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| A Holocaust Memorial at Minsk |
THE DEATH OF HITLER’S BODYGUARD LEAVES A HAUNTING MEMOIR IN CONTRAST WITH THE SOULFUL TESTAMENT OF INNOCENT JEWS WHO NARROWLY ESCAPED HITLERS MURDEROUS GRASP!
I won’t take time to read articles about Hitler anymore; I figure that by now any intelligent person fully understands the blemish on human rights he represents. As a Black American man I feel an intimate kinship with the struggle of the Jewish people and I have no problem saying that I consider then to be my brothers in struggle…
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| Millions of Jews were buried in mass graves after being murdered at Nazi concentration camps. |
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| U.S. and Allied forces uncovered mass graves after the war. |
Yet I was deeply troubled, yes… and alarmed when I happened upon this article as it popped up on my browser, the very first internet experience of my day. The article documented what they referred to as, “The death of Hitler’s devoted bodyguard” and I paused to imagine how this man, who died today at age 94, had come to peace with himself.
As I read further the article mentioned the man named Misch had published his memoirs in 2008. I shuddered to imagine what those pages might contain but resolved that perhaps they might hold, if nothing else, some historical value if they were not the twisted invention of a disillusioned, Nazi aesthete inventing reality in the absence of credible witnesses. My heart wept as it pondered the question or circumstance allowing such a man to live to a ripe old age whilst innocent infants, children, mothers and fathers were cruelly executed no doubt in the presence of this man…
Recovering I read on to this point which I shall quote, not paraphrase so that whoever reads this article will get the full dose as I did:
“In a 2005 interview with The AP, Misch recalled Hitler as "a very normal man" and gave a riveting account of the German dictator's last days before he and his wife Eva Braun killed themselves as the Soviet Red Army closed in around their bunker in Berlin.
"He was no brute. He was no monster. He was no superman," Misch said.”
I could not read any further than this, this was all my spirit could take. I recalled a room in The National Holocaust Museum I visited with a Jewish friend. That room contained photographs of an entire village of Jews who were murdered in a German Concentration Camp located in Poland, (this correction was made to clarify that the Polish people were not administering the concentration camp). I wept while standing in that room and when I walked further to a room containing one of the actual railroad cars used to transport Jewish families to their doom I froze in absolute horror and despair!
So then I had got my answer. I knew how a man of 94 could have found peacefulness with himself by forcing himself to believe Hitler was not a brute, a monster or a superman… I concurred with the latter, Hitler was certainly no superman but as far as being a brute and a monster I decided it was best to let history determine and preserve those verdicts for all humanity. I knew now that deceased man now affectionately known by history as Hitler’s “devoted” bodyguard certainly shared his master’s zeal for murder justified by racist notions used to dehumanize the Jews. His memoirs will stand as a singular feather weighed against the bones of millions of Jews cast into mass graves. The thousands of videotaped accounts of surviving Jews will outnumber his, the choir of them will drown his printed words and in the fields of the dead their torches will outshine his. Their collective stories will be preserved by history many thousands of years from now and his shall have been forgotten… I asked myself if I could mourn this man’s death in a different way that I mourned his life. Looking to his memoirs I mourned that he may have died without comprehending the great evil of which he was a part that he might have perished not being able to separate men from their deeds and put them together again. I mourned that he might have died fighting truth, clinging to pride, failing to acknowledge the unifying, expiating grace of humility…
As a lesson in human nature, I learned that very moment how important the truth is as measured against the brevity of a single life. It is inevitable that we will die so it is of utmost importance how we die. Our truth, our final truth and our final peace are the keystones of both our life in this world and our death to it. There is no road more personal, more exclusive than that of life leading to death. And as one of the greatest architects of all time, Frank Lloyd Wright said, “Pay attention to the terminals”!
Written by David Vollin
Administrator: FOR THE BROTHAS: VIRTUAL, INTELLECTUAL SALON
WWW.FORTHEBROTHAS.BLOGSPOT.COM
GALLERY OF RELATED IMAGES:
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| Bodies recovered from concentration camps. |
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| Nazis burned Jewish copses in these crematoriums and many Jews were reported to have been cremated alive. |
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| Jewish men in Nazi Concentration Camps. |
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| Imagine the indignity of women old and young being forced to stand nude with strangers before being executed. |
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| Add caption |
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| A mass grave |
There were only Nazi German concentration camps. My Polish Catholic relatives perished in them as well. Please correct this error immediately. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteAs you seem to have a lot of knowledge on the matter of Nazi Germany crimes, I would appreciate if you could correct the phrase "Polish concentration camp". For those of us who know history, we understand that you're referring to the location of the camp. Those who have no knowledge of history are very likely to understand that the camps were Polish and run by Poles when in fact they were built and run by Germans in German occupied Poland and the same number of Poles perished there as Jews. Many thanks.
ReplyDeleteDear Sir
ReplyDeleteI Really have a problem with the Phrase "Polish Concentration camp"
The Polish state as such had ceased to exist and bore no responsibility for the Crimes of the occupying power, In This case Nazi Germany.
a better term would be something like maybe "Nazi Concentration camp in Occupied Poland"
I'm certain you recognise this important distinction but please don't assume all your readers will come to your page with full knowledge of the issue
Many Poles were executed for giving refuge to Jewish Poles,and the 1st act of the Warsaw uprising was to liberate Jewish Prisoners of The Nazis.
Z Powazaniem
Tim Bucknall
Twitter #KresySiberia
Yes, my (non-Jewish) grandfather was captured upon Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland and forcibly sent to a slave labor camp called Mauthausen, in Austria. There, the prisoners had to carry heavy stones from the quarry, up 186 steps. Every day. He was there until liberation, from 17 to 22 years old. I don't know how he survived. The photos one sees of emaciated prisoners liberated by the Allies, as frightening as they are, are usually not of Jews. ... Those prisoners were still strong enough to walk up to the barbed wire fence and greet their liberators. To understand the complexity of genocide in Eastern and Central Europe in the 1930-1940's you could try reading "Bloodlands" by Timothy Snyder. I heard it is difficult to read more than a chapter at a time.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your observation, It was not my intention to imply that the concentration camps were administered by Poles but that Polish people populated them and/or they were located in Poland. I will make the correction and I very much appreciate your feedback, this is the reason why blogging is so important it gives the writer a chance to get valuable feedback. Again, please excuse me if I offended you it was clearly not my intention to do so or to implicate the Polish peoples for the war crimes created by German Nazis.
ReplyDeleteI revised the text immediately, I am unused to anyone actually commenting on my articles, I am glad to know that someone actually read it and I am also pleased that you all thought enough to clarify my mistake. The treatment of the Jewish peoples in Europe is a very sensitive topic for me, it was very hard for me to go to the Holocaust Museum because I knew that the story of human suffering would be immense beyond anything I had ever imagined. My fears proved accurate, but what I saw and learned there empowered me to grow from that experience, it truly took me to a higher level of human understanding and compassion...
ReplyDelete