It was spring of 1968. Fifty years ago. I was a senior in a small logging town in Oregon. We had a new teacher for junior year US history. He was young. He was an army veteran and somehow, some way, he had access to archive films from the end of WW II.
I suspect his students had to get permission slips. I don't know. maybe not. Seniors who had study hall were invited, I don't remember that we needed them. After all it was 1968 and there were still plenty veterans who were still around.
The films were taken in liberated concentration camps. Bodies so starved you could not tell if they were men or women being bulldozed into mass graves. Soldiers wearing masks in hope of cutting the stench.
Survivors, if you could call them survivors, huddled together. Some in scraps of prison uniforms. I could not keep looking. I could not look away. I don't remember if there was a soundtrack. What could be said anyway? Such and such a camp? So many dead? So many so far gone they wouldn't survive? So many who would wish they hadn't survived? A few would build new lives?
I haven't remembered this in years. A plague on those who voted for Trump, on those who stayed home, those who were too pure to vote for the candidate who had chance. I'd say the hell with it but I still have a sliver of hope.
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