From “The Lost,” a book about the Holocaust, when six million Jews and other minorities were slaughtered 60 some years ago: “And if one thinks one has lost one”s capacity for horror at the depths of human nature, consider this, from an eyewitness deposition: A terrible episode happened with Mrs. Grynberg. The Ukrainians and the Germans who had broken into her house found her giving birth … When the birth pangs started she was dragged onto a dumpster in the yard of the town hall with a crowd … who cracked jokes and jeered and watched the pain of childbirth … The child was immediately torn from her arms along with its umbilical cord and thrown. It was trampled by the crowd and she was stood on her feet as blood poured out of her with her bleeding bits hanging.””
From the NY Times, 9.21.06: “A United Nations report released Wednesday says that 5,106 people in Baghdad died violent deaths during July and August, a number far higher than reports … from the city”s morgue … Torture remains widespread, not only by death squads but also in official detention centers … some detainees showed signs of beating using electrical cables, wounds in different parts of their bodies, including in the head and genitals, broken bones of legs and hands, electric and cigarette burns … missing eyes, missing teeth and wounds caused by power drills or nails.””
I ask: How many hundreds of thousands must be killed, tortured and wounded in Iraq, Darfur, around the world and here at home; how many more must die or be crippled by starvation and preventable and treatable diseases before we declare: “The Holocaust is now!”
I say: Only you and I can change this and the change must commence, not in the Oval Office, the courts or the halls of Congress but in our homes, where war begins.
Eric Leber
Kelseyville
ericleber@mchsi.com
