I cannot imagine why I only heard of this until now. Now, when I complain of having to deal with sleepless nights memorizing the polygonal structures of nucleic acids--where the nitrogens are located or how they are numbered in the different purines and pyrimidines--or why I am encumbered in doing all the stuff that the younger I was fond of or who Lawrence of Arabia is and what he has to do with microbes in a crossword puzzle. I have witnessed sufferings of losing a loved one, of enduring three hours of worthless clips reeling in front of me so my money would not be wasted, of children reeking with sewage smell touching the hands--but unfortunately, not the lives--of passersby. I might have felt the excruciating disappointment of a boy discombobulated by a test that would determine his grade. I might have inherited the curse of my dad reading and reading and reading and preparing only to find out he is a percent away from being a lawyer (Yes, my dad took the bar twice!). I remember Job talking back to the Almighty, having the courage and the strength to question the Lord in His intimidating presence, after he was stripped of almost everything. Yet I was shocked to have heard of Elie Wiesel's account of the annihilation of the Jews by the Nazis in Night, and even more shocked that I have learned of this only now--no thanks to school.
I was never interested in history, it, being full of facts: names, dates, places, etc. History can never be fully learned as it's continuing by the littlest fraction of the nanosecond (what's littler than yoctosecond?) at almost everywhere inhabited on earth. But I have to blame all the makers of the curriculum since I was nursery up to now because they hadn't included--or emphasized, if I wasn't listening too well--the Nazis in World History. The first time I must have heard about them was in Sound of Music when it was all about gladness and joy and mirth and singing and favorite things. And now, we've met again. Only this time, the Nazis are more morbid.
Jews living in Sighet were transported to hell-like camps, where morbidity rates were almost a hundred percent. They were forcefully hanged, burned, beaten to death, starved, exhausted. Elie Wiesel, a survivor of such atrocities, narrates: how Jews, even the infants, were lined up to their deaths like they were stacked on a conveyor belt leading to a furnace; how some had to dig up their own graves; how a hungry man stealthily and quickly ran toward a pot of boiling soup as though he were a greedy leprechaun who has seen a pot of gold only to be shot, face flat on the soup. They also abode to "Survival of the Fittest": sons betrayed fathers only to selfishly survive, the healthier ones battered the sicklies for a morsel of bread, the wide-awake train passengers attempted to throw out corpses and even those who were sleeping so they'd have adequate space on board. One lesson that I will never forget is how man, intelligent as he is, improvises: not given any food or water, a guy tried crunching snow so as not to be dehydrated. Several others followed suit. And to think I don't even like cold water.
Let this be a lesson to people who'd love to spend tens of thousands just to throw snowballs. Knowing that deprived people resort to snow for food as though it is manna coming down from heaven, never again will I see snow as something miraculous, as something to be wished for. I'd rather have my brocolli.
