Thoughts On Remembrance

Last summer I took my 16-year old son to Auschwitz to learn about a chapter in our history and in my families history that is both horrific, sad and important to remember.

Primo Levi wrote his poem Shema in 1946, briefly after having survived almost a year in Auschwitz.
It is a stark reminder that we, generation after generation, have a responsibility to remember, and to pass on this remembrance to the generations after ours.
We are, I suppose, the last generation whose parents were born before or during the war, whose grandparents or their friends, could tell stories from exile.
The last generation, at least, to hear these stories first hand.

I wrote a little poem about that:

I’m not half the man I could have been,
perhaps even should have been.

I could have stood up every day and fought for those in need. I had the means.
I could have used my freedom to fight for those that bleed. I had the means.
I could have made greater sacrifices to plant a seed. I certainly had the means.

I’m not half the man I could have been.
perhaps even should have been.

And even though I do remember the stories told of the horrors of the holocaust
And know quite well the sacrifice of those who fight for the freedoms that are mine
And even though I have friends who paid heavy prices for their causes
And I knew enough to know to draw the line

I chose a different path

I inherited the freedom that others fought and died for
The privilege that those before me, snatched from an angry world
I never really fought for much of anything at all
Not ungratefully, I took what I was given and tried to make the best of it

I’m not half the man I could have been
perhaps even should have been

I could have screamed to the world to never forget the horrors. I have the voice
I could have stood up and yelled from my soapbox about the discrimination, the domination, the violation. I have the voice.
To remember those that fought, and failed and those that died in vain. I have the voice

But I chose a different path

I chose a different path for my children
I could have told them early of the horrors of the world.
Of the authoritarian menace and the libertarian greed
I could have shown them early what the world can also be
To those with less of the privilege we see

But I chose the easy path
I’ll protect their innocence, I said
Let them be children, I said
For their sake, I chose the easy path
Perhaps the cowards path?

I’m not half the man I could have been
Perhaps even should have been

But I am all the man I need to be
And man enough to know the privilege of never needing to be all the man I could have been

Because horrors create heroes, and I am grateful that a hero’s journey was never thrust upon me.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”, as Edward Burke apparently never said.
I believe this to be true. What I am a lot less sure of is what good men should do. and when.