Communication
Contributions from readers who didn't object to having
their email published in Vagabond Pages.
Amadinejad at Columbia University ...,
Walking on Living Bodies ...
Sometimes I don't receive an answer to my request to publish a letter and I don't know how to interpret it. So I've decided to simplify things and not oblige readers to answer. The most recent letters are at the top of the page.
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I don't think you wrote enough about President Bollinger's rude introduction of President Amadinejad. I couldn't believe my ears when he called the President of Iran crude names. I'm sure he was under pressure from the people who donate to his university and all those who said Amadinejad should not have been invited. But he could have displayed his disapproval of the invited guest in general terms. Honestly, by the middle of his speech I thought Bollinger was making a case for George Bush to go to war against Iran! The President of the University said he invited Amadinejad to an open forum, open debate as the right and duty of a free society. He praised America and its freedom to debate to the hilt – but he couldn't trust his student audience to say EXACTLY what he wanted them to say so he said it for them. I would say he didn't trust the audience to be as smart as he thinks he is. What a tribute to American free speech.
I'd like to see Columbia University invite President George Bush to speak and then introduce him citing the failures of his presidency, throw in a few adjectives like 'ruthless bully' or 'possible dimwit'. Then open the floor for free American style debate.
Nikole
The recent news that fifty million Holocaust files from Nazi sources may be disclosed to the public in the near future awakened my personal memories: A few days ago I was lying on the grass on the city outskirts looking up at the sky. I watched the clouds, thinking of nothing in particular. I saw people walking nearby, towering over me and I felt a slight oppression; I thought I could be stepped on and then came to mind a phrase I read long ago in some document concerning the enemy. Some SS Man, I believe, said: "I don't need to go to the broads anymore; the feeling of a woman's body under my boots satisfies me." Then other memories followed; In January (1945) Dresden was bombed and destroyed by the Allies. I was 14 years old, a prisoner in the armament factory of the concentration camp Tchachwitz, part of nearby Dresden. The factory was destroyed by bombs. In the middle of the night I woke up with heavy smoke or dust in the air and I didn't know what happened. I couldn't move. I was glued to the plank that was my bed. It took me time to start moving. Probably there was heavy air pressure caused by the nearby exploding bombs. I wasn't hit by the bombing, just by the oppressing air. I had been heavily asleep and the entire escaping crowd passed without noticing me. When I was able to move, I stood and followed the noise of the crowd. I was far from the narrow door that everybody had to pass through. The Kapos were far ahead. I could only hear their slashing whips. It was so strong, so noisy, that I think it would kill a horse. The Kapos were whipping the prisoners in the front, trying to make them move faster, which was practically impossible. I don't remember if there were people behind me or if I was one of the last or the last. I advanced as fast as everybody else did but it was forcibly slow. I didn't pay attention to the fact that I was walking on something soft. I soon realized that I walked on living bodies; people moaned under our feet. All I could do was to walk on the bodies, on the bellies, on the chests, on the faces, of people who complained silently. All the rest of my memory is schematic. We reached the outside. We walked in some, perhaps subterranean, passage and we were mixed with the crowd of civilian Germans who seemed as numb as we were. I can't remember details. I don't remember when we were finally separated and we went down some steps in the smoking ruins. Somebody stole or tried to steal the cover from my back which I had automatically grabbed when I left my sleeping spot. Each cover was lifesaving and I remember that, in the total darkness, I grabbed the cap from the person in front of me. When I heard his protest I simply put it back on his head. If he survived, up to today he doesn't know what happened to him. Now it makes me laugh. Other souvenirs come to my mind that I don't want to include because they are too unrelated to what I am telling now. Still, one detail of macabre humor connects them. In another camp much before, I assisted in digging up corpses of naked executed women holding little children in their arms. The bodies were well preserved probably because of the clay ground that covered them. We were disinterring the corpses to hide the evidence because the Germans were expected to leave the area. The front was nearby, and we could hear the cannons. Prisoners were disinterring the corpses and burning them on oil soaked piles of wood. I could hear the comment, from some other prisoners: "hey, come on buddy corps-ey!" The corpses were no longer victims, just hard to handle objects. How could people be humorous in those circumstances? When the horror reached its peak people simply enter another dimension where nothing needs to be understood.
B.W. Schreiber
(Email withheld by request)
Mr. Schreiber wrote to us in 1996 and in 2001. WM
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William Markiewicz
