We need to stop the bloodshed--even today.
Auschwitz today bowed its solemn head and was the scene of recrimination, sorrow and forgiveness. As the fires and candles burned overhead, an amazing scene was played out in the former Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. Former prisoners re-lived their experiences behind the cold barbed wire fences---fences guarding secrets so horrible that it beggars belief. The barrack buildings,the towering chimneys of death, the horror and the deprivation----it must have shocked the newcomer and, worse, brought back to the few survivors, the screams and the agony and the hopelessness of a people targetted by monsters. A recording of a steam engine on its way to oblivion brought gasps from the crowd as they looked at the candles flanking the same railway line which had delivered up its victims.
To compound the eerie commemoration ceremony, a heavy snowfall brought discomfort to the waiting spectators and a realisation that the poor souls of Birkenau must have felt far more discomfort in their sparse clothing, bare huts and lack of sustenance. Many of those condemned souls did not remain freezing for long.
It was sad and fitting and very depressing. It was a reminder to us not to forget man's inhumanity against man for he is indeed the cruellest animal on Earth.
We should all hope that the world can do more for the victims of Guatemala, Rwanda and Darfur, also martyrs of genocide. We should also shake our heads and wonder how it can still happen in this modern age. But it does, for the animal in man cannot be denied. It is time the First World arrived earlier on the scene rather than later!