Forgive Those Responsible

I open my eyes, only to see death.  The water is black, the sky is black, their eyes are black.  No one moves, no one breathes.  And the only thing I can think is, "why me?"  It's selfish, I know.  But when one is faced with death, the need for life becomes pretty much the most important thing.  It's instinctual.  I only think of myself.  Scratch that, I only think of myself and the people responsible for the little girl that floats dead and blue beside me.  I hate them, and if I could scream I would.  But hate doesn't save lives, so what's the point?  Suddenly I realize that self pity, and anger, and sorrow cannot save me either.  So I mentally relinquish my hate and indignance, and pray for every person still left alive.  Including any crew left that didn't fill those boats all the way.  Or any of the rich, diamond studded women in the life boats that demand that the boats don't come back to save us.  I want every single person that possibly can to make it out of this icy emptiness.  "I forgive you," I whisper.  "Just stay alive."

A Strong People

“The camp songs were of a special type, a mixture of melancholy, sick humor, and vulgar words, a weird amalgam of Russian, Polish, and German” (12).  The Jews not only lost a lot physically, but were also drained of many of their mental freedoms.  They had to sing immoral, twisted songs, against their will, in languages that were not their own.  It sheds new light on my old ideas about the Holocaust.  We always learn about physical hardships, tortures, and atrocities.  But the guards control the prisoners down to what they said and how they said it.  Later on in the book, Wiesenthal  talks more about the singing, and includes that the askaris forced the prisoners to  “radiate contentment” as they sang (60).  The prisoners were treated like animals, sucked to skeletal size, beaten, tortured, killed in the end, and they were expected to act content?  How much can you take away from someone without driving them completely insane?  Simon came out of the Holocaust alive, but how could he ever get past what he went through?  It becomes a wonder that anyone could come out of a tragedy like that and rebuild afterward.  I guess that shows that though the Jews were beaten down to their lowest, they became tough and resilient, allowing them to rise from the terror around them and move on.  Could we have the courage to do so if it were us?