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[felicula]

An Auschwitz Alphabet

I'm taking a class called Literature of the Holocaust this semester. I think that's why I read this site from start to finish when I stumbled upon it. The class is maybe half over now, and I have already been exposed to the raw horror that the human species is capable of in more ways than I would have imagined before now. More than just a survey of history or literature, I have stood up as another witness to what goes on worldwide: Bosnia, Rwanda, Sudan, and elsewhere. It has hit me in the heart that the politics of denial do not belong to the right or the left. There is no political policy that bolsters one who would launch a reversal of killing outside of economic or specific political interest.

It is up to us.

Each individual is responsible for paying attention when the slaughter is proclaimed. We can write letters, in force. We can try our very best to show our elected politicians that they too are accountable. Those with the means can speak up with money or advertising.

I have come to the conclusion that the blame for genocide rests on the heads of each and every individual the world over who stands by and does nothing just as surely as it rests in the hands of every militia man wielding a machete.

Comments

[lite.livejournal.com]

Each individual is responsible for paying attention when the slaughter is proclaimed. We can write letters, in force. We can try our very best to show our elected politicians that they too are accountable. Those with the means can speak up with money or advertising.

We can... but.. it doesn't work like that.

No one's made Bill Clinton accountable for not involving the US in the slaughter.. the GENOCIDE of people in Rwanada. No one's making Bush Jr. accountable for the likely to continue slaughter in nearby Tanzania (same people, by the way).

People don't give a shit about the slaughter of innocents unless it's someone like that. It's why we give a shit about the Holocaust and not Rwanada. Many Americans are Jewish, many POWERFUL Americans.

[blackfelicula.livejournal.com]

Back in the 1930's the US and Europe turned their back on the Jews just as surely as they did on Rwanda. It wasn't until Hitler invaded Poland, then other countries, that the Europeans cared. In fact, refugee Jews were expelled from England once the British joined the war because they were German! A survivor who spoke to my class experienced the trauma of trying to find a place where she could go once she could no longer stay in Germany and was kicked out of England. She ended up in the Belgian Congo only to be put into a prisoner of war camp by the Allies once Belgium entered the war. And believe me, the only difference I can find between the prisoner of war camp and the extermination machines of the Third Reich was that there was no krematoria. I'm not saying there's no difference. I'm trying to convey that people were starving there too, and fearful that the maleria medication would be taken away.

Today the politicians are following a long standing American tradition: non-involvement unless there is political or economic motivation. Your point is exactly mine: we the people have not stood up and shown them their accountability. And so the political game remains the same.

My point is that each and every one of us has a responsibility to stand up and make our voice heard on the issues of genocide. My point is that it is not enough to tune out the violence on TV and dismiss it as so much more spin. Every voice that does not speak out is a voice responsible for allowing it to continue.

I'm no saint in this. I'm as much of a lazy-ass who never writes or speaks out. I'm just saying that the options in my position are either to accept my share of the responsibility for allowing it to continue, to put every fiber of my being into trying to stop it, or to find a balance between the two.

I guess this post is my way of grappling with the twisted, bloated, discolored, rotting piles of people I have seen over the course of the semester so far. The face of genocide is not a powdered and prepared body in a funeral home. The face of genocide is greasy smoke and ash raining down. It is fragmented bones that pave pathways through horrific places. It is human flesh that is twisted and mutilated like roadkill. And the face of genocide is also the pleading eyes of the starving children who make it through all that. It is the Rwandan girl with her fingers butchered by machete and the hole in her skull who fills out to be a beautiful though incomplete young woman. It is every person who asks "Why? Why did this happen?" who remain unanswered.

No, no one did make them accountable. I think that is reprehensible. I also think that each and every American citizen has a portion of the power to make them accountable.

[phoenixsong]

I've been to the Holocaust museum here twice, though not since moving down here. If lite ever feels ready, that will be the third; I admit I'd feel odd going without him right now.

It's a place you can spend hours in, and hardly say a word, just taking it all in and trying to wrap your head around it. The boxcars, the bunks, the shoes. The children's exhibit. It was something of a shock the first time (in late middle or early high school, I believe) to find out we knew something horrible was going on, even if we didn't know -- or want to believe -- what, and didn't do anything.

I'd certainly recommend it to anyone, but it doesn't put a happy face on it, by any means.

[blackfelicula.livejournal.com]

It's difficult to put a happy face on genocide. Though one thing I've learned is that even at the pit of hell that is the slaughter and fear of genocide, there is hope that people can survive it. Each one of these had survivors. It's as if life thumbs its nose at those who would try to eradicate part of it. There are stories of heroes who saved others and of ordinary people who were able to find a place mentally where they could get through it, come what may.