View Full Version : memories
Hooahguy
04-21-2009, 17:10
Memories
courtesy of MMY Choir 2000
I’m a tired old and worn out man
And my eyes have long gone blind
most things that people say to me
Just seem to slip my mind
But the suffering and painful times
That were in years long gone
Are still as clear upon my memory
As the numbers on my arm
What will become of all the memories
Are they to scatter with the dust in the breeze
Who will stand before the World
Knowing what to say
When the very last survivor
Fades away
When I hold my grandson close to me
And his fingers trace the pattern of my tears
He asks me “Zayda, tell me why do you cry
What is it that you fear?”
And I tell him there once was another child
Who sound as sweet and felt as warm
But he was taken from before my eyes
And only I remained to mourn
What will become of all the memories
Are they to scatter with the dust in the breeze
Who will stand before the World
That wishes to deny
How will they believe in someone
Who never heard the cries
There’s little I can say or do to make things change
Time has a way of passing by so fast
Like a fleeting shadow no one will recall
The faces of the past
What will become of all the memories
Are they to scatter like the dust in the breeze
Only one thought gives me comfort -
It’s all that I have left -
I know that God in heaven
Won’t forget.
Holocaust Remembrance Day 2009.
You who live safe
In your warm houses,
You who find, returning in the evening,
Hot food and friendly faces:
Consider if this is a man
Who works in the mud
Who does not know peace
Who fights for a scrap of bread
Who dies because of a yes or no.
Consider if this is a woman,
Without hair and without name
With no more strength to remember,
Her eyes empty and her womb cold
Like a frog in winter.
Meditate that this came about:
I commend these words to you.
Carve them in your hearts
At home, in the street,
Going to bed, rising;
Repeat them to your children,
Or may your house fall apart,
May illness impede you,
May your children turn their faces from you.
Primo Levi
The shame of Europe.
LittleGrizzly
04-21-2009, 17:35
May it never be repeated..
I don't have a fancy poem at hand but let me just say my heart bleeds for all the holocaust victims and all those who survived the evil to tell the tale...
tibilicus
04-21-2009, 18:02
The tragedy of human savagery.
Let us hope humanity is done walking down these horrible paths of hate and destruction. I know it may seem a bit out of place but if your going to take some time out of your daily life to remember the holocaust, also take that time to remember the numerous other genocides of the previous century. Let us never repeat it.
rasoforos
04-21-2009, 18:19
:bow:
The tragedy of human savagery.
Let us hope humanity is done walking down these horrible paths of hate and destruction. I know it may seem a bit out of place but if your going to take some time out of your daily life to remember the holocaust, also take that time to remember the numerous other genocides of the previous century. Let us never repeat it.
If I may, I think that the Holocaust should serve as a lesson to us. It is great to hope that something like it will not happen again, but before Hitler seized power, I am sure few thought it could happen at all. People are stupid (all of us) and pretty easily manipulated when they are desperate or when they are too comfortable, and there will always be hateful people and opportunists out there. I think the suffering of Holocaust victims should serve as a warning to us to better guard our future, and be smarter than we have been.
tibilicus
04-21-2009, 19:03
If I may, I think that the Holocaust should serve as a lesson to us. It is great to hope that something like it will not happen again, but before Hitler seized power, I am sure few thought it could happen at all. People are stupid (all of us) and pretty easily manipulated when they are desperate or when they are too comfortable, and there will always be hateful people and opportunists out there. I think the suffering of Holocaust victims should serve as a warning to us to better guard our future, and be smarter than we have been.
Exactly. Hopefully we as human beings can process that the previous century can't happen again. So much suffering..
Don Corleone
04-21-2009, 19:31
The real tragedy of the Holocaust isn't just that it happened, but how it happened and why it happened. We all like to villify the Nazis and think "Thank God, those nasty creatures are gone. We'll never let them come to power again". Ditto for Stalinists or the Khmer Rouge or whatever boogeyman upon which we wish to project our darker selves. But whenever I delve into the various genocides of the past century, I'm struck not by the magnamity of the crimes, but by the intimacy of them.
Citing the Shoah as a specific example because I am much more familiar with it, not because it is somehow more atrocious or 'worse' than the others:
The Nazis didn't just erupt from the bowels of hell like Saruman's Uruk Hai. Despite how desparately we need for this to be true so that we can live with ourselves, it never will be. Never. It was a crime we perpetrated upon ourselves.
It was the newspaper boy, all grown up with his pretty brown shirt, that dragged off the 8-year old girl and her parents off to the train station to be loaded into the cattle car. He knew them because he delivered their paper, and at Christmas, they gave him a tip, even though they were Jewish.
It was the piano teacher, hired into her new role as KZ matron, who tore her former pupil from his beseeching mother's arms and hauled him off to meet his fate in a chlorine shower.
It was the handyman, who once sought odd jobs from the middle class eldrly couple down the street, that broke their skulls open with his baton, gleefully watching their life end before his very eyes, their faces upturned in uncomprehending fear, pain and betrayal....
And it was the collective "not my problem, I'm not a Jew" or "not a Pole" or "not a gypsy" that allowed the rest of us to turn a blind eye when anyone with half a brain knew exactly what was going on after November 9th, 1938.
It is our lack of ability to empathize with the rest of mankind that is the real tragedy that virtually guarantees in one form or another, they'll be repeated. :shame:
True story: When I was working in Chicago, I would drive past a large synagogue every day. For one week they had a big sign up that read: "Never again is now." Unfortunately for the congregation, there are two ways to read that sentence ....
Hooahguy
04-21-2009, 20:51
True story: When I was working in Chicago, I would drive past a large synagogue every day. For one week they had a big sign up that read: "Never again is now." Unfortunately for the congregation, there are two ways to read that sentence ....
i dont get it.
Don Corleone
04-21-2009, 20:53
i dont get it.
It all depends on what we collectively do.
"Never again is right now" can mean that it stops, from this moment, forever more.
or, it can mean that it will happen again, right now.
Hooahguy
04-21-2009, 21:01
ah. now i get it.
Let us all draw lessons from this horrible thing: let us, as the human race raise ourselves from such things as racism, antisemitism and fascism.
Hooahguy
04-21-2009, 21:21
with such being said, we must now fight to end not only denial of the Holocaust, but also racism and we must raise awareness for the other genocides that are going on, like in Dafur.
has everyone here seen "Freedom Writers"? great movie and i recommend it.
with such being said, we must now fight to end not only denial of the Holocaust, but also racism and we must raise awareness for the other genocides that are going on, like in Dafur.
has everyone here seen "Freedom Writers"? great movie and i recommend it.
Nevermind genocides; religious or ethnic intolerance should be stopped altogether; whether you are Islamic, Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, black, white, Asian, people should try to tolerate eachother. We all live on the same planet :bow:
Hooahguy
04-21-2009, 21:30
ah, thoughts like those are but dreams.... :no:
Was not the idea of a seperate Jewish state about 200/300 years ago? Or a black president of the United States 50 years ago?
Remember the crime and honour the ones who fight against it.
Yes, Nazism was rooted in a more "common" ant-semitism, in a basic level racism against all what is out-normatives, as Gypsies, homo-sexuals, retarded or others differences, in skins, religions and ideas.
But not all the population fall for it.
Even in Germany, Hitler did need a coup to take full power.
Never again is difficult.
If it happened far, if it concerend others continents, if it affect populations we can't link with, well it happens.
However, the Hollocaust, as a extermination process towards mainly the Jews, but aswell towards the Gysies and the Slavic populations, was a precedent and a specific process.
The industrialisation of the process, the Taylorisation (in term of process), the planification are very specific to it.
Long years ago, as a soldier, I went to a ceremony in France to commemorate the liberation of a concentration camp in France, the Struthof. It was a "small" camp, built to garentee the obedience of the Alsacians who were deserting in mass, and as well to liquidate the usual enemies of the Reich.
It was breath taking. To see the reality, to see the walls, the baracks and the gaz chambers and the landscape was a shock.
I had the same kind when I visited Oradour sur Glane, a village kept how the 2nd SS Division Das Reich left it.
To touch the reality of evil is something we have to do.
Remember that the men and women who did it were humans. So it can happened again.
Remember that the women and men who resisted it were humans. So it can be done again.
Seamus Fermanagh
04-21-2009, 21:36
The first verse of the "Dachaulied," the Dachau song (J. Soyfer & H. Zipper):
Stacheldraht, mit Tod geladen,
ist um unsre Welt gespannt.
Drauf ein Himmel ohne Gnaden
sendet Frost und Sonnenbrand.
Fern von uns sind alle Freuden,
fern die Heimat, fern die Fraun,
wenn wir stumm zur Arbeit schreiten,
Tausende im Morgengraun.
Doch wir haben die Losung von Dachau gelernt
und wurden stahlhart dabei:
Sei ein Mann, Kamerad,
bleib ein Mensch, Kamerad,
mach ganze Arbeit, pack an, Kamerad,
denn Arbeit, Arbeit macht frei!
Barbed wire, loaded with death
is drawn around our world.
Above a sky without mercy
sends frost and sunburn.
Far from us are all joys,
far away our home, far away our wives,
when we march to work in silence
thousands of us at the break of day.
But we have learned the motto of Dachau
and it made us as hard as steel:
Be a man, mate,
stay a man, mate,
do a good job, get to it, mate,
for work, work makes you free!
Most Germans were not and are not monsters. Most people are not monsters, make decent neighbors, and worry about their families and getting through the week -- just like you. In each of us lurks, however, the potential for evil. We must not forget this, and we must never rest in seeking to curtail that potential.
My prayers for all those victims of the Holacaust, for all those who a haunted by it to this day, and for all those who suffer in the continuing eddies washing out from this moment of evil.
Never again is difficult.
I would say it's impossible, given how human beings are. Genocide will be with us for a long, long time. Not trying to be a downer, but I don't see any evidence that we have the will, the tools or the guts to stop every round of ethnic cleansing that takes place. Note the world's overwhelming passivity in Darfur. Note the ease with which Rwandans drove out U.N. peacekeepers so that they could reach the full flower of Hutu Power.
I'm sorry, but "never again" is a slogan, nothing more. I'm glad people think about genocide, and I'm happy so many want to see it ended. But it ain't gonna be in my lifetime, and probably not in my son's.
Remember the crime and honour the ones who fight against it.
Of course, we must think to what degree we should honour those people. There is this case of a Dutch woman in the Dutch resistance who shot a police officer that worked for the Nazi's (actually, he was just a part of the Dutch police corps and continued his duty when the Nazi's took over the country). Is this justified? As far as I know, it was she who attacked the officer, not the other way around.
Is this justified?
yep called treason
Tribesman
04-22-2009, 08:39
Happy holocaust day
Happy holocaust day
That is sooo Tribes... :no:
Who else could say something like that and not have the entire community disgusted with him and flaming him? :P
Incongruous
04-22-2009, 10:24
Remember
For the evils of the past, may never condone the evils of the present.
CountArach
04-22-2009, 10:25
May this travesty never happen again.
Happy holocaust day
I smiled. Now I feel bad... Thanks Tribes...
Strike For The South
04-22-2009, 20:46
May this travesty never happen again.
I smiled. Now I feel bad... Thanks Tribes...
Why? We remeber dead people all the time. We make jokes about the dead all the time. Or more specificly we make jokes about people who use the dead as an agenda to further modern political goals of which the names he is invoking probably could give a hoot about said political goals.
I'm not trying to cheapean the holocuast by any means but I find it odd we choose to guilt ourselves over this one instance of blood while many more Russians and Chineese civilians were killed some just as brutally. I would also say that the Germans and the Japs deffinitly had the same feelings about the slavs and the Chineese they were deffintly sub-human to.
I mean you can bring up the "industrialzation" of the killings to but by the end of the war America could wipe cities off the face of the Earth with 1 bomb. Pretty dang industrial.
I realize this post is a breach of tact and I apologize but I had something on my mind.
I'm not trying to cheapean the holocuast by any means but I find it odd we choose to guilt ourselves over this one instance of blood while many more Russians and Chineese civilians were killed some just as brutally. I would also say that the Germans and the Japs deffinitly had the same feelings about the slavs and the Chineese they were deffintly sub-human to.
Not to mention the treatment of Japanese-American civilians during World War II :2thumbsup:
Not to mention the treatment of Japanese-American civilians during World War II :2thumbsup:
:inquisitive: Now this comparison is cheapening the Holocaust.
I find it odd we choose to guilt ourselves over this one instance of blood while many more Russians and Chineese civilians were killed some just as brutally. I would also say that the Germans and the Japs deffinitly had the same feelings about the slavs and the Chineese they were deffintly sub-human to.
Some thoughts:
The Germans had a much better fashion sense (Black leather with silver skulls? I mean, come on!)
The Germans documented everything meticulously
The forces who liberated the death camps had camera crews with them
The Nazis were mostly killing white, educated people
For these reasons, the Nazi Holocaust will always be the big kahuna, even if it pales in comparison to Stalin's five-year "everybody dies" plan.
"I mean you can bring up the "industrialzation" of the killings to but by the end of the war America could wipe cities off the face of the Earth with 1 bomb. Pretty dang industrial. "
Yep. However, the US did't "cattle" the Japaneese civilians in ghetto, then deported them with special trains in camps where they were either killed immediately or killed slowly with inhumain treatment and inimaginable crualty and cold blood.
So to compare the use of a superior weapons in order to achieve victory (so shorten the war) and the goal to exterminate entires ethnicities, religions or groups is not relevent.
That is what makes the Holaucaust specific.
The US Marines were horrified to witness the collective suicide of the Japaneese Civilians in Okhinawa.
The SS didn't give a whatever, even not a vague remorse or thought.
For these reasons, the Nazi Holocaust will always be the big kahuna, even if it pales in comparison to Stalin's five-year "everybody dies" plan.
I believe he is referring to the death of Soviet civilians due to direct action and planned starvation by the Nazis, not by Stalin's hand. Estimates are around 20-25 million Soviet Union civilians. So it's still the evil, yet fashionably dressed, Germans but different victims. Higher body count than the Jewish estimates, but since they were Commies they didn't get the press.
Most Germans were not and are not monsters. Most people are not monsters, make decent neighbors, and worry about their families and getting through the week -- just like you. In each of us lurks, however, the potential for evil. We must not forget this, and we must never rest in seeking to curtail that potential.
Ahhh, this is what powerful propaganda can do.
I remember a film now that I saw one or two years about this. Well, there are a lot of films, like Schindler's List , Europe Europe, and Train de Vie. Three good films to remember. And not to forgive.
Strike For The South
04-22-2009, 23:16
One could argue we were "showing off" to the Soviets with the A-bomb. (I don't belive it but it's a thought)
I'm sure the Germans killed smart Russians to, did they even consider the Jews as white?
I can't help but feel the allies used the holocaust as a trump card, not only to de-humanize the nazis as a whole but to brush our own crimes under the rug. Mind you as an American/French/British leader I would've done the same lest the plebs have feelings of compassion. Why are those 6 million lives so much more important than the others?
I also think it's stupid Germans have to feel "more sorry" than the others.
I don't know just a fleeting thought.
I feel like Panzer. I can't be a facist, never had the fashion sense.
Tribesman
04-22-2009, 23:58
I'm sure the Germans killed smart Russians to, did they even consider the Jews as white?
Colour didn't come into it , the Nazis didn't consider the Jews as really human at all
Incongruous
04-23-2009, 01:04
Niether did they the Gypsies, mentally ill, homosexuals etc. (...yeah, as if they were not into a bit of man love, plus some leather). I am not too up on nazism, but the Fascist idea was that there was group of men on this earth whom were simply better, forged anew into supermen by the horrors of the trench, everyone else was their to be ruled. The Nazi's applied a successful racial agenda to this idea, making the supermen into Arians/Germanics right? But what about those Germans whom opposed Hitler? Were they sub-human as well? They ere clearly not the new supermen of the Nazi Reich...
Hooahguy
04-23-2009, 01:05
EDIT: ignore, CR beat me to it.
I'm quite puzzle as to why Holocaust denial is outlawed, honestly.
Hooahguy
04-23-2009, 12:12
my guess is that as survivors die out, the denial movement will grow. if it is not stifled, at least in Germany and Austria, it will grow, and grow, and grow. soon, people will be overtaken by the denial movement.
AFAIK, Germany and Austria are the only countries that bans denial, right?
rasoforos
04-23-2009, 13:08
I think that denial is strengthened by the fact that this very denial is illegal or a taboo.
Some misinformed and ignorant people take this to be a sign that people are hiding things from us and thus embrace denial in the name of a conspiracy theory.
In my oppinion, the truth of the Holocaust is so dramatic and obvious that making denial illegal cause more harm than good. It basically gives racists the opportunity to become 'martyrs' by being prosecuted for their beliefs.
Where I come from, the Jewish community was in the double digits as a percentage of the population. Post WWII it was less than 2.000 people. Only some toponyms and places remain. What more do I need to see to realise the horrible truth?
I say allow people to deny it happen and make a fool of themselves.
my guess is that as survivors die out, the denial movement will grow. if it is not stifled, at least in Germany and Austria, it will grow, and grow, and grow. soon, people will be overtaken by the denial movement.
Not being allowed to deny the holocaust is silly if you ask me, if I want to deny that grass is green, what's it to the government.
seireikhaan
04-23-2009, 13:53
Look at it this way, Hooah. At least the Jews' suffering is wholeheartedly recognized by 98% of sane humanity. It could be much, much worse, considering the sad state of affairs America, Canada, and Australia have with the Natives, the Iraqis have with the Kurds, the Turks have with Armenians, Russians have with Crimeans, etc... Hell, in the US, the Armenian genocide was only recognized for political reasons- Pelosi and other top Dems trying to undermine Bush in his last couple years in trying to help bring peace to the M/E. I mean, it took a hundred years, and nothing was done anyways. In America, Native Americans are still treated as punchlines for gambling, alcoholism, and greed. Australia gave a "We're sorry" to the Aborigoness, quite literally. At least the world(again, 98% anyways) has deservedly recognized the atrocity suffered during the Holocaust by those involved.
Seamus Fermanagh
04-23-2009, 15:29
Ahhh, this is what powerful propaganda can do.
I remember a film now that I saw one or two years about this. Well, there are a lot of films, like Schindler's List , Europe Europe, and Train de Vie. Three good films to remember. And not to forgive.
My point was NOT to forgive those persons who participated directly in the Holocaust, nor to expiate the guilt of those who did little to prevent it/ignored what was before their eyes. They will meet the Lord in their own time and justice will be served. Should we catch anyone still alive who participated, then punish them to the full extent of the law, I have no problem with that.
My point was to assert that we should not ascribe the sins of the past to those among us now -- but that we should very much use those horrors in our collective past as a reminder of what we COULD become if we are not vigilant in avoiding this potential for evil.
I live in a country where we are arguing about and considering the prosecution of key members of our previous government administration for the torture of terrorists and suspected terrorists who WERE trying to kill us. I would MUCH rather be worried about the rights of a murdering terrorist such as many of those incarcerated at Guantanamo then to ever let such barbarisms as we were involved in slip by without concern and begin to dehumanize us entirely.
Evil does not cease and there is always an excuse -- we need to continue to fight this battle well short of that low benchmark from the 1940s.
Maybe I'm not understanding you, Seamus, my english understanding has been reducted to almost nothing.
I think you are trying to say "We must not let this happen anymore", and I was trying to say "lets remember what happened, what they suffered". If I'm wrong, just contact me or write here.
Seamus Fermanagh
04-24-2009, 05:23
Maybe I'm not understanding you, Seamus, my english understanding has been reducted to almost nothing.
I think you are trying to say "We must not let this happen anymore", and I was trying to say "lets remember what happened, what they suffered". If I'm wrong, just contact me or write here.
Okay. That's shortening it a LOT, but is correct.
I believe that PART of not letting this happen anymore invovles doing exactly what you suggest.
Don't worry, your English is vastly better than my Spanish, I appreciate the effort you make just to be here.
vBulletin® v3.7.1, Copyright ©2000-2025, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.