The one event in history that affects me the most is Holocaust. I don’t remember the exact age when I learned about this horrific incident for the first. I think it was in school, in one of the history lessons, when I was in my 8th or 9th standard. There was a chapter on World War II and I had a class mate who would start muttering obscenities the instance the teacher would start talking about Hitler. I later realized he was a Jew and I can’t begin to imagine what he must be going through, reading about it, and feeling helpless about the injustice meted out to his people.
I started reading about Holocaust when I had free time at work in 2007. Not a light read, but I wanted to know all about it. From the pain, the misery, the helplessness, the cruelty everything troubled me. I would read about Dr Death (Albert Heim), Josef Mengele and his atrocities. I would read about the death march, the concentration camps, the gas chambers, and then cry. I knew what I was reading had occurred years ago, and I couldn’t do anything about it, but then I would imagine their plight, and cry again.
When we went to Washington DC, we visited the Holocaust museum. Each picture tells a story of the brutality endured by the people. There is one which shows the amount of hair collected in one of the concentration camps, and one which had the thousands and hundreds of footwear lying, each a grim reminder of the person killed. Somehow those pictures stuck in my mind, I can still see them when I close my eyes and think about it.
I wanted to watch Schindler’s list but I could never build the courage. Finally I read the book, it hit me hard. There are times when I keep imagining about the plight of the Jews in Germany. I just can’t understand how any person can brainwash entire community to kill people mercilessly. What about conscience? How could they go to sleep at night, wouldn’t they have heard the cries of people they so ruthlessly killed?
Why am I writing about this today is I kind of keep thinking about holocaust often. It’s like my imagination working overtime. There are some days the images of torture and deprivation that I have read till now, keep repeating in my head like a tape on continuous play. When I waste food or throw them away, I think about the starvation and deprivation Jews suffered, and how they used to fight for some watery soup. I know there are people even now suffering from hunger in the world, but this is the first thought that comes to my mind. It’s not that I haven’t read about Darfur or Somalia but the genocide of Jews is something that I keep remembering all the time.
So, I just thought of asking is it me alone or do you guys sometimes get this feeling too? Being overwhelmed by something happened long ago, something you had no control on and feeling helpless about it. Do you have any event in history that affects you the most??
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