My January 27 blog referenced loss. This was the anniversary of my husband’s death, and also his father’s. It was also the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Someone asked me if I had family at Auschwitz. Being of essentially WASP background, I had to say no.
Except…
With an event of such magnitude, how can we not all be related?
One my father’s side I represent the British Isles…Scot, English, possibly some Irish. We are the Hendersons of Glencoe,. That would be the ones who decided to leave without fighting, or so I’m told. Be that as it may, and it was so very long ago, we are also kin to those Scots who were slaughtered at Culloden in a brutal attempt at domination.
On my mother’s side, I’m American Indian. Choctaw to be more specific. My mother was born in Oklahoma and there’s a saying: if you’re born in Oklahoma and you’re not part Indian, you’re lying. Again, something told to me. And certainly the white folk on this side of ‘the pond’ can’t have much pride in how they treated those who were different.
Fact is, I’m a mutt with delusions of grandeur. After all on one side my ancestors were landed gentry in Merry Olde England. On the other side? There’s some German immigrants and an Indian lady named Liza Blue. I hear there’s also a horse thief and a scoundrel. The horse thief might have been on the more refined side of the pedigree.
Even so.
When something as brutal as the concentration camps happens, we are all family. We must be. We must connect not only to the Jews but also to the Africans and the Kurds and people around the world without a voice to stand against oppression.
“We must hang together, gentlemen…else, we shall most assuredly hang separately”..a statement of a man who was not perfect but who was willing to stand up for what he believed in…Benjamin Franklin.
This probably seems like a disjointed rant. Maybe it is. And maybe I’m trying to express what I’ve believed in for most of my life. There is no such thing of supremacy of any race, color or creed.
We are ALL family
GROUP HUG? Or just giddy fun?
Mona Karel Author 