Monday Morning Musings:
“Art is the lie that helps us see the truth.”
–Pablo Picasso
“For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living. He has no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory. To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.”
–Elie Wiesel, Night
We went to see Son of Saul
It was International Holocaust Remembrance Day,
January 27.
On this date in 1945, Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau,
The Nazi death camp.
“Work will set you free.”
Free from living
That is,
Cessation
Extermination
Six million or more
The theater was not full,
But there were small groups of people
And one or two by themselves
More people than we usually see at “foreign” movies.
Many of them were elderly–
Meaning older than us–
And I wondered if any were survivors.
Would this trigger memories
Of past horors?
Some seemed surprised the film was subtitled,
And I hoped they knew what it was about.
Saul was a sonderkommando
One who ushered in new victims
Lead them to the “showers,”
Listened to their cries
Carted away their bodies
Sorted the objects they left behind
Shoes here
Gold there
Hair in the bags
A boy still breathes
The Nazi doctor kills him.
No one is to survive.
But how did it happen
That he escaped death?
The doctor wants to know.
I wonder how a doctor
Pledged to help others
Could be an executioner.
I watch the movie.
My eyes do not leave the screen
Though my body
Curls up protectively
Arms hugging chest–
Yet I know this is only a movie,
A depiction of the evil that was
But nothing like the reality,
Hell on earth
And if there is a devil
He surely was there
Watching humans destroy
The bodies and souls of others.
I wondered if my husband would say,
“What did you make me watch?”
But after, he agrees it was a powerful movie.
I keep thinking of the actor’s face,
Even now a month later.
Blank, stoic, yet haunted
How did he convey so much
While saying so little?
The sonderkommandos could not display emotion
Could not
Would not
Crack–
Till they did.
The movie focuses on his face,
Much of the action is blurred behind him.
We hear speech and yells,
German, Yiddish, Hungarian
The barking of dogs
The camera does not show or embrace the violence.
Master directors know it’s not necessary.
Remember the shower scene in Psycho?
It is enough to hear the cries and banging on the door
To see the blood scrubbed from the floor.
We know what has happened.
The sonderkommandos really did plan
And execute an uprising.
Executed some Nazis.
Were executed themselves.
Some by other inmates upon liberation.
They were considered collaborators.
But I can’t judge them.
Who knows what we would do in their situation?
They left papers, recently found.
The Scrolls of Auschwitz,
Buried in a crematorium
Mostly from Crematorium III
There were several, you know
More than one necessary
Because
The death factory ran full time,
Day and night.
Some pages faded with moisture and time
But others still legible
Record transports and mass killings
Record
How people were duped
Record the planned uprising
Record the horror
And show that some hoped others
Would learn what happened there
So that it would not happen again.
I think of people here
Now
In the present
“We like his plain talk,”
They say
Embracing the hate-filled speech
Of demagogues.
Build walls
Keep out the foreigners
Us, not them
Whoever they and them are.
I read the words of supporters
Tweeting out hateful messages against
People of color
Women
Jews
Muslims
Kill them
Rape them
Question the abolition of slavery
I shudder at the ignorance.
People who have no knowledge of history.
People who do not understand the Constitution
Or the role of the president
Do not understand
Separation of powers
Civil rights or
The hard fight for freedom
That they would destroy
In the name of what they call
“Liberty.”
Liberty to hate others
Is what it seems to me.
Crazy world
Crazy times.
Mass killings
Mass rapes
Nanking
Cambodia
Rwanda
Kosovo
Guatemala
And more,
Killing fields
Endless numbers
Men, women, children
Destroyed.
My husband and I do not go to eat
After this movie
It seems wrong
Disrespectful somehow
Our stomachs clenched
Our minds jumbled
Trying to comprehend
Mass atrocities
But we stop for coffee to talk
To discuss the movie
To decompress
To see the truth in art
To discuss life
To bear witness in some small way
To the survivors
And
To those who were killed
For no reason
Other than their religion,
Their sexual orientation,
Their ethnic origins.
It is still happening
And I don’t have an answer
Except to say
I stand against hate
Will you stand with me?
“Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred.”
–Elie Wiesel, Millennium Lecture, April 12, 1999. Read the speech here.
Son of Saul won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language film last night.
Further Reading:
Fresh Air Episode discussing Son of Saul
Yesterday and today: Merril's historical musings 