1968.
I grew up in a little logging town in the foot hills of the Oregon
Cascades. We had a pretty decent high school. It was 1968 and
something happened that probably couldn't be repeated in a lot
schools today. I'd like to believe it could but, we were a lot closer
to the time when these horrors happened and there were a lot more
veterans still alive who saw these events with their own eyes.
We
had a new social studies teacher and bless me if I can remember his
name. He had done his stint in the army and had access to certain
film archives. Movies that were taken in the liberated concentration
camps of the Reich. I don't remember the film may have included
footage taken by the Germans. I have to hand it to them. They kept
really good records.
I
watched a documentary a few years ago that included footage of a book
used to record the deaths of prisoners who actually ended up in the
camps and weren't sent to the gas chambers right off the train.It was
crazy. Such and such a date. Such and such a time. 12 PM to1 PM
everybody died of pneumonia. Next hour everybody died of typhus. It
was crazy. The men taking the films and filling out the records
probably never realized where those films would end up. After all the
Third Reich was supposed to last a thousand years. It lasted for
twelve.
US
history was a junior year class. Seniors who happened to have study
halls during the same periods were allowed to watch too. I don't even
remember if we had to have permission slips.
I
went. I watched. I will NEVER FORGET.
To
those participants in the demonstrations in Virginia last week. You
know, the "men" with the torches, the shouts, the guns who
are now trying to claim that they aren't really Nazis. They aren't
really white supremacists. They aren't really, I don't know. Fill in
the blanks with whatever you believe to be appropriate. They were
there out of curiosity or some damn thing. You were there. We heard
the shouts. We saw the twisted faces. We saw the torches that echoed
the parades of the Brownshirts over eighty years ago.
Either
have the guts to own up to it or stay under your rocks next time.
