Deaf and Dumb

This has been a beautiful day in Houston. I stopped for a Quick lunch at a local restaurant I have visited often. My usual lunch of soup and a hamburger was as good as always. This was a usual action for me, I had no idea that it may be a trigger for reflective thought. But it did. Most of our daily actions are just habit, without alternative consideration. Occasionally this is not the case. A simple lunch? Yes, for me, but then, the mental reaction.

The landscape of the mind is a strange and wonderful world indeed. It can lead us to the solution for getting gum off of the sidewalk, (ice and a sharp spatula,) too determining the physics for putting a man on the moon and bringing him home. It can also conjure up all sorts of evil.

Today, my mind took me back to one of the many concentration camps in Europe. I thought of a starving Jew who knew he had reached the end of his life. My (taken for granted) small lunch
contained more nutrition than his emaciated body had taken in in months. The soup and sandwich may have maintained him for a few more weeks. How could this have happened in a civilized world.

What had happened to put this man and a whole race of people in this horrible situation. Had they committed a crime? no. Were they involved in a plot to attack and overthrow the Government? no, not that either. Their only crime was that they had accumulated possessions that their leader envied and wanted. They were Jews and owned things of value. After all, this was Germany, and Germany was a christian nation, (Martin Luther said so). These people were going to destroy the idea of a "one world, master race.

The trains ran day and night to keep the ovens fueled. Men, women and children, riding too their death, while starving, and living in their own waste. Why would my mind take me back to this time? Not a pleasant thought on a nice March day in Houston. I know why, it's because I have never been able determine how it could happen, how?

It was so easy because people like to have something, or someone, to hate. The propaganda machine of the press and radio spewed out the foul message from morning to night. The people cheered when their leader would speak for hours giving justification for his nations actions.
As the prisoners were being told to be sure to tie their shoestrings together and remember the number of the hook their clothes were hung on, preparations were being made to eliminate a race of people. The very race of which their God was proclaimed to be a member.

As their gold teeth were pulled, their hair cut for winter clothing padding for the troops, (we must support the troops) and the ovens called for more, where were the critics? I guess no one knew. No one wanted to know.

Very cleverly crafted lies doomed a whole people to the anguish of humiliation and an early death. Murdered by the insanity of the notion of superiority. Did we not hear the screams? Our neighbors, gone in a flash, I wonder how we can ever be forgiven. Yes, I know, we were not there. Yes we were. We are all products of the same human race and are responsible. As Hemingway said "Ask not for whom the bell tolls, The bell tolls for thee.". If only the laws would have been enforced, but, they were canceled. The people approved.

The Catholic church knew and approved, better than communism, so they said nothing. The Swiss knew, but millions in never to be claimed Jewish wealth was in their banks, besides, they were neutral. Italy knew, and joined in the greedy war for power.

I, and my generation, will soon be gone and no one will remember. Perhaps it's best, because we know,---It can never happen again, at least, not here.