Ruth Sarah Lax LO30136

From: ACampnona@aol.com
Date: 04/22/03


'this above all, to thine own self be true.'
Polonius.

"They expect the worst -
they do not expect the unthinkable."
Charlotte Delbo

"The three victims mounted together onto the chairs.
The three necks were placed at the same moment within the nooses.
"Long live liberty!" cried the two adults.
But the child was silent.
"Where is God? Where is He?" someone behind me asked.
At a sign from the head of the camp, the three chairs tipped over...
Then the march past began. The two adults were no longer alive. Their tongues
hung swollen, blue-tinged. But the third rope was still moving; being so
light, the child was still alive...
For more than half an hour he stayed there, struggling between life and
death, dying in slow agony under our eyes. And we had to look him full in the
face. He was still alive when I passed in front of him. His tongue was still
red, his eyes were not yet glazed.
Behind me, I heard the same man asking:
"Where is God now?"
And I heard a voice within me answer him:
"Where is He? Here He is--He is hanging here on this gallows..."
That night the soup tasted of corpses."
(Wiesel, p. 72.)

'this above all, to thine own self be true.'
Shakespeare

(The universally known ethic espoused as, 'this above all, to thine own self
be true.' was uttered through the 'figure' of Polonius who, according to my
friend John Moore, was as, "slippery and untrustworthy a character as one
could wish for." (Between Image and Reality)

"It can happen, and it can happen everywhere. I do not intend to nor can I
say that it will happen...it is not very probable that all the factors that
unleashed the Nazi madness will again occur simultaneously but precursory
signs loom before us...It only awaits its new buffoon (there is no dearth of
candidates) to organize it, legalize it, declare it necessary and mandatory,
and so contaminate the world."
Levi, Drowned, (pp. 199-200.)

For Ruth Sarah Lax
Auschwitz Birkenau

Andrew Campbell

-- 

ACampnona@aol.com

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