generalspeaking

"Declaration of War"

Really, a declaration of war, to remove that detestable symbol of Nazi extermination camps from Auschwitz, so it no longer hangs over the entry gates to the huge death camp in Poland. And just when Germany had agreed to pay half of the restoration costs for the crumbling symbol of genocidal triumph. Such devotion to ensuring that a horrible blemish on the world's conscience remain intact. It is, after all, a tourism site.

Not a "tourism" site quite like that of so many others of the world, to revered religious sites, or fabulous natural geological wonders of the world, or cities with fabled art treasures and monuments to the past, but a bleak, black reminder of humankind's failure to itself. Do we not have memory, that will never permit us the release of such reminders of our failures?

Do we not have massive amounts of documentation, and other dedicated sites in cities around the world to ensure that the immense scope of this historical atrocity remains in the public eye? If human beings are capable of destroying other human beings in such a monumentally efficient manner with no compunction, no empathy, how is the removal of this dread iron declaration of deceit a "declaration of war"?

It is, rather a re-dedication to a certain element within humankind's vast inventory of hatred extended to others unlike themselves, and how is that surprising, significant and worthy of elevating to a "declaration of war"? It is a sad and sorry commentary on the state of the human mind. So it becomes a matter of national honour to Poland, to apprehend the thieves and restore the symbol of mass atrocity.

Honour is a slight and ephemeral thing, when such a death factory could exist to begin with, within the confines of any country that prides itself in any degree. If there did not exist a significant complicity generally, not only in Poland, but in Hungary, in France, in Italy, in Czechoslovakia, in Bulgaria, in Romania, such death camps could never have existed, anywhere, regardless of Nazi intent.

If the sign was so meaningful for whatever reason - resale to a high bidder, surreptitious show for others of like mind, opportunity to embarrass the country, an irresistible wish to deliver yet another anti-Semitic message of a job not yet completed - that the malefactors planned it so carefully in a time-precision exercise, simply seals the public acknowledgement of a hatred that will not die.

To state as President Shimon Peres did, that "The sign holds deep historical meaning for both Jews and non-Jews alike as a symbol of the lives that perished at Auschwitz"; perhaps the world is better without it. There are far more respectful and abiding memorials elsewhere in the world, painful but not as excruciating as those of the former Nazi death camps.

Above all, memory itself, the most meaningful of human traits, will continue to serve us well.

Labels: Anti-Semitism, Holocaust, Human Fallibility

posted by Pieface @ Sunday, December 20, 2009