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Tag Archives: Death

We Must Never Forget

16 Friday Nov 2018

Posted by Lesley Irene Shore in Healing

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Tags

Awareness, Change, Death, Faith, Family, Growth, Harmony, Healing, Heart, Holocaust, Hope, Journey, Learning, Lost, Love, Memorial, Memory, Prejudice, Prevention, Racism, Remember, Survivor, Witness

1993

I enter the recently opened Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., join a crowd of strangers and begin travelling through time. Our group moves from one historical moment to the next. We observe Kristallnacht, the burning of books, mass murders, rape, and other Nazi atrocities. Each event brings us closer to Hitler’s “final solution.”

Passing beneath an arching sign, ARBEIT MACHT FREI (work sets you free), I enter Auschwitz—following the trail of my grandparents, my aunts and uncles, cousins, children, countless members of the human family. First, the selection: to the left or to the right, to gas showers or living hell.

To The Left

A scale model of Auschwitz’s Crematorium II depicts the journey too many were condemned to take: down a stairway to an undressing room, and from there to an underground gas chamber. Naked bodies massed together, each struggling to survive. Gold teeth and fillings pulled from corpses as they lay on the ground. Hair shaved from their heads. And, then, their final destination. Ovens.

Wanting to control my emotions while bearing witness, I take a deep breath and steel my innards. The next exhibit displays empty canisters of Zyklon B. (The insecticide that gassed my Grandmother.)

I enter a room of shoes. These shoes survived, but not their owners. A stale musty smell pervades the room, for the shoes carry a stench from the past, reminding me of the horrors they witnessed. (Could one have belonged to Grandmother?)

To The Right

After selection came tattoos. No longer a name, now a number. At least Grandmother was spared this indignity. But like others entering Auschwitz, Grandfather would have been branded on his left arm. And then he would have been shaved.

I stand staring at a display filled with human hair—swatches in shades of black, brown, yellow, white, and grey.

Unable to look at the hair any longer, I read the accompanying placard and learn that the Nazis found a use for everything. They sold their victims’ hair. When soldiers liberated Auschwitz, they discovered 15,000 pounds of human hair in bales averaging 40 pounds each. (Was Grandfather’s hair in one of those bales, or was it sold to make felt slippers or stuffing for a mattress?)

Continuing my journey through time, I view photographs of death marches and learn that on January 18, 1945 about 60,000 prisoners were removed from Auschwitz. About 15,000 died during that march. (Each life precious, one my Grandfather’s.) I stare at a photograph of prisoners with grey camp blankets draped over their shoulders, each barely surviving, yet struggling to continue. (Is Grandfather among them? Which one might he be?)

Moving on to Liberation, I wait my turn to watch a display of film clippings. The first is of Auschwitz and Dachau. I look at haggard faces and emaciated bodies stuck atop toothpick legs. Some survivors are too weak to walk; soldiers carry these skeletons to shelter. (Could one be Aunt Friedl?)

I stand transfixed before one person’s eyes: wide open eyes, haunted, staring. They gaze at me and through me—as if perpetually drowning in an internal sea of horror. Rescuers help and support his body, but his mind appears frozen in time, stuck inside the terrors of his past.

I stare at piles of decomposing dead bodies. A fly moves in and out of one person’s nostrils.

At Liberation, I lose control over my emotions. Pent up feelings erupt, tears stream from my eyes, and my chest heaves with inner sobs. Moving away from the exhibit, I search for a place where I can pull myself together. Luckily I find a bathroom nearby, where I hide inside a stall. My face twitches as tears roll down my cheeks. I struggle for composure, trying to contain my raging emotions and quell my tears.

When my chest eventually stops heaving, I blow my nose and resume my journey. After passing exhibits describing the plight of survivors and their search for a homeland, I walk into an area where a movie is being shown.

The movie consists of interviews with survivors. I sit mesmerized by their stories—poignant moments of hope, bravery, courage, rebellion, anger, faith, and love. Many cared for each other despite deplorable living conditions, reminding me of humanity’s decency. Tears fall from my eyes with each testimony. I wipe the tears away, but am unable to locate a tissue in my backpack and sit sniffling through the movie.

A woman speaks from the screen, saying, “One should never give up. Giving up is a final solution to a temporary problem.” Another man says, “The future—there was none. But we didn’t give up.”

The movie ends with a female survivor asking us all to bear witness, to stand up to every form of persecution, to make sure such atrocities can never happen again. Not to anyone. Not ever!

People around me start leaving the area. Many quietly wipe tears from their eyes. I continue to sit, still sniffling away. The woman next to me leans over and asks, “Are you alright?”

I am initially taken by surprise. (My grandparents were murdered along with millions of other good people. Such suffering! And courage! How can anyone be alright with that?)

Appreciating her expression of caring concern, I smile reassuringly and say, “Thank you. I’m fine.”

A voice announces that the museum will soon close. It is time to leave, but I have trouble pulling myself away from the exhibits.

Finally following the crowd, I drag myself into a hallway, pass beneath a sign that says “Hall of Remembrance,” and enter a spacious place. A flame burns on a coffin-shaped grey slab of granite at the far end of the sky-lit room.

Walking around this six-sided space, I sense six million ghosts swirling above me, behind me, and around me. They are here to remind us of human nature’s dark side. They are here to protect us from ourselves.

WE MUST NEVER FORGET!

 

Mixed Blessing

25 Thursday Oct 2012

Posted by Lesley Irene Shore in Nature

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Tags

Blessings, Death, Gratitude, Guinea Fowl, Harmony Center, Harmony Farm, Keets, Life, Mother Hen, Nature, Soul, Spirit

In my previous blog, I wrote about the joy of discovering our guinea hen with her newly hatched brood of keets and my excitment about how all the adults were caretaking the babies (see Cooperative Edge?).  I hoped to watch the tiny, adorable little beings develop into full-grown birds. 

When I first noticed Mother Hen with her babies, I spotted at least 15 keets.  I had difficulty counting as sometimes they were underneath one guinea fowl, then moved to another.  And when they were out-from-under, they ran around so rapidly, peeping and chirping as they went, that I had difficulty counting. 

The adult guinea fowl initially hovered over their babies, protecting them from the cold, and moved around very little.  But as day one moved into days two and three, their attentiveness to the baby keets appeared to wane.  While they continued protecting and teaching the keets, their focus turned to foraging for food.  They moved at a faster pace and travelled further before stopping to eat or rest.

I watched tiny little bodies scurrying, trying to keep up with the adults.  They encountered many obstacles that the adults readily walked over.  A small stone became an insurmountable mountain and a twig a hazardous zone that their tiny legs had difficulty negotiating.  But try they did.  The feisty little souls scrambled up and down, running as fast as they could after the adults.  A noisy little bunch, for they peeped, and peeped and peeped.

While the adults still tended their baby keets, they appeared oblivious to the keets’ inability to rapidly negotiate terrain with tiny bodies and fragile state.  I watched in despair as the parents ran ahead, seemingly unconcerned about what was happening behind them and despite a keet’s loud frantic peeps.

At the end of each day, Mother Hen  found what she considered to be a safe place to spend the night and gathered her keets under her there.  Once I located her under a saw horse next to Harmony Center. Other nights I didn’t know where she slept, but she and her brood re-appeared in the morning, sitting outside the guinea house, waiting for her “husband” and other pals to join her.

I thought, “if only Mama would take them into the coop. Then I could lock them all up for a while – keep them safe, give the keets a chance to grow stronger.”  Hoping that she might, praying that she would, I readjusted the ramp into the coop to ensure that the keets could readily walk inside.  Doing everything I could think of to entice Mama inside, I sprinkled food on the ramp and turned on the light.

As one day led into the next, my baby keet count went from 15 to 10, then down to 8.  I found two small bodies sprawled, lifeless on the ground.  Gathering these remnants of once spirited beings, I said a few prayers and buried one white and one speckled inert form.

Day four dawned, and as the day developed, one after another baby keet succumbed.  Finding two little souls struggling after the pack, I picked each one up separately and held him, or her, for a while, thinking that I might warm the probably cold body.  But when I put him / her down, I watched each little body struggle to run, only to fall over, struggle again, and fall yet again.  I realized that they’d each broken a leg, probably caught on a twig, or a rock, or who knows what.

During the afternoon, I buried 2 more bodies, and watched two spirited little beings running through the brush, still managing to keep up with the pack.  At the end of the day, when I went to lock the guinea house, all five adults were there.  But none of their babies.

After all the joy and excitement, I feel deep sorrow, broken hearted.  Such feisty little souls, so full of energy and happy peeps – broken legs, exhaustion, cold – I have no idea how each one perished.  They struggled and suffered.  I hope not too much.

Walking around outside, I miss seeing tiny exuberant bodies scurrying around.  I miss hearing boisterous, happy peeps.  Yet those feisty little keets live on – inside me.

Living on Harmony Farm, experiencing nature’s cycles, carries mixed blessings.  Despite my sorrow, I feel very blessed. 

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