These words are from the pen of Amy Bloom as she describes the peaceful, voluntary death of her husband, holding his hand as he began the "long journey of miles and miles of nought", legally, via Dignitas in Zurich. It did not matter that there was a belief or not of "miles of nouhgt" versus an afterlife. Only the dignity which should be accorded to a person dying, in pain, via a painless, more dignified ending of that journey through life.
There are many examples of the beliefs of one being imposed on another. Abortion choice. Homophobia - personified so gracelessly via DeSantis, our quickly upcoming fascist. In fact, it is so entangled with his other cockeyed beliefs that one cannot see exactly where sanity and insanity merge. Black history is to be banned because it teaches "queer theory", or intersectionality, or whatever bizarre idea runs through his bizarre mind which then finds new homes in the sadly confused minds of others. As it washes through these people, it becomes more and more of a real life threat, as books, ideas, inventions, philosophies, teachers, and all people are targeted for their opposition to this backwards, dangerous trend in the life of the world today.
Much, much worse than the spouting of these ideas, these vitriolic words which are part and parcel of the adherents of the New Fascism, is the transference from words to deeds. To a repetition of history most vile and unspeakable. Yet speak of it we must if we are to prevent further growth of this already burgeoning poisonous tree and its deep, long, twisted roots lurking beneath the surface.
In two days, on January 27, 78 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, these ideas remain alive and well and thriving. Still too strong. Still too appealing to haters. Still clinging to life, a life receiving new infusions of energy, money, of blood, every damned day! Even here in Palm Beach County, in West Palm Beach, in Boca, we are living with the growing presence and poison of antisemitism, of Holocaust denial, of a virulent hatred of Jews, as new hate groups arise, as well as groups formed to combat this poisonous contamination of humanity.
However, our efforts to combat this hate, this erasure of names from life - not numbers, but real, once living, thinking, breathing, laughing people, well, they are failing abysmally. It is a story of a sour history returning again and again, never to die, always to rise and infect. In the UN, the Yad Vashem Book of Names is to be opened, 4,800,000 names - so sadly incomplete. Families with no one left in life to recall them, to name them, to demand that their existence be validated, their death mourned and the enabling philosophy to be ripped asunder, its roots torn out of the psyche of humanity. I, along with so many, too many others will type our list of names which burn in our hearts and validate our emotions, our histories awash in blood and the blackness of hate.
Will it bring them back to life? No. Most definitely not. However, these victims will be recognized as people, with names and histories, with hopes and dreams, with anguish as their loved ones were stripped away and their own humanity denied. So I will type those names of mine, made ever more real as research has uncovered pictures, stories, their very humanity, new relatives who looked my mom, or resembled my dad. No longer part of a vast incomprehensible mammoth crowd, but individuals.
Real people. Dying people, entering the long journey of miles of nought way before death freed them from their pain. They are people, my great aunt trudging on a death march, cousins gassed, beaten, burned, shot, tortured to death.
My great grandmother 'disappeared', her greatly advanced years earning her no mercy, her death never confirmed as to exact day of death. Known to be, as one minute she was there and the next gone. Was she killed in the streets as she searched for food and water, for medicine for ailing, dying loved ones? Or was she ripped from her barely there shelter, or from a street where she might have been existing?
Was it on the train in the brutal world of the cattle cars, or of starvation and illness in the ghetto of Lvov or did she 'survive' till she reached the belching flames of hatred in the notorious extermination camp Belzec. We might never know exactly, but death was certainly her fate, a death drowning in hate, in spilled blood, and her name and history live on in me. In the diminutive 'Esterke' my grandmother, my Bubbie, used to call me. Did she see her mother in me? Did I cause her pain every time my name was mentioned? I hope not, for I dearly loved her and my Zaydie who lost over 200 members of his family in one brutal mass "Holocaust of Bullets" in the summer of 1942.
Such was the "long journey" of theirs. Such is the long journey we all live today. One official, a pretty good guy for the most part, said, “These people are not coming from Palm Beach County They’re coming from outside of Palm Beach County bringing their hate to us,” ... “We are a diverse, peaceful, loving and welcoming community, but we don’t welcome their hate.”
This isa denial of truth, a hopeful, but useless and dangerous thought. It is not the stranger, but the neighbor. It is not the acquaintance, but the once best friend, family friends. These are the perpetrators of violent death, of criminal behavior, of uncaring cruelty. Not the stranger - and that makes it even more dangerous and infinitely sadder.
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