The barracks lie side by side. The boilers are silent. Smoke that billowed out from the chimneys ceased some 80 years ago. Auschwitz camps are silent. Soundless whispers of graffiti scrawled on walls resonate without being heard; the inherent message is lost to the world beyond yearly observances.
King Charles has commissioned a group of painters to ink on canvas the horror most of them have never seen. Their views depend on whatever the few survivors of the Nazi pogrom can muster up from memories that have faded but not snuffed out.
Six million Jews were systematically murdered. Emasculated bodies were dumped in mass graves; others were gassed to death and reduced to ashes in the boilers. And it was all about The final solution.
Survivors chase and continue to look for the perpetrators; decision makers and implementers, though the numbers of both the pursuers and the pursued have dwindled. The resolve too, has shifted to commemoration through museums and maintaining the Auschwitzes that remain.
They say these must remind the world of horror so as not to be repeated again. They don’t comment about similar, if not the same horrors inflicted on people around the world. Perhaps the numbers outweigh the acts. And then again, perhaps it’s the politicization that is questioned.
Bangladesh continues to avoid the learning curve for reasons unknown
Perhaps that’s why the legacy borne by Germany never translated into reparations satisfying others with an admission of guilt. The same kind of reparations that France and Belgium acceded to and the United Kingdom didn’t of their colonial misdeeds.
Similar again to what never happened in Laos, Cambodia, and Serbia by their subsequent rulers, the Pakistanis for what they did in Bangladesh in 1971.
There lies the question. Israel didn’t learn from what their ancestors went through. They failed in holding Germany to task. Bangladesh continues to avoid the learning curve for reasons unknown.
Instead, a new phenomenon is settling in. Nations can now openly transgress on others’ sovereignty based on curious historical realities or simply expand territorial existence.
Inch by inch, through economic or more insidious ways, the moves have been in place. That replaces the previous format of installing governments that suit others’ purposes.
It also dovetails with propositions of forced water agreements and one-sided transit facilities. Suddenly, military bases strategically positioned become a façade, economically unfavourable.
They are fast being forgotten. The final solution victims, the Ukrainians that died for their country, the Palestinians -- including children that never knew why. The families of those that died in the War of Liberation also don’t know why and can only cling to memories.
It’s a long and painful list of lives lost. Lives that continue to be lost because those that can prevent it don’t act.
Whether in continuing their governance, being brow-beaten, or simply because rational thought is clouded by heady egos, the preposterous continues.
The Jews don’t care to pontificate as to why they were never welcome anywhere. Had that been so, they would have come up with ways to co-exist. Their financial acumen and brilliance of mind doesn’t reflect on any magnanimity.
The Germans, pummelled into submission have since concentrated on what they do best -- engineering and economic geniuses. Their uneasy existence -- harbouring a past they can’t talk about and accepting humiliation in limits to their defensive barriers -- have left themselves largely quiet on European leadership.
The resurgence of the far-right, a group that isn’t all that apologetic about their past, has given rise to new concerns.
The smoke swirls; it’s just unseen.
Mahmudur Rahman is a writer, columnist, broadcaster, and communications specialist.