Dancing

The building of a dance hall on this most austere, and even sacred place where virtually millions died anonymous and cruel deaths underscores the very heart of what the holocaust was about: some may think it was about faith and religion(it was certainly that); some may think politics, it entered in, some may claim economics, it was central; but the Shoah or Holocaust and what happened at Auschwitz was only possible because of who we are, and who we allowed ourselves to become. And who we will once again come to be, if it is not realized.

The Fall

Merchandising Souls

And they were merchandised. Merchandised to such a hopeless end that it has seldom been matched since time began. First, before arriving, their incomes were taken away and their businesses and vocations; enriching the National Socialists. Then, their finances were ransacked: bank accounts , insurance policies, savings, and property. When that was not enough for insatiable appetites, their homes and belongings were confiscated and sold to the highest bidder: when they were deported they were allowed to take no more than approximately 50 pounds of luggage/belongings. As they arrived at Auschwitz and other camps, the few remaining items were taken from them including clothing and shoes. Then, their spouses and children were taken, leaving an entire nation of sheep for Nazi slaughter, robbed of hope and identity. One would think that merchandising of the Jews and others could go no further than that, but ingenuity, as they say, is the mother of invention.

They still had their bodies, and this became a concern to an adversary who passionately, hatefully and violently wished to consume them until there was nothing left. They could still be noble and dignified in suffering, so knowledge of it was taken away. Their purity and innocence was raped; they were robbed of privacy and modesty and health. The Orthodox Women's hair was their crown of glory: it was shaved and marketed as hemp to be made into rope. Their labor was stolen and used for free to build the atrocity of the Third Reich: it was to become the Land without Jews, built as Europe had been, on their backs, times and talents. Consuming Jealousy will not rest. They took their names, that they would not be known: at best all were required to take the name Jakob or Sarah, at worst, the blue number tattooed on their arms served to further turn them to stone and leave them without relationship. When there was virtually nothing left; the National Socialists and the ones who looked the other way took the gold from their teeth for the war effort, the fat was rendered from their bodies for soap, their skin was used for leather goods, their bones used for anatomical skeletons in universities; and when only cremation was possible, their ashes were sent when possible back to their families who were forced to pay for their burial costs.^{1,2,3 ,4}

Many will read of the horrors and decry them as past: it will not happen again, it was a particular group of monsters we would like to think are gone from the earth, but that despotic giant has taken on many faces in History. We know, though but for circumstances, we are all those monsters. A Jewish survivor at Nuremberg was reported to have wept openly during the trials of the war criminals. When asked if he was suffering because of the memories, he replied to the effect, that no, he wept because he realized that for the grace of God, we could all be either the despots or the victims. The plumbline runs through each human heart.

The Dance

We all have our own Auschwitzs we are willing to dance upon, for the sake of our own comfort, agrandisement, and enrichment. We will look the other way, ignoring the pain we cause in and to others, even to the point of leaving them robbed and in despair. We minimize their pain, that our ease may be full. We will some times go on for years, desolating another soul, so that we can pretend to be something we are not. We always expect the end of this to be the comfort of our lives, and for our victims of every race color or creed to fade away, at which point we hope to rest. Rest never comes. Instead we constantly find more voracious ways to nail the door shut, as our victims do not die but restlessly. We neither end up with what we wish to have, nor can enjoy it; we live as Pilates with washed hands that do not come clean.

While this point may seem a diversion from the topic, it is not. Auschwitz did not begin with the massive trains and deportations and krema, it began in the heart of one isolated individual and a few friends in the 20s, who was willing to sacrifice an entire nation for his desires. Overlooked at first, he rose from an obscure dark semi-intelligent man to a dictator of ceasar-like qualities in 5 years, between 33 and '38. We cannot fight an Auschwitz once it is in place, because the battle has grown beyond hearts: we can fight the battle, though, when it first rises in our hearts. We can make decisions not to merchandise another human being, no matter how noble the cause,as means to an end. Many leave a legacy of riches and monuments which they obtained by the desolation of other souls, hoping to be found noble. Far fewer leave a legacy of refusing to harm or have worldly success at the expense of another. Alone you will never fight a tyrannical army darkening a continent, but you can at the vertex of a decision in your life to do right instead of wrong, change the course of history.

Was the Discotheque built on the graves of mothers, fathers and children? Can we see it as not differing from wanting someone to dance on the grave of our parent or child? We can choose not to harm, even if it is at our expense. We can choose not to allow another to suffer an indignity at our hand. We can refrain from profiting from suffering, even if it is in a mundane choice of not purchasing from someone exploiting the vulnerable people and children in the world. Little choices will be swept away in memory and histories compared to grand expensive endeavors, but small choices could have stopped a war, and saved over 65 million persons in WWII. Solzhenitzen tells the story in the Gulag Archipelago of a doctor imprisoned with him who was given the opportunity to conduct surgery on a cruel guard. If he let him die on the table, many would be saved extreme cruelty. If he let him live, he knew he might be killed by an inmate. The Doctor, a Christian proceeded in honor, he did his best as a physician, even to someone he hated and who hated him. He died in a prison cell, the victim of violence, never knowing if his life or name would be remembered. He did not know before he died that the soul observing his action, his small choice would become a Nobel Prize Winner who would singlehandedly alert the world to the atrocity of Soviet Prison camps: that man was Solzhenitzin.

We choose to build nightclubs on a Graveyard to make money, and we choose to forego dancing again that another person might be delivered suffering in perfect love. We kill to get what we want, we die to let another go on living. There will always be the two. Some will dance upon the graves of the victims of Auschwitz in this lifetime, and others, by choice will also Dance on Auschwitz in Eternity, where Death has lost its Victory. We either choose that dance, or it is chosen for us.

Danse Macabre

The Fall

Merchandising Souls

The Dance