60 years on
You remember the sun of Auschwitz
and the green of the distant meadows, lightly
lifted to the clouds by birds,
no longer green in the clouds,
but seagreen white. Together
we stood looking into the distance and felt
the far away green of the meadows and the clouds’
seagreen white within us,
as if the color of the distant meadows
were our blood or the pulse
beating within us, as if the world
existed only through us and nothing changed
as long as we were there. I remember
your smile as elusive
as a shade of the color of the wind,
a leaf trembling on the edge
of sun and shadow, fleeting
yet always there. So you are
for me today, in the seagreen
sky, the greenery and
the leaf-rustling wind. I feel you
in every shadow, every movement,
and you put the world around me
like your arms. I feel the world
as your body, you look into my eyes
and call me with the whole world.The Sun of Auschwitz
Tadeusz Borowski
Prisoner 119 198
1943 Auschwitz
Today marks the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops in 1945. This is a part of our history that we should never forget. It should be a mandatory lesson for every schoolchild throughout the world. Sadly many children today are completely oblivious to the holocaust as a reality never mind what it meant or said about humanity.
Many British children know shockingly little about the Holocaust, a survey by The Telegraph has demonstrated. Despite the publicity surrounding this week’s memorial day, key facts still elude pupils, with a quarter unable to say what Auschwitz was and less than 40 per cent able to date the Second World War.
This kind of ignorance is exactly what Santayana was referring to when he said in Reason in Comon Sense, 1905 “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Such ignorance plays into the hands of those who would revisit upon humanity the evils of those days. Such people are not just pathetic white supremicists hiding out in Idaho or the Florida swamps or the Ozarks. The attitude that people of no power are expendable commodities permeates many western societies. It’s just a matter of degree that’s all. Carpet bomb a city or herd them into railroad cars, it’s just a matter of degree and distance. Saturate a whole country with cancer causing defoliants to punish and kill generation after generation or herd them into the gas chambers, it’s just a matter of degree. Send fifty-eight thousand of your own poor and unconnected youth to die in order to score political power at home or ignore genocide in Africa. The attitude remains the same - they are not of us so they are sub-human and/or expendible.
People such as that do not care about those outside of their power circle or social class. Power is an end in itself to them and for them to get it you must give it up, but that is something they do not want you to know (thus the dearth of civics classes these days). Fear and loathing are the instruments they use to bind your power to them. Fear of the ausländer first to get you to willingly forfeit your freedoms for security from the aliens ,
“Of course the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.”
Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials
then loathing of those same so you turn your eye away from the horrors:
‘First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist, so I said nothing. Then they came for the Social Democrats, but I was not a Social Democrat, so I did nothing. Then came the trade unionists, but I was not a trade unionist. And then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew, so I did little. Then when they came for me, there was no one left to stand up for me.’ Pastor Niemöller
We, as a species, can not afford to forget the horrors of Auschwitz or ignore the kind of people that would practice genocide in all its many forms. Be it a death camp or a civil war inflamed for personal political power. Be it a pharmeceutical company that for the sake of making huge profits off of relatively wealthy AIDS patients in first world countries refuses to lower the costs of AIDS drugs to the millions dying in Africa or removing the rights of foreigners seized on any pretense and put in concentration camps to disappear with no recourse to courts or legal representation. The base attitude is the same. We are the ones in power, you (and we define who you is) do not count except for how we can use you to stay in power. It’s just a matter of degree.
We are getting closer every year to the last of the WWII veterans dying off. A 16 year old entering the military in 1945 is 75 years old today. A 5 year old survivor of Dachau, Aushwitz or any of the other horrors of the time is 65 this year. When they are all gone who will remember? Who will be the speaker for the dead?
Have you seen, in fields of snow, frozen Jews, row on row? Blue marble forms lying, not breathing, not dying.
Somewhere a flicker of a frozen soul - glint of fish in an icy swell. All brood. Speech and silence are one. Night snow encases the sun.
A smile glows immobile from a rose lip’s chill. Baby and mother, side by side. Odd that her nipple’s dried.
Fist, fixed in ice, of a naked old man: the power’s undone in his hand. I’ve sampled death in all guises. Nothing surprises.
Yet a frost in July in this heat - a crazy assault in the street. I and blue carrion, face to face. Frozen Jews in a snowy space.
Marble shrouds my skin. Words ebb. Light grows thin. I’m frozen, I’m rooted in place like the naked old man enfeebled by ice.
Frozen Jews
Avrom Sutzkever
Auschwitz
July 10, 1944
How do we keep it from happening again?
