Friday, May 26, 2006

Memorial Day

In line with what I was talking about yesterday--about children and how they deserve the best--Oprah has had couple of very relevant shows lately.

On Wednesday Oprah featured Elie Wiesel, author of the holocaust memoir Night, and they took the cameras around Auschwitz while Professor Wiesel narrated his memories and impressions. His quiet words brought to life a horror and desperation that's difficult to grasp. But the children, o the poor, innocent children and tiny babies that perished there, wrapped in their mothers' arms...to this especially, there are no words to describe the pain.

As a mother, I can't help but try to imagine myself there--to be forced to leave my family, to be ordered at gunpoint to disrobe myself and my baby, and then get in a line to take a "shower" only to find that we were all to be mercilessly murdered. What thoughts go through your head? You've got your precious baby in your arms, you've been separated from your husband and other dear ones, and you're vulnerably naked and helpless. What can you afford to think?

Well it brings me think: how could this have really happened? and who would have done this--to babies and small children especially--millions of them. day after day after day...? My God, who? What kind of human being?

Dispicable.

Auschwitz has not only entombed millions of bodies, but it also houses mounds of baby shoes, clothing remnats, and baby suitcases. Not to mention the 67-ft-long window that separates you from the veritable hillside of shorn hair. Unbelieveable--and unspeakably sad.

To know that these kinds of atrocities still go on in the world (Sudan and others?)makes me want to stand up and do something.

But what?

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