Past Lives

I was thinking about past lives today. I was wondering how one gets to know what their past lives were like. I wondered this because every year about this time I become almost obsessed with the Holocaust. I’m not Jewish, so why do I want to watch every program about it and read every book about it (One year I read every book in the local library about that horrific event.)? So, I thought a lot about today when I was watching yet another program.

I wondered if it maybe had something to do with the fact that a lot of programs are aired about the Holocaust this time of year. That could have started, I think. I don’t know. I never really noticed it so much until this year- though I admit there is a lot going on about it around this time. So, maybe this has somehow infected my psyche? I am deeply affected by these stories. I cry and have nightmares sometimes. A lot of times. I think that I can almost smell the rot and disgust of the barracks at Auscwitz. But I don’t know. I just feel so mournful when I hear these stories.

A lot of people I know are interested in WWII, but not so much what happened in the camps. I’m not at all interested in the battles. I don’t care about D-Day. I don’t care what happened in the Pacific (I’m sure that I should, but I don’t). I just really care about all of the innocent lives that were stripped away. And the utter lack of caring for those lives that most European and Americans showed–all the way to the end. It disgusts me that there are really people out there that don’t even believe that the Holocaust happened. They hear stories from survivors and dismiss them as “propaganda”. It disgusts me that there are actually people that trivialize what happened. They argue the numbers. Like it matters how many died. What mattered was how those people were treated and ultimately killed. We treat our cattle better than that.

So, back to what I was saying. I’ve been thinking about this alot today. I wonder if I wasn’t perhaps a victim in a past life. I wonder if maybe I wasn’t a mother who was gassed with her child. I find myself utterly emotional when I think about what happened in those camps. I’m sometimes overcome. I didn’t have any family over there, that I know of. None of my people are Jewish or Gypsy. So I wondered if there may be a deeper reason for my sadness. I don’t really want to remember it all, if that’s the case. I don’t want to go into some kind of trance and feel what it was like to die. I just want to get this nagging suspicion off my chest. Out of my head. There’s nothing more I can really do about it.

I would love to go back in time and do what I could to help as many of those poor people that I could. There were so many saved by brave rebels, those that risked everything because they couldn’t stand to see this evil flourish. I applaud those people, I really do. I just wish more people would have done that. I wish more Americans would have stepped up to the plate and done something to help them. Americans didn’t even want Jewish refugees coming here. They weren’t willing to save even 1 million from Hungary. Yes, they should be proud.

I’m afraid that this kind of thing could happen again. The root of hatred and fear could take hold and some unscrupulous leader can go crazy. It’s happening in parts of the world now, in a smaller scale. And again, America is doing nothing. Look at Darfur…why aren’t our troops there instead of in Iraq right now? How come that government is allowed to commit genocide and we do nothing. Maybe because it’s blacks killing blacks and there’s no oil in Darfur. We hold ourselves up to such high moral standards. I hear people screaming about the oppressed Iraqis but theres nothing being said about the Afrikans. No one cares unless they get something out of it.
Nobody cared about the Jews, the concentration camp prisoners, because they couldn’t get something out of it. And by “nobody” I mean governments of the world. I think that if Japan hadn’t attacked us we would never have joined the fray. Germany would have ultimately been beaten back, because Europe is still strong without us, but the concentration camps would have done what they were ultimately set up to do. They would have exterminated all of the Jews of Europe. Yet, we like to take credit for freeing them, for forcing Germany to it’s knees. They were almost to the ground before we even went to Europe. We just gave them the final shove.

Yes, I’m going off on a tangent and probably making no sense at all. But this is the time of year when I really feel, deep in my soul, pain for the victims of the Holocaust. And I was examining the source of that pain. It’s not something that I can shake. And I wish that I could. It lasts only for a couple of months. When the snow stops falling the dread, fear, and mourning will go away. Maybe I died in the winter. Maybe we were killed during a snow fall. I don’t know. I think sometime between January and March. And I’m not even sure if I was a mother. I may have been the child. I may not have died in the gas chambers. Maybe on the road west? I will probably never find out. There are so few survivors left. I want to remember only so no one forgets. As long as the story is told it can’t be forgotten.

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