A Return to Night?

A recurring memory of mine has returned.

This post comes mid-week and is outside my normal posting schedule. Sometimes, groups of words need to be released regardless of any arcane and artificial timeline. This group of words seemed to fit that category though I’m very apprehensive to release them. I have no idea if what they seem to point to is appropriate to say out loud. But deep down, for some reason, they are compelling me to free them.

I free them.

Do you know what this is?

As I wrote in the subtitle, I’ve been experiencing a particular memory’s recurrence lately. I don’t remember a lot of the specifics, but I remember something profound very vividly.

I have a clear memory of visiting the home of one of my friends when I must have been around 8 years old. The memory is of my friend’s dad. My friend’s dad must have been born sometime between 1915 and 1925ish. (My friend’s dad seemed older than most other dads of friends.) My friend’s dad was a native of Germany. And he was Jewish.

I don’t know why this happened, but I remember having a solemn moment in which my friend’s dad, while we sat at their dinner table, pulled up the sleeve of his sweater to show me some numbers that were inked there. I don’t remember exactly what I was told about it, but I do remember being told my friend’s dad doesn’t like to show this to others which is why he always wore long sleeves. The solemn nature of the act felt like it was a profound, even sacred moment. I wasn’t told this, I felt it.

The word “Auschwitz” was mentioned. I didn’t know what it meant, but was told it was a place in which a very bad thing happened. I did have an 8 year old student’s knowledge of WWII, of Hitler, and a shallow understanding of concentration camps. My friend’s dad was showing me…he was there.

I don’t remember my friend’s dad saying much at all about the experience as he was showing me the tattoo. But I do remember he allowed me to run my finger over it. I do not recall, so I don’t think he said this, but it is the one thing that remained true for me during that singular moment: my friend’s dad didn’t say “I’m letting you do this so you never forget.” Turns out he didn’t have to say a thing.

Because I’ve never forgotten.

“In the afternoon, they made us line up. Three prisoners brought a table and some medical instruments. We were told to roll up our left sleeves and file past the table. The three “veteran” prisoners , needles in hand, tattooed numbers on our left arms. I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name.”

~ Elie Weisel (from his Nobel Prize Winning memoir “Night.”)

Why write of this memory now? Why is it so vivid for me? I think I know.

It’s because for two reasons, I’m scared.

To compare even the darkest of human evils to the Holocaust runs the risk of minimizing the profound meaning that is the Holocaust for all human beings. Because humans share common DNA, the Holocaust is encoded in every genetic DNA strand in all human cells—as if it were, well, tattooed there. That the Holocaust happened, and that those tattoos exist, and that an 8 year old American boy was allowed to run his finger across the identification of a Survivor, along with all the other human atrocities that have come, and continue to happen, since those tattoos were being inked, proves humans do retain the capacity for evil.

In our country right now, under the orders of our current administration, a group of peoples are being hunted, rounded up, gathered together, and taken to a couple of common places (Cuba, Venezuela, Texas) away from sight and sound. Families are being separated. That administration is also removing all access to those places for journalists. That administration is putting in place a structure of language, narrative, and communication that will forever mask what is truly going on there. The “truth” of what is happening, at least right now, is only what we are being told is happening from this current administration.

“Sometimes I am asked if I know ‘the response to Auschwitz’: I answer that not only do I not know it, but that I don’t even know if a tragedy of this magnitude has a response. What I do know is that there is ‘response’ in responsibility. When we speak of evil and darkness, so close and yet so distant, ‘responsibility’ is the key word.

“The witness has forced himself to testify. For the youth of today, for the children who will be born tomorrow. He does not want his past to become their future.”

~ Elie Wiesel (“Night”)

The picture of the tattoo on the arm of the survivor shown above is not of my friend’s dad. My friend’s dad died a few decades ago. And it has been longer than that since I’ve been friends with my friend. But that tattoo is familiar because in my memory, though I cannot recall the exact numbers, I know my friend’s dad wore the fading black ink, through a series of numbers on his left forearm, of an atrocity we were never supposed to have seen again. Because we were told to “never forget.”

We’ve forgotten.

Or maybe worse: we are justifying some things in the name of patriotism, and telling everyone “Nothing’s happening here, move along. Nothing to see here. We’re just cleaning our place up to make it great again.”

The thing is, that is exactly what was being said aloud by the administrative leadership of Nazi Germany.

“How was one to speak [of those condemned to death upon arrival, in the crematoriums] without trembling and a heart broken for all eternity?

“Deep down, the witness knew then, as he does now, that his testimony would not be received. After all, it deals with an event that sprang from the darkest zone of man. Only those who experienced Auschwitz know what it was. Others will never know.

“But would they understand?”

~ Elie Wiesel (“Night”)

The other thing I’m scared of, is that it’s becoming night again. And we just don’t understand it.

Always and Ubuntu,

~ k