Holocaust

Category: Opinionated | 4 Comments | Posted 23:00

Ok this is an entry that may never see the light of day... one that has been brewing inside me for ages, but more as a diffuse feeling than as something to be put into words. It is something I've mentioned, alluded to on a few occasions, so I think it is quite clear how I feel about it, yet I've never expressed my feelings about the subject in full depth - and maybe that's quite simply impossible. But I shall try anyway - not in order to achieve something, but simply because... I don't know... it's so much part of me that I feel I need to express it.

So the Holocaust. Why is it so acute in my mind? I believe there is no subject I have read more about than the Holocaust. Gruesome as it sounds, I have grown up with the Holocaust - mainly due to my grand-parents, for whom the horrors of the Nazis were ever present, even 40 years on. That explains, I believe, why my 'reconciliation' with the German people happened so very late and is still incomplete (a fact for which I'm still getting some slack from my German friends).

I have read innumerable books about the subject. The first must have been Judith Kerr's When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit and its follow-ups (I must have been less than 10yrs old at the time)... then there was Anne Frank, read at least 5 times (that's a lot for me) - Anne Frank was my best friend, I grew up with and through her. Have read books about her too (e.g. by Miep Gies). And Joseph Joffo's A Bag of Marbles (which we did at school)... to name but a few (i.e. those that remained most vivid in my mind).

Then as I became older I became more interested in the historical (and less anecdotal) point of view. I read Kazimierz Moczarski Conversations with an Executioner (Moczarski shared a prison cell with Jürgen Stroop, responsible for the Warsaw Ghetto during its uprising), as well as Marcel Reich-Ranicki's autobiography (he was in the ghetto too) and (recently) Szpilman's The Pianist. And of course D.J. Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executionieers (not that I agree with all of that).

Long intro to say what. To say that after all this, having been confronted with this indescribable horror all my life from early childhood, I still cannot grasp or understand it. And I mean this in a sense of... it throws me every single fucking time, to the point of making me want to cry, or alternatively throw up. I remember I tried to watch Schindler's List with the girls in my 2nd year and I had to leave cuz I couldn't take it, not this, not in company. I went to see La Vita E Bella on my own cuz I knew I couldn't stand having someone next to me while watching it.

It's so unbelievable, yet it's so real. This ACTUALLY happened, much as we would like to fictionalise it. Millions of people were exterminated, for what? For nothing! We can look for (and find) historical explanations - underlying and open antisemitism, the promises Hitler made (and partly kept), most people's convenient habit of looking away while looking after themselves... it still does not make the reality of the Holocaust any more acceptable. And that's not even the word.

There are no words to describe the Holocaust. Never was there a greater horror than this. Why? Because it was planned cold-heartedly, not executed in the heat of the moment, in a rage of revenge or personal hate (as many other exterminations, eg between Tutsi & Hutu, or Palestinians & Israelis). A whole damn nation followed a deranged dictator on his insane quest - and they're still not done purging their country, over 50 years on. I will never, ever understand it - and I'm not even blaming the Germans for being particularly prone to such a temptations (tho I still can't help feeling that they are more so than others) - but I see it more as proof of the despicable nature of all of humanity - how could I not despair after something like that?

How, HOW could it have happened? Millions killed, families torn apart, people stripped of their possessions, left to flee or starve to death... and finally sent to certain extinction by people who never gave this a 2nd thought - the stoicism with which the Jewish people seem to have in most cases accepted their fate amazes me. All these people who've lost their whole families (I've just read an interview with the pianist Alice Sommer) in this cruel, pointless mass murder, but who can still see the good in life. How do they do it?? How come they don't succumb to cynicism and indifference? I don't know. Maybe it's preposterous of me who has not directly suffered to make such a fuss about the topic, but it's how I feel. Maybe cuz I hate humanity anyway. But how could you not.

If I was forced to draw a conclusion from this for our current times, it would be that antisemitism (please spare me the stuff about how semites include Arabs too etc - you know what I mean) is still around us, as ever, in the usual "this guy duped me, and guess what, he's a Jew, so it's not surprising" fashion - and how much that - again - proves my point about the despicable stupidity of humanity. I think most people reading this blog know of my position towards Israel and their treatment of Palestinians - I'm as anti-zionist as you can get - but fuck me, I will never EVER accept antisemitism - discrimination based on nothing but ignorance, convenience and selfishness (much like any discrimination ey). Oh how it outrages me.

Ah I think I need to create a new Blog category called "Misanthropy".