[OPE-L] Fw: Roman Rosdolsky on the Holocaust, from his own experience

From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Sat Dec 16 2006 - 10:36:12 EST


BTW if anybody wants info about the Iranian Holocaust conference, there's a
pretty good article here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Conference_to_Review_the_Global_Vision_of_the_Holocaust
The IPIS site is here:
http://www.ipis.ir/English/meetings_roundtables_conferences.htm

Many other Marxist scholars have of course commented on the Holocaust -
Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Enzo Traverso, Ernest Mandel, Timothy Mason
etc.

In  Amsterdam where I live, the wellknown Dutch writer and artist Jan
Wolkers designed an Auschwitz memorial sculpture. It consists of six
mirror-glass plates with cracks, over an urn, with a transparent sign
featuring letters carved out that say "Auschwitz never again".
http://fcit.usf.edu/Holocaust/GALL37R/AMSTER26.HTM

Jan Wolkers commented:  "It seemed as if it would be impossible to design a
memorial for the site of the urn containing ashes of the victims murdered in
Auschwitz concentration camp to be laid to rest in Dutch soil. How can you
devise a form to mark a crime, which you know in your heart will still be
unforgiven when our planet ceases to exist two, or two thousand centuries
from now? To attempt to find an image to reflect the ignominy and the
suffering, transcends the limits of your comprehension. When you look up at
the sky, it is impossible to imagine the same sun shining over that
destruction as indifferently and peacefully as over a meadow filled with
flowers. In a vision of justice, the blue sky above you cracks apart, as if
the horrors that took place on earth below have desecrated eternity forever.
That is what led me to place these broken mirrors on that small plot of
ground above the urn. Here you will never again see the heavens reflected
undesecrated."
http://fcit.usf.edu/Holocaust/resource/gallery/AMSTER2.htm

So if you look downwards, you see the sky reflected through the cracks. Only
if you look up, do you see the sky unfragmented. But you cannot see the
memorial anymore if you look up. You see it only if you look downwards.

Jurriaan


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