Dear Friend and Reader:
WHEN I RETURNED from Poland with my photos of the Auschwitz concentration camp complex, Fe Bongolan (who now writes in this space) urged me to publish the series sooner rather than later. This was during the congressional race of 2006, and she felt that this information needed to be in public consciousness prior to people having an opportunity to vote. I began the series, which lasted about two weeks, on Oct. 4, 2006, two years ago yesterday. I did notice that it was St. Francis Day. I felt a little safer telling these stories with someone watching over me.
We may ask why it’s necessary to document Holocaust after what seems like so long. This was a 13 year phase of world history during which an advanced industrial nation set up a philosophy of hatred and a system of death camps, and executed between 12 and 20 million people from throughout Europe. There was a religious agenda — some six million of those killed were Jews.
There were other agendas; another six million were simply anyone, though the German Reich had a particular hatred of the Sinti and Romany people — the Gypsies. Official estimates of how many people were killed seem to stop at about 12 million. I feel it was probably a lot worse, and there was a terrible aftermath that came with Stalin after Russia occupied many previously German territories. Many of the Nazis who had taken the lives of camp victims were themselves put in camps and executed after the allies handed over the territory to them.
I recognize that by posting this series, I am making an implied warning that we are heading for a similar situation at this point in American history no matter who is ahead in the polls. It’s not really that simple. I am in the first instance making a comment about what happened so recently and so nearby, and which therefore exists in potential today. I am also making a comment about what humans — the civilized kind, who get educations, pay taxes and wear clean clothes — are capable of: the abject disregard of life and allowing some horrendous inner shadow of humanity to take them.
And yes, I am saying that the American regime has spread its sadism onto every part of the world, currently and most recently Iraq, and that it’s running out of places to terrorize. I propose for this reason that we take note that we may be next. Depending on how you interpret the events of the past eight to 10 years, that next may have begun quite a while back.