This is a powerful picture for me. It scares me just like the cell scared me. The picture is taken in the Museum of Hostages. A small jail/cell block preserved next to a manor in an idyllic rolling hills-pasture-land-setting. The faculty wanted us to see this place.... a series of cells where the German gestapo crammed 20-30 people in the space equivalent to a large walk-in closet. From here Jews and non Jews were either shipped to concentration camps or simply taken outside and chained to the beautiful birch trees and shot.
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The place is grim. There is graffiti on the wall. A clock with hands pointing to 1pm. Names, prayers, quotes, pictures.....gougings. In each room, artifacts are placed on a small display: handcuffs, pictures....articles....helmets...bayonets....metal drinking cups.
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I went into cell #4 and froze. The display in this room had pictures from book about a concentration camp. I "recognized" the pictures.
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I grew up in Chicago and lived in a large apartment building. My grandparents owned the building and lived on the first floor. We had two apartments ...the 2ND floor and the basement and so my grandparents place was a passage between our dual living areas and like any kid a natural place to snoop.
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One day while snooping in their main closet I came across a book. It had a faded red cover and was in Polish. I opened it and immediately became frightened by what I saw. The book had pictures of skeleton-like people who were somehow still alive and standing. On other pages there were pictures of these skeleton people dead and heaped into piles. There were pages with pictures of faces, faces of women and men standing in line for something. I put the book back...but for the next couple of weeks....I would return and study the pictures. Each time the pictures got easier to look at....but each time I became more frightened at something I didn't understand.
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My grandfather caught me in the closet...sitting against the back wall ....studying...the book. He yanked it out of my hands and told me it was not a children's book. "Who are these people?" I asked him.
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"Jews."
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But that information didn't resonate with me. In my Catholic grammar school, Jews were folks who seemed to have...in children's terminology/ideology....missed the bus. As if everyone was standing around, the bus came....and a group of folks decided it was not the right bus and would wait for the next one. The Sisters seemed to be present Jews as stubborn folks......folks who had a chance at Jesus but preferred to wait for someone/something else they would like better. This inherently did not seem to me to be a big deal....yet it somehow was.
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I remember going back to the closet and this time when I studied the faces I felt a deep fear. The people all looked like they could be part of my family. Uncle Zigmund (all adult friends and relatives were called aunt or uncle) looked like the man at the beginning of the book. Aunt Clara looked like a woman in line. Did I look any different than some of the little girls?
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I guess it was my first experience with evil....of realizing that people would do harm...horrific harm ....for no logical reason....and if harm or death could be handed out based on no reason.......couldn't someone make up a rule that would eliminate me or my family based on something they didn't like? Perhaps all blonds would be considered evil or all people with a certain type of nose could be declared unworthy of living and destined for elimination.
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Seeing the familiar concentration camp pictures in the cell....transported me back to that early introduction to a particular madness....which could spread to others simply by being near it.
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I left the cell and walked outside onto the gravel path near the pasture.
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Bells were ringing....small tinkling bells.... I realized, after a few minutes, they were cow bells....innocent high-pitched bells ringing over the hillside....and it made me feel the fear again....how could madness come to such an inherently beautiful place?
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And if these valleys and green hills and distant snow -capped Alps and meadows and early spring flowers couldn't stop evil....what could?
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I didn't have an answer.
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