h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I múst write a few words about it, at this memorial day.

I have known a Jewish woman who (as one of a twin) was in Auschwitz, and had met doctor Mengele several times. He did his racist medical experiments at a group of prisoners in Auschwitz for years.

When he was finished experimenting with a group of children, he always came visiting them at an evening to give them some chocolate.

He did so,to gain their confidence, because the next morning he called them to follow him...........to the gaschamber.

P.S.

Monstrous behaviour, but, alas, not by a monster,but a human being.

That makes "not forgetting" absolutely necessary.

I easily could call Hitler a demon, monster, sadist,
black devil.

But the real danger is than located in another species, and thát can be very misleading.

He was as "human" (not humane) as we are, and tháts shocking ánd the reason we have to keep watching ourselves and others.

We all have dark sides.
The more we dare to see Hitler as a human being,
the more we are confronted with "black motives" in ourselves.

It is known, that the Tyrants of Auschwitz regularly went to the village for the Catholic mass.

Mankind is able to deceive himself.
We need to look through our own "shows" in our modern times.

Fascism was built step by step.
Officially Hitler rejected the murder of Jews.
It was all "arranged" in a meeting in a villa in the forests of Germany.


Maybe I could say it this way;
Auschwitz doesn't only tells us about the evil of the Nazis.
Auschwitz shows us the dark potentials of mankind.

I am still moved by the "speech" of a woman at the memorial in Auschwitz.
There were about five thousand peoples.
One thousand had been prisoner of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

While one of the politicians ended his speech, suddenly a woman came foreward and stood behind the microphone. I did not know that her "speech" was not planned. She behaved very self-assured.

She looked with very firm eyes to the public, raised her voice and said; - my quote is not exact - "sixty years ago I stood here, naked, with many others. Now again I am standing naked here, at the same place".(It was also this time freezing cold, and now she only had on her pants and a white T-shirt with short leeves; alfredo).

And while showing her arm, she continued;"Here is my number of Auschwitz. They did not gáve me a number, they máde me a number".

And her voice became stronger and stronger,while everything she said
was deeply impressive and finally she said; "why was our camp never bombarded?" without seemingly expecting to ever get any answer.

She broke the rules and said her words in three minutes time through the microphone. Her appearance was very dignified.
Why?
Because she did what never happened in Auschwitz;
Rules or no rules; she stood up and spoke the unspoken thoughts and feelings of her and her fellow-sufferers sixty years ago. She expressed the hearts and minds of the gassed "numbers".

She said, what had to be said, including the penetrating question; "why was our camp never bobarded".

To me, she did not say that, to expect to get any answer.
She herself feels inside what is most probably the cruel truth.

To me, she did express passionately the emotions, thoughts and questions - in face of the watching world, at the 27th of Jan. 2005 - what she and mány others felt,thought and questioned those days while they had to go their way through the hell of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

She spoke the unspoken from the days of the rule of death by fascism.
She stood there in full dignity, while being deeply de-humanised, sixty years ago.
She confronted the world with questions that have never been really answered.

She reconquered dignity for herself and those former companions, dead or alive.


She spoke straight from her female heart at a place where ány individuality and humanity was taken away by fascism.
In Auschwitz the victims were industrial materials and nóthing more than that. Everything was "used"; teeth, glasses, hair, skin, etc. etc.

She seemed not to need revenge anymore.
She expressed now ,what she felt and thought at these days, and what she feels and thinks at this memorial day.

She was fully hersélf, again almost "naked", at Auschwitz Jan. 27th 2005. Although not invited as a speaker, she still díd so, and showed her heart and mind of those days and all those that did not survive.

The ultimate answer to Fascism; I am a woman, I am alive, I feel and think and speak from my heart. I do exist and am not a prisoner of hate and revenge.(these are all my words)


Although uninvited to speak, she created a huge Momentum of reconquered and shown human dignity, in the face of the world, at the gate of that death camp.
The últimate "revenge" to fascism, in my opinion.


For me, a very uplifting experience.
I am very grateful.




P.S. Today I tried to make an abstract water colour painting to "answer" the impressive appearance of this woman.
I did not succeed.
To massive.

Today, it is the second of october 2006.

Tonight there is at BBC a chapter of the series of the Nuremburg trial and at Belgium 2 ,one can see the Auschwitz tribunal what
happened in 1963.
Of course they showed previews, while I did not want to see anything at all.

There is something, that really buggs me; I saw the men in charge in former Auschwitz 1940-1945 in court in the preview.
Old and bold, one of them smiles. The other ones are looking around as if they are waiting for a theatre performance.

I don't see devils, hysterical turnings of eyes, tears, madmen that
shout like a dog that's been hit by a car.
I don't see aggression.
I don't see evil.
I don't see remorse.
I don’t see any anger.
I don’t see any emotion at all.


I just see, what I see every day, all year around me; dull men, in gray clothes.

So what really bugs me, is that they don’t differ at all from me.
They were/are just as human as I am.
No difference at all, except the unicity of every person.

They just sit there.

Now I know what really bugs me; they were fully in charge in a killing fabric for Jews and many others,
And – I fear – they did not want to experience in those days, that they were serial killers, in the largest scale ever.

At the most, they might have felt during wartime, that they had bureaucratic orders to do a very tough job. A dirty job one would not think of in the first place as a career.

Like Eichman once said; “By me, not even óne train ever arrived too late”.

Hiding in bureacracy and becoming a clone of orders at paper.

Visibly, I cannot pinpoint them at anything at all.
They “just” did what they had to do and behaved like robots.

I don’t see foam on their faces, because they belong to the same human family as I do.

sept. 19 th 2007.

At Dutch TV is shown an photo album of 140 pictures, taken outside the Camp Auschwitz where more than a million Jews and others have been gassed between 1940 and 1945.
The album was found last year and is taken care of by the holocaust museum and one can see the whole content on line.


The most shocking for me is my experience that I see just old and bold men who are having a chatt, go hunting and drink a beer. Completely normal, while they runned a hell above all imagination. Outside the camp they went on with their conventional life as before the genocide/war/killing.

We, all humans have potentials in the black area of life. It's not just "they", in the past, but "us", the human race, all over the world.

http://www.ushmm.org/research/collections/highlights/auschwitz/

In total there are about 140 pictures.
See the menu at the right, almost at the bottom, where you can click at " + " to see another 20 pictures.

Today, I felt the same irritation, as the journalist who wrote about that photoalbum in our national newspaper.

"I do not see the slightest emotion of shame or any guilt. Not even the slightest"

End quote.

Evil at its best; totally hidden in their minds/hearts, behind a culture of extreme bureaucracy.