Friday, November 03, 2006
Oprah did a show on Auschwitz, the largest Nazi German extermination camp in Poland. In it, a survivor of the concentration camp, Elie Wiesel, brough Oprah around the place where he and million other Jews were prisoned, tortured and made to live thro hell.
Auschwitz
I was at tt very camp 3 yrs ago during my tour of central Europe. The images of tt place nv left me since. As the tour bus entered the area, the sky was a picture of dull grey. the air was eerily cold with soft gusts of wind. As we travelled along the houses tt stood alone by the roads, there was no in sight. The surroundin was a dead ringer compared to the other parts of europe we visited, the contrast was stark. "A place where many spirits roam, the weather is always like this, eerily cold." said my tourguide.
wat left me cold were the glass displays tt showed the belongings of the Jewish dead. Huge mounts of shoes tt once belonged to the walking. a giant mountain of hair left behind tt were shaved off the heads off those captured, for industrial purposes. You wouldnt believe the amount of shoe polish and brushes tt once belonged to young men. Spectacles of those who perished cocked up a serving fit for ten thousand giants. imagine the massacre.
wat stil remains embedded as a faded photograph in my mind today is the figurine of a broken doll wearing a once pretty-pink dress. the doll tt once belonged to an innocent smiling face of a young child. A child tt nv had the chance to grow up.
i had the chance to visit one of the actual blocks of the camp where inprisonment took place. bunk beds stacked ags each other, cells where fingernail marks were stil evident on the walls of those in torment. i specifically rem a small cave where the tourguide told us many Jews were made to hunch in.
I wish i had a digital camera then. I wish the disposable camera i had then had not cocked up. I wish the damn salesman who sold me e camera was less stupid. I wish the pictures i snapped at the camp were not destroyed. But somehow the images nv left me. the mind remembers them, clearly. till today.
A book by survivor Elie Wiesel "Night" is a recommanded read. I am goin to get tt book asap.
Mr Wiesel reminds us, to constantly say, "No, we remember."
He wrote:
"Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky.
Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever.
Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never."
"Let us remember, let us remember the heroes of Warsaw, the martyrs of Treblinka, the children of Auschwitz. They fought alone, they suffered alone, they lived alone, but they did not die alone, for something in all of us died with them."
minahlian
- 2:44 PM
