I cannot commemorate Rabbit Hole Day.

[heidi]

Not this year, and probably not any year. It's not you. It's me. It's history, and the faliability and fluke-ness of birthdays (my grandfather's would've been tomorrow - my mother in law's is on Saturday).

Today is the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, which is correctly recognized as the worst of the Nazi death camps. One point five million people were murdered there - many by poison gas, some in executions by machine guns, others in grotestque pseudo-medical projects which I cannot bear to call experiments.

My grandfather was a US Army surgeon, and he was among those who, in the Spring of 1945, liberated Bergen Belsen. He had a photo-camera and over the weeks he spent there, healing those who'd been tortured by the Nazis, he took photographs of the atrocities, then, when he arrived home, hid the images in his attic. About 12 years later, my mother found them, and asked him about them. He couldn't answer - and the photographs disapeared. My grandfather died when I was almost five, so I was never able to ask him myself about the horror. It wasn't until 1994 when I first went to the Holocaust Museum in DC that I was able to truly look at the images, rather than read the words, and even try to think about the horror and the murder.

It's hard for me to find the right words from myself, so I will primarily link to, and paste in, words by others.

Rabbi Emanuel Feldman writes of lessons that humanity must always remember.

Tony Blair reminds us of how it began: ... the Holocaust did not start with a concentration camp. It started with a brick through the shopwindow of a Jewish business, the desecration of a Synagogue, the shout of racist abuse on the street.

The Soviet soldiers who were part of the liberation tell their stories.

And Elie Weisel, Auschwitz survivor:

How can you go away with the knowledge you gathered here and remain the same? If you will be the same after this, we will be lost.

Look at the images. Read the words. Even 60 years on, when the fact of the Holocaust is something we know from our childhoods, we cannot be the same after looking at the results of malice and evil. We cannot be lost.

Comments

[ryf.livejournal.com]

I visited the Dachau KZ a few years ago, like nearly every German student does and I don't think I will ever be able to forget what I saw there. Disgust for what happened during the Nazi reign has been drilled into me since I was born and I am so very happy that I do not have to live in a world where the war ended any other way.

[telepwen.livejournal.com]

I can't do it. I tried. I can't look at the images, I can't read the words. Not anymore.

This is not to say I don't remember. This is more of a commentary on my education, which was filled year after year with as much of this as they felt they could safely cram into young minds. For more than ten years, I had walls of ice. I could stare at the pictures, I could read the words over and over, and feel nothing.

There's a short story, I forget who it's by, called The Shawl. I had to read it for class in college a few years back. It was so subtle, that it crept right under the walls. Shattered them. I was traumatized for a solid week. Which, of course, was when I was scheduled for a trip with Hillel to the Holocaust Museum.

Suffice it to say that I can no longer handle it the way I once could. It's not to say I don't remember. I do. Oh, I do. And it's not to say that I'm trying to forget. I'm not. I simply cannot look anymore. I don't know what that says about me or about it or about anything, but there it is.

Telling this story, explaining all this, is the best I can do to commemorate, so here it is. I only hope it's approaching enough.

[erised1810.livejournal.com]

[{{{Hugs}} i" mcrying. i'd liek to thank you for sayign this. it's
part of how I feel. It hasn't been driilled in oru eduaction liek yo udescribe but it's ben made clear dependign on theh istory teacher you had (frankly, mien was rather yougn and midway throug her oen lesos nabotu ti she nearly burst into tears.) i've been in france o natrip, visits rangign form the ination beache to memorial museums with velr yprovokign films and other multimedia material...and it is al li wil ldo i nthat field. I beleive it's enoug ho know what I know. I knwo it's far for mforgetting. THer's a personal limit foreither of us on what we needto know to grasp sometihng as far as we can/want to.
Sending good thougths to those who need it.

[perceval.livejournal.com]

The memory of the Holocaust is kept very much alive in Germany, you'll be pleased to hear. Nobody is forgetting ...

And to top it all off, Harry bloody Windsor goes to a party dressed like a Nazi. That happened two weeks ago, and the stupid little tyke still hasn't apologised.

[nmalfoy.livejournal.com]

Are you British? If so, I'm curious to see what you make of Prince Harry's actions (and the theme of the party overall; Britians and Colonials seems rather racist to me).

[sundancekid.livejournal.com]

I wonder about that too. The entire THEME of the party invited that sort of political faux pas, and yet no one seems to be outraged at the IDEA of partying while celebrating imperialism.

[perceval.livejournal.com]

No, I'm German, that's why his thoughtlessness annoys me so much. This is too serious a matter to be taken lightly by a British heir to the throne.

[nmalfoy.livejournal.com]

Ooh, German! How cool. I am part German, but I've never been to Germany. I've always wanted to go, though, because it's an amazing country with a fascinating history.

[perceval.livejournal.com]

It IS a fascinating country, with a great culture, and also quite beautiful, if I may say so. But as history has shown, a well-developed culture is no protection against barbarism ... and I refuse to think that what happened in Germany in the 1930's couldn't happen anywhere else.

[flyby.livejournal.com]

It doesn't represent Britain as a whole. At least, I'd like to think it doesn't, from my socialist-humanitarian perspective. What it does represent, I think, is the attitude among certain upper-class sets - the braying, chinless wonders - that the Empire was a good thing, because that's when aristocrats had just the right balance between power and leisure to have a hell of a lot of fun. They're so insulated from the real world that the awful things those costumes stand for aren't real to them.

And for all the ridiculous prejudice against asylum seekers and immigrants right now, all the post-9/11 anti-islamicism and BNP idiocy, we don't have the problems with racism that the US does.

[annearchy.livejournal.com]

It started with a brick through the shopwindow of a Jewish business, the desecration of a Synagogue, the shout of racist abuse on the street.

Kristalnacht. Yes. We must never forget. My maternal grandfather was Jewish, I was raised Catholic, I'm now a Unitarian, but I'll never forget.

[emrinalexander.livejournal.com]

I think the seeds of my interest in and love for Judaism were sown when I was a senior in high school. My social studies teacher was in his 60's - he was an officer with the Army during WWII and was there when Auschwitz was liberated. He took movies of the days he spent there, during the cleanup and so on. Which he showed to us in class. What an eye-opener. I will never forget those images if I live to be 100+ years old; I can't begin to imagine what must be burned in the brains of those who lived through it and who were eye witnesses when liberation days came. I also remember thinking two things - how could any people survive such things and go on, and then realizing but they did anyway!

[nmalfoy.livejournal.com]

I was talking about that on the air... the anniversary of the liberation (if you can call it that; liberation just doesn't seem like the right word) of the camps. Also, in 1967, three Apollo astronauts were killed when a fire broke out in their space capsule and they couldn't be gotten out in time.

I hope, though, that we never, *ever* forget the concentration camps and the things people are capable of.

[likebunnies.livejournal.com]

It all seems so much easier to forget living over here than where I used to live until a few months ago. It doesn't enter daily life like it did there. I wonder how many people will never know -- how many people do forget? How can the rest of us, even if we aren't Jewish, ever let the world forget?

[phoenixw.livejournal.com]

I worked with a woman - a Hungarian Jew - who was at Bergen-Belsen. She was very young (somewhere between five and ten) and grew up to be a very strong woman. I find it particularly horrifying that children lived and died in these camps.

So my thanks to your grandfather, and all the liberators, and particularly to the people who stood up then and stand up now and say "No. It's wrong to throw that brick."

[erised1810.livejournal.com]

thank you very much forthis post. there is alot in the news aboutthistoday in HOlland. I've seen snippets of interview from a survivor. I'm unbelievably otu ofthe looop of thigns now but Iwant to link to this or point to it. I don't think I can say it better. {{{hugs}}}

[anthon1.livejournal.com]

You said it so much better than I did...

Thank you.

[rookie131.livejournal.com]

Mike's grandmother and mother are Holicaust survivors. She wrote a memoir in 1980. She passed away in August at the age of 98. She did not have a bitter bone in her body. When she went to schools to talk to the children, she talked about hope and love, not hate and despair. I will miss her every day for the rest of my life.

http://www.geocities.com/msyfalk/BarbaraKlima.html

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link. : bookmarks it

[sheryll.livejournal.com]

You're right, no one can be the same after reading the words and looking at the images. My father took us to Dachau when we lived in Germany. I remember standing inside a gas chamber when I was 10. It definitely left an impression that will last a lifetime. It sparked need for knowledge about the Holocaust that continues to this day and is something that I, without even realising, passed on to Nyssa. Her graduation gift trip to Europe with my parents included trips to both Anne Frank's house and Dachau.

[til-midnight.livejournal.com]

The summer after I graduated high school I went to Poland for a mission trip for two weeks and while I was there I visited Auschwitz and Birkenau. The visit was mandatory. Quite a few people from my church protested, mainly parents, saying that Auschwitz and Birkenau wasn't something that children should be exposed to firsthand. My minister put his foot down, saying that no one should ever have been exposed to the horrors of Auschwitz and Birkenau, but they were and all we can do now is never forget what happened.

At Auschwitz we visited the gas chamber and the crematory and the Black Wall and the displays of the personal belongings confiscated. Then we took a bus to Birkenau and saw the barracks and the guard towers and I walked down the train track that runs through the middle of the complex to the platform where people were either sent to the gas chambers or to the work camps. The gas chamber was destroyed during the liberation. It was a beautiful day, warm and sunny, and I sat under a tree near the collapsed gas chamber and the monument to the victims and prayed and just wondered how. It was one of most difficult things I've ever done, but I walked away a different person and I'm so thankful that I've had the experience.

An aside: people live in sight of Birkenau. I don't know how I could live if the view out the window was a concentration camp.

[paladyn.livejournal.com]

I went to Auschwitz-Birkenau this past November to see it for myself. It's a grim reminder of the nature of man and that some things are worth going to war for.

[alexandramuses.livejournal.com]

One of my betas is Jewish and lives in Israel, and I didn't realize until reading your post that the reason we had such an intense conversation on Wednesday night was because the commemoration was approaching. We live such sheltered lives, many of us, and I agree: we must remember. One can almost think in a bio-religious way: why else would we be given the ability to remember, if not to avoid repeating the past?