Thursday, June 23, 2011

The Holocaust

You who live safe
In your warm houses,
You who find, returning in the evening,
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 scrap 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 this came about:
I commend these words to you.
Carve 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. – Primo Levi

***

The lessons of the Holocaust must never be forgotten. The terrible cost in suffering and the countless millions of lives sacrificed even now cast a pall over history. Mankind can ill afford to pay such a price again.

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