Like a dream. Like running through open space under a knowing Sky. Like silence—after a really loud life. Like a trance that enchants you. Europe. Like finding a corner of shade in a battlefield of blistering sun. Like sitting in it.
Spellbound.
If Neverland exists and Peter Pan still lives, then Switzerland must be on the way to Wendy Darling and the Lost Boys. Or maybe it's humanity's version of a land J.M. Barrie dared to imagine and to which we can only aspire. Maybe it's just the best version of it that we have. But it'll do, I'm sure.
There's a peace in Zurich that I have not felt anywhere.
We boarded the train to Landeck on a clear afternoon. Boys fiddled with phones and reflections in mirrors as I readied the camera for what was to come. Moving forward and sitting backward. Looking sideways while thinking straight. English before me and German behind me. Swiss German. Schweizer Deutsch. The kind that makes you stop in your tracks. Have I heard that before? Berlin, 2010—where the rubber meets the road and where a young Jew meets a young German.
Preconceptions. Like what about the past? And, should I really be talking to this guy? Or that girl. The one that turned me upside down and inside out, at a memorial somewhere.
Noises. Like the one we heard at the Barracks in Sachsenhausen that were barely audible. Spaces. Like the visible ones which weren't there. Well, where are they if not here? Stephan told us: the history of mass murder is the history of things you can no longer see. Oh.
But that stupid history. That stupid, stupid, stupid history. Who are you, anyway? And what have you done with half the world? Berlin, where it's blurry. Where Walls becomes Art after War becomes Peace, and where images flash before your eyes without asking permission.
Like a train bound for the mountains on the way to Neverland. Postcard mountains. The kind that make your eyes glisten in disbelief. That make you incredulous, but not enough to keep you from documenting the journey. Evidence. Do people really live up there? I asked. Green pastures. Steep hills. Remote cottages. But all the way up there? How do they get up there? Hold on to your children and belongings up there, please. And for a moment I wondered, who are their children? What are their belongings? And when the firewood depletes and the cool of the lake sneaks up from below? What then?
Europe carries little secrets on her back. They're too much for one generation to carry, and so we whisper them to each other in dark, brushed alleyways so that we won't forget what the cobblestones know. The cobblestones are shy and won't tell us much. But not the Stolpersteine—they're telling. Sometimes more than we want them to be. They're screaming. They're memory. And they'll be here to remind us when we forget. When our children become curious and we become tired.
Now? Now I’m in Austria. Where the sunlight breaks and chases. Where the mountains play a game with it and loop around the clouds they just fall short of. Forty German teenagers are currently on their way here from Munich. I hope they're as excited as I am. I hope we'll grow together and tell secrets to one another. About our identities, and about the future. About our fears and about our hopes. About the mountains, and about the clouds. And about who beat who when the sun came chasing after them with secrets from the past.
Showing posts with label Europe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Europe. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Life in Death
Sometimes, when I stroll along the cracked pavements of city squares and pavilions on a cold New York City night, when I breathe and then watch curiously as the water condenses to fog, when I pass a perfect, silent stranger painting smiles on the faces of passerby, I pause and think of them.
I think of victims. All victims of an unknown time who died in an unknown place.
Perhaps the sky is their graveyard, or maybe the open field at Treblinka, or the forest of Sobibor. Or maybe it's the streets of European towns that bear the marking of their deaths.
But, particularly, I think of the victims whose memory has been ingrained in my heart—those whose stories I have read and whose personal, but universal messages I have come to know. And to cherish. And to cry over. Sometimes, when all around me I see vivid signs of life, I think of death.
And then the death haunts me and when I sleep it chases me. In the morning, I awake, and it awakes with me. I wish not to overcome it, for I fear that I will forget it. And then, who will be left to return to the open field at Treblinka? Or the forest of Sobibor? Who will be left to teach that bystanders are as complicit as killers? No, I cannot forget.
So, instead, I look for ways to keep death. To enshrine it. I carry the pain of death with me. I tuck it in the pocket of my consciousness when I walk and talk and run through meadows where lilies sing and dance before the knowing sky—the sky that remembers all that we cannot—above a graveyard somewhere.
Today is the 66th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camps, designated by Resolution 60/7 of the 2005 UN General Assembly as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Today, member states, communities, and individuals everywhere renew their commitments to the values of human dignity and reaffirm their resolve to fight the forces that would do away with us.
On its face, it seems that, though late, the world has made progress—that which can be measured, poured into a cup and quantified. Yet, while the establishment of this universal memorial is to be celebrated, it is not to be taken for what it’s not—a sign that the countries of the world have dealt adequately with the past and are working together in common purpose to build a better future. Many, in fact, are not nearly. Many have failed—as evidenced last week, when the Simon Wiesenthal Center published a report of nations’ grades based on their efforts to bring former Nazi criminals to justice. Many literally failed.
Holocaust memory—fancy it a species—faces the threat of extinction. In America, two states out of fifty have instituted high school curricula focused on the rise, atrocities, and moral implications of Nazism. Record counts of antisemitic acts have been recorded in communities across Europe over the past year. Neo-fascist groups bent on the indoctrination of youth have surfaced all over the internet. And while it may seem plausible to some, no—Iran’s Ahmadinejad does not stand alone in his denial of the Holocaust. Nor does Venezuela’s Chavez.
A "Day," no matter how "International," will not prevent the ultimate reality if each of us does not step in and speak out on behalf of the victims. If we do not take to the streets and call for the extradition of those who had consigned them to their deaths. If we do not build a foundation upon which their stories can rest and teach and inspire our contemporaries not only to learn about the perils of intolerance, hatred, and bigotry, but to make meaning of them in these changing, difficult times; arrive at mutual understanding through dialogue; breathe life in death.
We must always remember these truths. That there is, at the end of every tear, a smile. There is, at the end of every tunnel, light. There is, at the end of one generation’s responsibility, another’s.
And sometimes, when the air is cold, I breathe it in and out again. And then I close my eyes and think of those whose breaths were taken from them. I feel the whistle of the wind around me and hear the clucking of distant steps. I see the open field at Treblinka. I imagine the forest of Sobibor. And the streets in Amsterdam, and Paris, and Prague.
I think of life. And then of death. And then I take my breath and slowly, between my lips, breathe one into the other.
I think of victims. All victims of an unknown time who died in an unknown place.
Perhaps the sky is their graveyard, or maybe the open field at Treblinka, or the forest of Sobibor. Or maybe it's the streets of European towns that bear the marking of their deaths.
But, particularly, I think of the victims whose memory has been ingrained in my heart—those whose stories I have read and whose personal, but universal messages I have come to know. And to cherish. And to cry over. Sometimes, when all around me I see vivid signs of life, I think of death.
And then the death haunts me and when I sleep it chases me. In the morning, I awake, and it awakes with me. I wish not to overcome it, for I fear that I will forget it. And then, who will be left to return to the open field at Treblinka? Or the forest of Sobibor? Who will be left to teach that bystanders are as complicit as killers? No, I cannot forget.
So, instead, I look for ways to keep death. To enshrine it. I carry the pain of death with me. I tuck it in the pocket of my consciousness when I walk and talk and run through meadows where lilies sing and dance before the knowing sky—the sky that remembers all that we cannot—above a graveyard somewhere.
Today is the 66th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camps, designated by Resolution 60/7 of the 2005 UN General Assembly as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Today, member states, communities, and individuals everywhere renew their commitments to the values of human dignity and reaffirm their resolve to fight the forces that would do away with us.
On its face, it seems that, though late, the world has made progress—that which can be measured, poured into a cup and quantified. Yet, while the establishment of this universal memorial is to be celebrated, it is not to be taken for what it’s not—a sign that the countries of the world have dealt adequately with the past and are working together in common purpose to build a better future. Many, in fact, are not nearly. Many have failed—as evidenced last week, when the Simon Wiesenthal Center published a report of nations’ grades based on their efforts to bring former Nazi criminals to justice. Many literally failed.
Holocaust memory—fancy it a species—faces the threat of extinction. In America, two states out of fifty have instituted high school curricula focused on the rise, atrocities, and moral implications of Nazism. Record counts of antisemitic acts have been recorded in communities across Europe over the past year. Neo-fascist groups bent on the indoctrination of youth have surfaced all over the internet. And while it may seem plausible to some, no—Iran’s Ahmadinejad does not stand alone in his denial of the Holocaust. Nor does Venezuela’s Chavez.
A "Day," no matter how "International," will not prevent the ultimate reality if each of us does not step in and speak out on behalf of the victims. If we do not take to the streets and call for the extradition of those who had consigned them to their deaths. If we do not build a foundation upon which their stories can rest and teach and inspire our contemporaries not only to learn about the perils of intolerance, hatred, and bigotry, but to make meaning of them in these changing, difficult times; arrive at mutual understanding through dialogue; breathe life in death.
We must always remember these truths. That there is, at the end of every tear, a smile. There is, at the end of every tunnel, light. There is, at the end of one generation’s responsibility, another’s.
And sometimes, when the air is cold, I breathe it in and out again. And then I close my eyes and think of those whose breaths were taken from them. I feel the whistle of the wind around me and hear the clucking of distant steps. I see the open field at Treblinka. I imagine the forest of Sobibor. And the streets in Amsterdam, and Paris, and Prague.
I think of life. And then of death. And then I take my breath and slowly, between my lips, breathe one into the other.
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