the Nazis
started their invasion of Poland.
We don't have to visit the death camps
to learn what it was like for those populations.
With their eeire silences and neatly kept grass
the death camps can only yield so much to us.
The way I learnt about it was to read what it was like
in the first person, from a diary written by a Polish Rabbi.
From the 1st of September 1939, when that dreary man,
Chamberlain, declared war on Germany in funerial tones
to August 1942 Rabbi Chaim Aaron Kaplan wrote daily
and hid his writings away. He is believed to have persished
in a death camp in spring 1943, after burying his diaries.
The book is an astonishing work, written in the present tense
and covering as many days as possible, it is more accurate
and more expansive about the everyday privations
of the rights of the citizens of Poland being salami-sliced
out existence, along with the citizens themselves,
through progressively abusive new laws and customs
than you will ever want to read about. Find it here.
I read it on holiday, and I read every word.
I knew before I took it away with me that I was odd,
I had yet to realise how strange I could be.
An accurate first person account of those times
should be a tough read, and will make many shrink
from understanding because of the refusal to gloss over
how dismal life could be. But still we should mark,
read, and inwardly digest this material, to understand
how we are blessed, and keep the right side of fear.
I told my local Jehovah's Witnesses about the book
when they joined me, walking alone last Sunday.
They agreed with me-dilute second hand digests
of other people's suffering are insufficient reminders
if we want to map their inner journeys properly.
We don't have to visit the death camps
to learn what it was like for those populations.
With their eeire silences and neatly kept grass
the death camps can only yield so much to us.
The way I learnt about it was to read what it was like
in the first person, from a diary written by a Polish Rabbi.
From the 1st of September 1939, when that dreary man,
Chamberlain, declared war on Germany in funerial tones
to August 1942 Rabbi Chaim Aaron Kaplan wrote daily
and hid his writings away. He is believed to have persished
in a death camp in spring 1943, after burying his diaries.
The book is an astonishing work, written in the present tense
and covering as many days as possible, it is more accurate
and more expansive about the everyday privations
of the rights of the citizens of Poland being salami-sliced
out existence, along with the citizens themselves,
through progressively abusive new laws and customs
than you will ever want to read about. Find it here.
I read it on holiday, and I read every word.
I knew before I took it away with me that I was odd,
I had yet to realise how strange I could be.
An accurate first person account of those times
should be a tough read, and will make many shrink
from understanding because of the refusal to gloss over
how dismal life could be. But still we should mark,
read, and inwardly digest this material, to understand
how we are blessed, and keep the right side of fear.
I told my local Jehovah's Witnesses about the book
when they joined me, walking alone last Sunday.
They agreed with me-dilute second hand digests
of other people's suffering are insufficient reminders
if we want to map their inner journeys properly.
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