How do you remember six million people's violent death, each one unique?
How do you appreciate the suffering of the survivors then and
for as long as they lived?
How does one comprehend that Poland is land without Jews, and was once the land for Jews?
How does one comprehend what lies deep in each of us, the blood lust, sadism, and hate of others?
How does one comprehend the failure to be different, to learn skills for a more peaceful life?
Like negotiation skills, or vegetarianism, or veganism, and appreciation of the right to be different, non violently, like sharing wealth and spaces, and access.
How do you remember to remember that there is a second a third generation
the pathology of racialised murder ingrained in living people?
How do you connect the hate of Jews then to the hate of Jews today?
How do you understand the role of Israel and the disaster of Palestine?
And then connect the holocaust link it within human history:
slavery, America, aboriginals, colonial abuse, imperialist and neo imperialist exploitation, child labour, and 1 dollar a day, Rwanda, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Armenia, Yugoslavia, Iraq, China and Nepal, Sudan, Afghanistan, and many more stand side by side the shoa.
Revolution for this, killings for that. Always perfectly justified, always loss of lives.
And far away from our comfort places people today will be killed and raped, and slaughtered, alongside millions of innocent animals cruelly and unnecessarily killed daily.
We have too many choices, this way or that way, and for most of human history preferred
ignorance riding over fast forgotten corpses in an esprit of hedonistic self centred amplitude.
How does one remember?
The potential for all of that, the forked avenue with two choices lies within each one of us, and must be made for each new generation.
We are obligated to teach our children, our communities the right from wrong today!
No more murder, no more meat, no more hunger, no more hate. A knife a gun, a toy soldier abhorrent tools to transform into ploughshares.
Communal foresting in each and every one of us.
Because we remember, that there is another side to us. A violent untamed hateful side. That we must hate. Our potential to hate and destroy and to be unconsidered. That's how we remember. Our genius of invention how it can transform the world, or destroy.
Within each one of us.
We remember by taking action, by being on guard, by learning new skills, like mediation, like negotiation, like non violence, like sharing, and saying I have enough, and responsibility, and humanitarian global conscience, and fair trade.
A person who as an adult has learned nothing but to propagate him/herself and his / her own, is always a failure to all of us. A step closer to a new catastrophe.
So let us remember the shoa and what the dead collectively would say.
The author is the son of a shoa survivor from Poland. Several other members of Daniel's family have also survived the shoa, including two uncles, two aunts.... Daniel is engaged in reconciliation meetings with the Polish town his father was born in , and engaged in sessions specifically targeted for sons and daughters of shoa survivors. If any one wishes to know more about therapy for the sons and daughters of survivors , or for survivors themselves in London please contact Gaby Glassman gaby@glassman.com
This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.
The opinions expressed within are solely those of
the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect that of LJHC.
