What is to become of us if no one reads our names or counts the shoes we left behind?
What is to become of us if no one dares remember the torture or the anguish?
What is to become of those who died before us? Those that died with us?
What is to become of us when young women and young men forget the meaning of bravery?
What is to become of us when little girls and little boys grow up not knowing the truth?
I
saw her face in the tower of pictures. Her face was almost mine. Few
subtle differences and we could've been sisters. A gypsy's face in a sea
of faces, all lost to ignorance and blind hatred. All lost in a sea of
broken humanity. My fate could've been her's if we were to switch
places. And that knowledge is like a punch in the throat. I can't
breathe when I look at her. I can't think anything except that she
could've been me.
Standing at the gates of Auschwitz, I hesitate.
I don't want to feel what I am feeling. This place is full of ghosts.
Not the ghosts of stories or movies, the intangible that frighten us
with their intangibility. These are real people pressing against me,
real faces staring blankly at me. These are real people whose genitals
have been sewn shut and whose brains are exposed to high pressure winds.
These are real people who are tortured and gassed and tattooed like
cattle. These are real children that are starved and mutilated in the
name of science, in the name of Aryan science.
These are the
faces of the Holocaust. The Jews, the Gypsys, the Homosexuals, the
Catholic priests and nuns, the disabled and mentally handicapped. Those
who believed differently, those who believed in equality and fought for
the lives of others. These are the faces of those who stood up while the
whole world held its breath and twiddled its thumbs. These faces could
have been mine or yours.
If no one smells the death and the fear,
if no one reads the names, if no one stands up when everyone else is
sitting down, what becomes of them? What becomes of us? Could we be as
brave? Could we face those who were murdered for our silence?
If there is no one left to remember, what becomes of us?
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