By Katie Badrick (Junior)
note: I wrote this stream of conscience and mean it with respect and admiration, though my thoughts are random. But this is what I felt.I can't say what I was feeling, detachment maybe. I watched dry-eyed with a stone in my chest. Because this isn't new. This isn't sudden. I've seen this before in my head a million times. This is something everyone confronts all of the time. Although certain pictures always grab me. These emaciated skeletons on the screen, I see, they're human. Human. Everyone is a person, left deliberately, hurt deliberately, to physically atrophy into an almost lifeless form, that still contains a person. They were all people.
These images always get me, but not as first time shockers, but affirmations. Because none of this is new. I admire the creator of this presentation for being able to capture this reality and bring it to life for those who haven't thought of it before, and remind those of us who have. Emotionally reaching individuals is the key, because detachment will solve nothing. Reaching people with this horrific reality and making them realize these were people who suffered and died, not just statistics in a book, is the only hope that we have of preventing if from happening again.
But when I was watching, and after, I felt sometimes, such, I don't know, even, contempt? at those around me. Because there's a connection between what went on half a century ago across the ocean, it has a connection to every human being. Because it shows the contempt and absolute disrespect, evil, superlative there's no word for it, that people had toward their fellow beings.
And what kills me, why I sat there silently almost filling with anger, is that I see this disrespect every day. How many times have I heard males say that they thought all homosexuals should die? How often have we detached ourselves from those starving in other countries? Not even seen them. How often has someone felt they were worth more than someone else? How often do you hear people citing prejudice and contempt every day without even knowing that they're doing so? Because, THEY DON'T GET THE CONNECTION. THEY DON'T GET THAT WHAT HAPPENS EVERYDAY AND THAT THE EVIL, the , there's no word to describe the Holocaust, that its actions manifested from the disrespect and inhumanity and all that, which still breathes in society today.
I mean, I think that through our empathy, our goodness, our connection, thanks to this memorial, may, might be able to be, we might be able to stop it within ourselves. That's the point. To give us the knowledge that every human is a human, the same as us, with the same right to life. And we can't wait for the evil to grow out of hand, like some human cancer. We have the power to stop it now, here. Aim for the root and maybe another Holocaust won't happen.