Never Forget

Today marks the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau by the Soviet army.  Today, we are invited to reflect on the lessons of a human calamity so great, that it qualifies for the definitive article: Of all the massacres that this world has leveled against itself, only this one is called The Holocaust.

Yesterday afternoon I sat at my kitchen table and read this excellent and deeply upsetting article by Hugo Rifkind.  I also sat and cried my eyes out.  It caught me on the hop, Mr. Rifkind having knocked on the head a nail I had been sizing up for the last fortnight or so, that when reduced to a personal level, the horror is magnified.  The worst thing about it all, the piles of shoes, the rooms full of hair, the houses converted into gas chambers... The worst thing of all is that it all actually happened.  It's like an abyss that stares back.  All that's left of the people who were arrested, exterminated and then almost erased from history.


I read Maus when I was young.  Very young.  Eight?  Nine?
I'd almost certainly say too young, although maybe everybody should read it for the first time then?  I finally bought my own copy after years of borrowing from Derby Central Library when I was eighteen, when I moved to University.  Like several important volumes of Metaphysical Poetry, it survives every house move I have and will do. It's the story of the Spiegelman family, of Vladek and Anja who survived Auschwitz, and of their son Art, as he deals with his relationship with his father in the narrative present, while recording the events and depicting them in the narrative past, which makes up the majority of the two volumes.  In distorting the people by depicting them as not only cartoons but also as anthropomorphised animals, I think it actually helps bring it closer - rather than become hung up on how accurate the faces may or may not be, or how 'Jewish' the Jews look for example, the animal faces are largely uniform; they become emblematic, symbolic.  We look past them.  The boundaries are still, if not even more present as well, that we can identify the Jews instantly, portrayed as Mice, while the Polish characters (more often than not as Nazi sympathisers) are portrayed as Pigs - I'm sure there's no irony lost there even with my hazy knowledge of kosher - rather than have to work it our for ourselves, distancing us from the narrative.

This is a story about people.  Maus is focused, of course, because it is the account on one man.  Naturally we can seek out the accounts of others, and today there will obviously be a lot of attention on those who are still with us.  I feel as if I'm straying into Cornwall Remembers territory here as well, having performed a week of Evensongs and the Britten War Requiem specifically as part of the remembrance events for the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the first world war.  The number of Holocaust survivors dwindles every year, just as the survivors of WWI are now gone.  Their stories must continue.  We must never forget.  We must never forget it's about people as well.  I feel as if I'm banging on a little bit, I apologise, but there's a quote from the Rifkind article that we should all pay close attention to:

"Anybody could have done it to anybody. This is what humans can do. Talk about that. Talk about which side you’d be on, if something like this happened again. And talk about how you’re so damn sure."

There have been so many atrocities against the Jews throughout history, let alone the twentieth century - look at Mount Masada and The Diaspora (yet another 'definitive'), and there were so many casualties that it's easy to make this a purely Jewish thing... But the Third Reich set their sights on anybody  they didn't want.  The extermination of the Jews, yes, but also the Roma people, Homosexuals, the mentally and physically ill, any kind of political dissident, Soviets, Communists, Freemasons... And God help you if you're not white.  The list goes on and on.  Absolutely anybody they didn't like or want.  Ask yourself, did you look at that list and find a label that you would or have had applied to yourself?  Even if you're a socialist, if it wasn't their kind of socialism you might have had a knock at the door and were further never seen or heard from again.  Let's just say that I'd be dead on three counts alone there, my own Jewish nature notwithstanding.  

I am no Holocaust Scholar.  I am no expert on the policies of the National Socialist Workers Party.  What I am, however, is a person who will never forget.  Today we remember a horrid crime, Man's inhumanity to Man on a grand scale, and if there is any element of celebration it is that those who were left behind at Auschwitz, the elderly, the infirm and the children, that they were found.  The first camp, Majdanek, was actually found by the advancing Soviet army almost six months previous.  The scenes there were just as horrific.  I once lived in a shared house with a person who would continually watch Holocaust documentaries on Netflix - you know, the great stock of History channel material that they had (do they still have?).  Seeing as it's a delicate subject to me at the best of times, I was finally moved to question this person, who would sit in the darkened front room, eating oven cooked ready meals while chaining these programmes... I hardly expected them to say "So I can be ready for next time." 

I'm fasting today.  I hardly ever keep Shabbat at the best of times, let alone the worst, but I thought it was an appropriate thing to do.  I like to joke that as a man with Jewish heritage the act of singing in an Anglican Cathedral Choir is purely business, but the issue is far more complicated than that.  I, as a man, appeal to you, never to forget both what happened and that this is something that affects us all as Human Beings.  Collectively we are better than this, and we need to make sure we remember that as well.