Every Day, All Day Humiliation at Auschwitz

 

Auschwitz-Birkenau latrine

On my return visit Auschwitz in July of this year, I saw things I missed or forgot I saw on my first visit in 2017.  

In 2017 I was overwhelmed by the scale of the camp--so many people murdered, so many German soldiers and civilians running the camp.  

One of the horrible sights was the latrine in a barracks at Birkenau.  The guards herded the inmates to the latrine. They used the latrine together, dozens at a time. The guards used a stopwatch.  When time was up, the inmate had to get up or be beaten.  

When I try to imagine how horrible life truly was I think of times when I lived and worked in close quarters large groups of men--the Army and Teamsters loading docks.  One lament common to both places was, "Can't I take a shit in peace?"  

No one wants to be rushed in a latrine.  

And even men I have known who care little for privacy would occasionally want "to shit in a latrine with a door."

When I was on German gunnery ranges in the 1970s, some of the ranges had a place we called a "Make A Buddy" Shitter.  It was an outhouse with two boards with three holes connected by a narrow floor space.  When it was full, three men sat on each side facing each other with interlaced knees.  The inside guys had to wait until the outside guys were done to get out.  Sometimes men would wear their gas masks to use that latrine.  

And yet, these laments of dock workers and soldiers hardly touch the deep humiliation of prisoners in Auschwitz and other concentration camps forced to use latrines on a stop watch.  

The Nazis who marched in Charlottesville represent the very same things as the guards at Auschwitz. They see me and everyone who is not in their tribe as less than human. Nazis are never "fine people." We can never have peace with a government that tolerates Nazis. We are fortunate to be delivered from a government that numbers all American Nazis among its voters.

Nazi and rebel flags together at Charlottesville, 

both flags represent the losers in racist wars.

 

Seven Years Ago Today: Ironman Finish Six Minutes Before Midnight

 

My wife and I crossed the start line at 7:20 a.m. I crossed the finish line at 11:54 p.m. after 16 hours and 34 minutes of swimming, riding and running a total of 140.6 miles. My wife finished an hour before me.

Seven years ago today, I did my first, last and only triathlon. It was the Louisville, Kentucky, event.  That day, like today in Pennsylvania, the temperature was in the mid-90s with 90% humidity.  

Since that very long day, I had a knee replaced, lost partial use of my left arm.  I will never do another Ironman, but I am very glad I did the one I finished seven years ago today.

I have written several blog posts about the Ironman. They are here.

Vital and Urgent Priorities in America's Place in the World

 

At the center of the book "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" the author says we must learn to separate the Vital from the Urgent and live our lives taking proper care of both. The reason we can't is the tyranny of the urgent. 

When there is a fire on the stove we have to put it out before we can think about remodeling the kitchen to be more efficient. Social media makes the urgent loom much larger than Stephen Covey could have imagined when he wrote his book. I can see and sympathize with the urgent plight of the people of Afghanistan. 

But America also needs to keep its commitments to other allied nations, and I would add to fix prior betrayals. What America has done to the Kurds in the last three decades needs to be fixed. It does not have the videos of the current crisis, but we left the Kurds in Iraq to be gassed and slaughtered by Saddam Hussein in 1991. Our failed "nation building" strategy left the Kurds isolated in 2003 and after. Then the last President betrayed the Kurds in Syria after one phone call with Erdogan. Unlike the current President, he was not surprised by events, he did not give a fuck about the Kurds or any commitment we made to them. 

And while we focus on Afghanistan while showing the world we are incompetent, what happens to Taiwan? Does China think we would come to Taiwan's aid? And Ukraine? What would stop Putin from moving into Ukraine in force? The Baltic states have authoritarian Belarus and Russia as neighbors to the east and increasingly authoritarian Poland to the south and west.