The holocaust and the power of memories

By Chido Nwangwu

It’s this solemn week of memorial, in

the Jewish homeland

Israel;

the roaring thunder of memory,

the indelible power of memories

 

Those/

memorials of the mind, etched!

expressed on the daily canvas of life

for the survivors, an instalmental life,

a life of thunderous

apparitions of industrialized murders and

industrialized incinerations

of kith and kin, of neighbor

 

Amidst all of its agonizing clarity, these years

Elie Wiesel, survivor of the Holocaust and

winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace, bore witness/

in his work titled ‘Night’ wrote these haunting words and potent promise:

 

“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed.

Never shall I forget that smoke.

Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.

Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever.

Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live.

Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.

Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself.

Never.”

 

I am awash in God’s spiritual grace,

as I bear witness on this 2020 Yom HaShoah

 

In a time like this,

In a clime like this,

In reverence to valor,

in standing up, portraits of courage, and

towering inspiration THEY become

men, women, boys and girls whose

first name should have been Courageous!

 

the foot soldiers for the

hunters of the children

of Zion

become the hunted;

 

in their own life time,

In the lifetime of their children;

In the lifetime of their grandchildren;

history’s inevitable invoice

and bills come

like thunder at high-noon.

 

Afterall, armed with 5G devices and Zoom,

the offsprings of the messengers of racism,

anti-Semitism,

of genocides,

the assorted confederacy of skinheads and neo-Nazi thugs,

the radical jihadists,

merchants of death in Nigeria called Boko Haram and

other transporters of hate,

will increase their singing

swine songs of mayhem and mechanized bigotry.

 

Alas,

to God,

in sober supplication/

in humbling reverence/

in stoic serenity/

in realistic awakening

to the nakedness of

its weaknesses; Israel and its friends  must rise

to the global moral and security architecture of

NEVER AGAIN!!

April 27, 2020

• By Chido Nwangwu