waywardcats | Holocaust Remembrance day (Reply)

Whatever threads destiny spins
Heads high and nerves on call
For nothing can defeat us,
If we remain just who we are.

Surface still as befits confinement,
Obliging us to obedience,
And yet within we are on our feet
in the knowledge of our own strength.

That’s why we want, as long as bearable
To bend before the force of evil,
And trustingly wait for the life
That lies beyond these barracks.

- Song written by an Austrian prisoner of Ravensbruck who was executed.

You can find this poem and others at Pat Binders 'Voices from Ravenbrueck" web gallery.

Ravensbruck was a women’s camp which sits across the peaceful Schwedt lake from Furstenburg north of Berlin. While a minority of the prisoners in the camp were Jewish, most of the women who died there were. The camp housed "undesirables" of many types, Roma women, the mentally disabled and delinquents. Set in it's beautiful location, the camp was a much desired assignment by the SS officers, who brought their families for vacations on the lake. Meanwhile, inside the camp, women were submitted to back-breaking labor with little food and savage brutality from their guards.

In 2001 I stood at the shore of the beautiful lake, looking at the village across the still water, not 50 feet from the crematorium. It's smokestacks were visible from the village. They must have known what was taking place there, just across their lake. May we never see a time like this again, but if we do, let us pledge to not sit by as it happens to others. That is my pledge on Holocaust Remembrance Day, to speak out against prejudice and injustice wherever I may see it.