THE SHOAH
Every year, in January the 27th, we always listen to words such as Holocaust, Jewish extermination, Memory, Auschwitz. We listen to them at home, on TV, at school, on the streets and in the media. We have seen films, read books, gone through old magazines, visited museums or heard stories by survivors. Just listen to words to bring back a series of horrible images in our mind, because each of them carries a load of pain.
But basically what does Shoah mean? The term Shoah is related to what the Jews suffered in the concentration camps and tell us about their atrocious deaths. This celebration was introduced in the UK since 2001 and the United Nations declared this day an International Event in November 2005.
So, everyone must not forget anything, because all that happened may seem so crazy now, but in a moment it could come back today, probably in a different way, especially in a time like ours, where we feel menaced by terrorists, threatened by ‘Isis, the war in the Balkans, the interminable wars in the Middle East…
Memorial Day. So what is it this day? After listening to the lesson of my English teacher Viola Maria Linda I understood the meaning of this day. We remember that the human race is One, that we are all the same, all worthy of freedom, respect, dignity, rights. Remember to make sure that it never happens again. Recall that in Auschwitz, as in all concentration camps, there were no animals, but people. Men and women. Little boys and little girls. Young and old. We spend, for all those who lost their lives, a few minutes of our time, some thoughts remaining silently. I think that despite being the day of memory people are risking of forgetting, people in the street seem to be too busy with their little problems to take some time to remember. I think this happens because we have our family, friends, a safe house to live in, so we can’t understand what happened. We complain about our problems but we have no idea how terrifying it was for all those people to “live” in the extermination camps. We can’t understand that all those people were innocent. We do not understand that they had to leave the people they loved, and that they saw people around them dying for a “yes” or a “no”. Punished only for being of a different race, for their own religion. I shudder just thinking about it. It is true that on January 27th our thoughts must go to all the victims of the Holocaust, but I think that every day there are victims of indifference and silence that kill millions of people every day. I think we are the first to kill others and ourselves, every time we close our eyes in front of wickedness, when we close our mouths in front of injustice, when we close our ears to reality. We kill, when we turn our backs to the pain of others, when we decide to be selfish and think only to ourselves. We kill, every day, when we judge who we are neeting, when we use the word “handicapped” as an offense to someone, when we consider the color of the skin a fault forgetting that our country is so rich because, throughout history, has had a huge mix of cultures.
My opinion? “DO NOT FORGET”, remember the magie words, reported in Primo Levi’s poeme, “Shema”: listen, remember, tell, engrave, act. These words perfectly summarize what every one should do to prevent this from happening again. We can’t afford to forget, we must remember, even being “irrespectful”.
During our English lessons we studied even the poem “Shema” taken out from the book “If this is a man” that was written by Primo Levi during the Second World War. He survived Aushwitz because he was in a labor camp.
The poem is made up of five stanzas, with a very simple language that immediately reaches our hearts. In this poem he wants to denounce all the injustices committed against the Jews.
You who live secure
In your warm houses,
You who return in the evening to find
Hot food and friendly faces:
Consider if this is a man
Who works in the mud
Who does not know peace
Who fights for a crust of bread
Who dies because of a yes or a no.
Consider if this is a woman,
Without hair and without name
With no more strength to remember,
Her eyes empty and her womb cold
Like a frog in winter.
Meditate that such horrors have been:
I commend these words to you.
Engrave them in your hearts
At home, in the street,
Going to bed, rising;
Repeat them to your children,
Or may your house fall apart,
May illness impede you,
May your children turn their faces from you.
As you can see each verse has its own meaning: in the first stanza it refers to the people who were quiet in their homes during the massacre of the Jews <<You who live secure in your warm houses…>>, in the second of the sufferings of the Jews <<Consider if this is a man […]who dies because of a yes or a no.>>, in the third of the sufferings of Jewish women <<Consideri f this is a woman, without hair and without name…>>, in the fourth one talks about what really happened <<Meditate that such horrors have been: I commend these words to you…>> and in the fifth a meditation addressed to all those who are asked to prevent such massacres again <<Or may your house falla part…>> .
In my opinion, what Levi wants to have us understand is the fragility of the Man who lives in a life made of simplicity, pain, despair and loneliness. I can imagine the regret of not being able to go back home and hug my family, feeling their Love. As he tells us it is our task to hand down the memory to our children.
