Boston MonumentLeonard Oprea, known also for his anti-communist dissidence as a writer during the Ceausescu regime, invites us to reflect on the Holocaust. Beginning today until October 9, The Day of Holocaust Remembrance in Romania, our weekly electronic magazine will host articles on this subject. (S.N.Maier)
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I know Evil.
So, I have to tell you a story.
Once upon a time was Hitler, Stalin… Then, “9-11”…
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In Boston there is a strange monument…
There are six rectangular guard-towers made of glass. They unite with the sky. Around them there are always people… who walk , talk. They are alive. And free.
These towers are six chapels for remembrance and prayer: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek-Lublin, Sobibor and Treblinka – the Nazi concentration-camps from Poland…
On their thresholds you feel their sinister-alive remembrance … Stepping over thresholds …feeling that shiver…
Strange chapels – like gates from hell… From one gate to the next… It’s hard to walk… Under the blue sky. Around you – alive and free, people like us.
At the entrance, on the side of your heart, a black marble plaque. Chiseled on it , white letters – a harsh, precise definition, a history of Nazism : 1933 – 1945 , twelve years. A long or short time? Or … beyond measurable time ?
Inside each chapel stepping on a fire grate. From it a whitish steam is coming up … It’s there – always. Does it smell of burnt corpses ?
On the glass-walls – just numbers …Millions of Jews. Also other thousands Slavs, Catholic priest, Gypsies… All – exterminated. In these six Nazi camps. Yes, no names. The numbers erect ladders of grief into the blue-open sky.
Between the chapels there are footbridges …with sentences chiseled in the gray rock…If you are not careful you might step on them… Alive sentences speak about 500,000 Jewish children killed… Where ? In these six Nazi camps.
They also speak about the World Powers which knew of the Holocaust, since 1942. Yet, they refused to see, to hear…
Also, chiseled with blood are stories about the Jewish martyrs… Alas, few and so helpless dared to fight against the Nazi criminals. Inside these Nazi camps.
Bitter words chiseled – about the cruel indifference of the world – at that time… If you are not careful you will step on blood, on heroes, on common graves…
Within each chapel, on the glass-walls you read stories. Told by survivors and American soldiers. Here are three testimonies:
” One morning, in the yard of our camp, near our hut, I found a small raspberry. I hid it carefully in my pocket. In the evening I put it on a leaf and shared it with my best friend. We did this while hiding cautiously and fearfully in the lavatory. Can you imagine a world where all you have is but a small raspberry which you share with your friend, while secretly and fearfully hiding? ”
” After liberation from the Nazi camp I witnessed the digging up of one of the common graves in the camp. There, among the tens and tens of corpses I identified all the members of my family. ”
“ Inside the yard of the Nazi camp I suddenly saw something black and shiny. It looked like a small stone, but it wasn’t. I took it in my hand and I touched it. All of a sudden I murmured : ‘Oh, Lord, it’s a bone, a small piece of bone. My God, is this all that is left of a man?’. The next day I found a quiet, grassy spot and buried the bone. ”
Near the exit … another plaque. Black like the darkness of hell. I read the confession of a Christian priest, who in 1933 was anti-Semite… Yet he was sent to a Nazi camp. He survived. And confessed his shame. His guilt. Forgive – do not forget. I’m a Christian… God, forgive us.
I have been inside these chapels of remembrance and prayer, before… Yet, today I feel different. Today, I don’t have any blood in my veins. Neither flesh on my bones. And my tears dried out a long time ago…
I feel like a skeleton . Do you know how it is to be a skeleton? Somewhere in a common grave?
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I know Evil.
At the beginning of the third millennium this is my testimony against any genocide perpetrated by Nazis, Communists or Islamic terrorists.
It’s not the history that repeats itself , we are the ones that repeat history continually , obstinately .
((c) Copyright 2005, Leonard Oprea September 11, 2005, Boston )