I read this afternoon about a French priest who has taken on the mission of discovering every mass grave of Jews in the Ukraine. It is a pretty interesting story and the link to the NY TImes article is below. I am also linking a podcast (below that) from the USHMM about it.
NY Times article:
Podcast:
If you read the article or listen to the podcast, I would love to hear your thoughts on it. These would have been the victims of the mobile killing squads we talked about today.
What is the importance of knowing where someone is buried, of having an actual grave to visit? Why do people return to the scene of accidents and deaths? Why are these things so important to us as humans?
Lit Terms 2
5 years ago
1 comments:
Just to start off, I really think that what Father DeBois is doing is a great thing.There are only so many people in the world that will go to those lengths just to find graves. Personally, I think that knowing where someone grave is reassures us, as humans, that they're actually dead. There are people, sadly, who want to say "The Holocaust never happened," but it isn't as easy to deny when they're looking right at a grave that can house more than a thousand bodies. Not only for the sake of reality, but graves are important for the chance to mourn too. Maybe some of the survivors don't particularly want to remember, but knowing were the graves are is also important to them, so they have the chance to say goodbye if they really want to. Of course, maybe we, Americans, want to visit them for mourning as well. Most of us are only connected to the Holocaust through what we're told, but even so, some people are touched enough that they want to seek out these graves and speak to them, even if they cannot respond. Possibly, that way, we don't feel so helpless when it comes to facing the past, when it comes to proving that it happened.
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