October 26, 2015 HOW?!

October 26, 2015

I realize this post is far overdue and I've been promising myself I'll start up again... here goes.

I’ve been studying the concentration camp of Terezin recently and a lot has been flowing through my mind. You need to understand my infatuation and wonder of WWII when I was a little girl, but especially for the Holocaust. I had a difficult time then, and still now I struggle to see how, first of all, one man could have so much hatred towards a “race” of people altogether, but then for not hundreds, but thousands more to believe his words and follow him in such a gruesome goal, I still find myself asking, HOW?!

In one day, 5,007 people were deported from Terezin to Auschwitz-Birkenau in the fall of 1942. Of course, there were several thousands more, but this was a record for one day. This would be 4 Brookfield high schools FULL.

How could any of those soldiers have had any remote sense of a conscience remaining at all? And the citizens! You can’t fool me in saying that they didn’t have a clue! Hundreds of thousands of their peers were vanishing in their regions, without a trace. HOW?! 

How could not a group question it, or stand against it? I know that the German opposing political parties tried and plotted to overthrow the Nazi party but it still wasn't enough. I also know that many people were in distress, which is a pattern in history when those people tend to lean and support extremists parties...

But when these chilling actions were taking place, how did the enemy overrule for so long, for every one else to brush aside or turn face? It only takes one to ignore to equal a death that could have been prevented. I do think about that…

When I was home a month ago, Mom and Dad were driving me to the airport. It was a rainy night and we had passed a newly-crashed car on the interstate, which had crashed front first into the median. I urged one of them to call 911, or the police. Dad got so short with me asking, ‘why? that’s not necessary, someone else will call!’ I was so upset and,frankly I was shocked that he could possibly think that way. I was raised by him, surely! Mom picked up her phone and called it in, reporting the mile markers and all. I thanked her after she had hung up the phone.

It takes an act of duty, not kindness. This is our DUTY as human beings to other human beings. HOW?! How have we come this far and still haven’t managed to understand it?

My cousin, Bara went down to Serbia last week to aid the thousands of refugees fleeing their homes to come north into Europe to find a safe haven. The situations there are dire. Many Europeans argue that this cannot happen, how are we to pay for them all? Won’t they ‘stain’ our culture, our history, our traditions? 

Let's step back a moment. Sometimes we need to go back to the basics. We have a problem. Someone is hurt or in need of help. Instead of assuming someone ELSE will do it, or it’s not our problem to solve, or turning our heads, we need to act.

Bottom line: If that person in need were me, I wish someone would have called, stood up for me, or came to give me aid.

*** Human-to-human makes a human. Everything else is an animal. ***