THIS IS WHAT NAZIS DO

Liz Johnson

In light of recent events I would like to share with you one of the most haunting photographs I have ever seen. I first stumbled upon it in a library book as a child of about ten. Until now, I have not shared it with anyone because it seemed too gruesome. Today, I think we should all look at it.

 

It is from the early 1940s in the early days of Hitler's final solution. In those days the Nazis were still working out the most efficient way of exterminating an entire race. They hadnt yet settled on Zyklon B so they sent squads of soldiers to round up Jewish people, shoot them, and then bury them in mass graves. Witnesses say that the dirt over the graves shifted for several days because one bullet was not always enough for a quick death.

 

As a child, I found myself wondering how horrible it would be to face death in that way. How much emotion and fear I might feel. But now, as an adult who works with children I cant help but think "how awful it must have been for those mothers." I can see them in my mind, naked, humiliated, and calmly waiting to be horrifically killed. Did they sing softly to their babies? Did they tell them it would be ok? I can barely stand the knowledge that it happened, but they endured it.

 

Let us NEVER forget that these terrible things that happened.

 

If you can look at that and take up a Nazi flag, then there are no "on all sides". There is no "everybody did some bad things" you are holding up an ideology that caused those women to die naked with their babies and be buried still alive in a shallow mass grave.

 

You cannot refuse to take sides here. There is no middle ground. When nine million people are murdered under an ideology its time to be done with that ideology.

Posted on Facebook by Liz Johnson
August 18, 2017