Quite chilling when You realise that this Mother is shielding her Infant Child from a bullet from an Einsatz Murdered. The image itself is Iconic and has been widely presented at it presents to the World an image which denounces all such crimes against Humanity! If this is what was meant to be the ‘master race’, then the World woke up a little late to find itself besieged by such imagery. The World shudders today to the further genocide that speaks with the same intolerable crimes that we witness here. These Murderers are on Hitler’s mission. This is Ivangorod! These are Jews of Kiev being Murdered.
For those of you who have queried whether the Blog is up and Running, I will be Blogging to your heart’s content from August 10th. This will give me a Month to prepare for The Auschwitz Blog, for real!
It is my intention to comment heavily on the Destructive capacity of the place known to History as Auschwitz, and Birkenau, which is somehow shaded by the awesome nature defined by her Sister Camp. There is the negative responses to all those Western powers who knew much and did little which is a resolve I wish to expand upon.
I will place a Stone within Auschwitz and Birkenau, and would gladly do so for any who so wished. In placing a Stone, those who come after will know, there are others who will Not forget what happened to the Jews within Auschitz and Birkenau, and toward the eventual Catastrophe that is The Holocaust Murders of 6,000,000 Jewish Men, Women and Their Children of Europe.
I have spent the last 20+ years living with this past, an Intolerable stain upon the conscience of Humanity! Such was the reign of Worldwide Indifference that Hitler moved with seeming impunity against an innocent Jewish People. I wish to confront that past as it faces us with a lesson we can all learn from, should we choose to learn from it. It is imperative, as a Christian, not to allow for the Intolerances and Indifference to that Jewish Struggle, to conform into a complicity many who resided alongside this Tragedy are rightly guilty of. I am here so as not to compromise my own belief, and in standing against this tide of past Intolerances and Indifference, I see and hear the same hatreds resurface!
I am to follow in the footsteps of Children! I will follow along the tracks of the Babies who are swathed in whatever a Parent has to keep them clothed, warmed and protected! I will walk a line which Countless Children traversed en-route to their extinction. These Children were corralled by a hate filled group set upon their demise. Children here cajoled by those Parents, Siblings, Aunts, Uncles, Friends and Neighbours who sought to deliver them toward whatever would meet them, with concern and more than Human Emotion could bear! The World woke to a Catastrophe of unparalleled Dimensions, and while a traumatised World was dealing with the after effects of a Second World War, the World of Jewry was decimated! Raphael Lemkin coined a term to encompass what Hitler had accomplished, and as we respond to Lemkin’s choice of the word, the knowledge of a near Total Genocide of The Jewish People has permeated our Lives ever since! World Humanity was bracing itself for an enormous Tragedy, a loss of between 50 and 60 Million People, some 2.5% of the World’s Population. Yet still, the World had to acknowledge that the Destruction of 6,000,000 Jews of Europe, some 40% of World Jewry, was a calamity of unparalleled dimensions.
In that requirement to acknowledge that the ugly face of antisemitism has raged against the Jewish People and in which the term of The Holocaust has become a battle ground for deniers, and those fraudulent liars, what peace is allowed these Jews of Memory! Many have now called for a recovery of the unique place of these Jews, formed together in an Intolerable position. But newer Intolerances and the ability of a consistent Indifference to any Jewish struggle, plays squarely into the hands of a vociferous and bigoted racism! While I agree that Genocide cannot be retained as an exclusive term, surely The Holocaust can register for all History the uniqueness of that selection process which brought 6,000,000 Jews toward an eventual Destruction!
History now toys with the idea, because so many seek to corrupt The Holocaust term of its unique reference point. For many, who seek to adopt the State of Israel’s Hebrew word ‘Shoah’ as a newer emphasis that will allow for Jewish Remembrance of a particularly Jewish Catastrophe, this shirks the responsibility placed upon us all to see The Holocaust as a purely Jewish term. Linked clearly to the Yiddish ‘Chrubn,’ which strikes an accord with the Biblical identification of Abraham’s ‘Burnt Offering’, The Jews of The Holocaust reside on the periphery of what History seems hell bent upon allowing, for the term to diminish its relevance!
How does one relate to a Catastrophe of such an enormous Human significance? If I could borrow from the trauma of my Childhood it would be to look to a Mom whose entire World was crumbling before her! The Death of a Father, Sister and then Husband! In the wake of this two year spell of deep despair and sadness, the Deaths of Her two Daughters, My Sisters, was a body blow few could emerge from, unscathed. My Mom managed to do this, in order to ensure the well being of those four Children she was left with to bring up!
When my life appears settled, and I am looking for ways of expressing what life’s journey has meant to Me, a memory of those two young Sisters blended with the image of a 4 year old Jewish Girl, Tokele, and a relevance was bought into or borne out of! I cannot possibly know the grief of any one of those Jewish Parents whose terror was realised as they looked on. As they and Their Children were driven relentlessly toward Destruction, who could not feel their pangs of despair? Nothing compares to the Horror they witnessed, saw and were consumed by! My own, nor even My Mom’s deep despair could compare. I can only imagine that if My two Sisters had been taken under similar conditions of barbarity, then maybe I could write as if I could comprehend what those moments were like for far too many?