couldn’t explain at all,”(14:32). The rest of the night, they had seen tons of nice cars, and she felt that spiritual feeling again. Eight and her friend both had the same feeling. They both felt like they were in the presence of God himself. While she was being pushed to become a Catholic, she began to turn her head towards Christianity. At that time, she believed more in Christianity then Catholicism. Eight argues that everything has a label now. I actually agree with her on this point. There are people that agree with certain aspects of religion, but then there are people that don’t agree with something specific about a religion. One thing that I never understood was the Holy Trinity. God, Jesus, and Mary are known as the Holy Trinity. It is said that God, Jesus, and Mary are all one person. That is something specific that I don’t believe in my Catholic religion. There are just some things in different religions that people don’t believe in. Eight said, “I feel like I believe a little bit of each religion and it’s not all one yet. I am still trying to figure all that out,”(16:22). I couldn’t agree with her more.
Millions of Jews were being persecuted for their spiritual beliefs. Jews fled or hid because their lives were on the line. Hitler specifically targeted Jews and wanted them all killed. Just like Eight, Jews just wanted to live their normal everyday life, and not be persecuted for their beliefs. Maria kept insisting that Eight needed to be Catholic and nothing else. Maria was losing her daughter over religion. Anyone should have the rights to have faith in what they believe. No one really knows why Hitler had so much hated for the Jews. Jews were basically slaves to the Germans. They had to do everything that was told to them. Eight was forced to believe in the Catholic Church by her mother. Eight has the right to believe what she wants, just like the Jews should have been able to believe in what they believed in. I believe that God has to do with various things that happen in our lives. I ask myself why God put so many Jews’ lives in Hitler’s hands, but I guess that is how it is. Eight believes in God and so do I. Eight is now living a better life and the situation with her stepdad and mother has improved. She is getting better at opening up with her parents. Everyone could learn something about Eights story. People could see the real-life problems people face. Everyone deserves to be able to believe in what they want and not be persecuted for it.
Freedom of religion is a necessity to subdue persecution, “[everybody] should have the rights to have faith in what they believe”. In Nazi Occupied Europe the Jews weren’t free to practice their religion without peace, comparatively in America the persecution suffered by people is infinitesimally smaller. The blog post, The Persecution by Alexis Molina is an interview that revolves around a woman named Eight, who “just wanted to live their normal everyday life, and not be persecuted for their beliefs” (Molina). Eight’s experience is quite common in the world, of people imposing their belief system on others. It highlights the common necessity for people to have freedom of religion in this world, and though persecution starts off in very minor forms it grows to become something much more, the only thing that stops that from turning this minor harassment into persecution such as the Jews faced in the Holocaust is the freedom of religion.
In Nazi Germany Hitler made the Jews, “basically his slaves[,]” in the sense that he too away their free will and did as he pleased with them. It didn’t matter what they thought, “Hitler had so much [hatred] for the Jews” (Molina). The Jews were sent to concentration and death camps for the sole reason for being Jewish. Under the situation that the Jewish people had been ensured by the government the freedom of religion, the Jewish people would have had the right be Jewish, but because Hitler hated the Jews in a society that was very antisemitic they could impose sanctions on them. In a more open society where everyone is “able to believe in what they want[,]” like America we see the level of persecution decrease. Freedom of religion is also a necessity because we see that people are more open minded, like “when Maria realized that she was the one that was wrong the whole time” (Molina).
The author puts it perfectly at the end of the piece of writing “Everyone deserves to be able to believe in what they want and not be persecuted for it[,]” and the “the Jews should have been able to believe in what they believed in” (Molina). Only freedom of religion—only the guarantee of freedom to believe in what they believed in could satisfy that.