dream

After a complicated dream that seemed to centre on the Normandy landings (commemoration of D-Day?) with sweeping vistas, close ups and obscure/anachronistic tableaux, in vivid if imprecise detail (oxymoron?), on waking I commenced a conversation with myself - no with the invisible audience if I am honest - about the vicissitudes faced by female fraternizers. The tarred and feathered. My daughter's incandescent fury at their treatment all for trying to protect and feed their children led to the consideration of The Whited Sepulchres who tried to deflect scorn from their own collaboration, who pitched on an easy target.

This led on to "This week I went to Auschwitz..." - imagining my grandson, after a government sponsored school visit, comparing his experience with that of his grandfather's. Jimmy had been part of a Royal Engineers bomb disposal squad sent in to remove booby traps et al before liberation proper could begin. They were warned that things would be bad but who can prepare you for something like that?
"This week I went to Auschwitz."
Anyway, they were led by a young captain. He collapsed and was carried out. Jimmy said he had heard the term "Green at the gills" but that was the one and only time he had ever actually seen anyone that colour. He managed to stay on his feet and finish the job - he was proud of that - but he said that afterwards nothing any human being did to another would surprise him ever again.
"This week I went to Auschwitz."
Will we, at some point, be arranging school trips to Darfur? Just to prove that whatever the horrors we learn little.
Our arrogance in the face of Josef Friezle's revelations - the Pharisaical prayer of "thank god I'm not like that"- and questioning of the Austrian psyche led me to ponder on the nature of abuse/slavery. The two are the same. I smiled wryly at our ability to look without seeing.
"This week I went to Auschwitz."
Abuse, control,slavery, doesn't have to be physical, tangible - it is an attitude of mind, of which we are ALL capable.

It is the attitude of controlling, creating dependence, manipulating anyone to suit ourselves.
It can live in a mansion, wear designer clothes, or next door with Joe Bloggs ; we can find it just as easily in deprivation and abject squalor.
Until attitudes-of-mind change slavery will continue in myriad forms and locations.
"This week I went to Auschwitz".