Title Imagery
Not surprisingly, perhaps, the title of the narrative itself affords for a powerful bit of imagery. The sunflower is a very popular symbol and doubtlessly can be extricated as imagery from any number of books. Few, however, carry the emotional punch demonstrated here:
“And on each grave there was planted a sunflower, as straight as a soldier on parade. I stared spellbound. The flower heads seemed to absorb the sun’s rays like mirrors and draw them down into the darkness of the ground as my gaze wandered from the sunflower to the grave. It seemed to penetrate the earth and suddenly I saw before me a periscope. It was gaily colored and butterflies fluttered from flower to flower. Were they carrying message from grave to grave? Were they whispering something to each flower to pass on to the soldier below? Yes, this was just what they were doing; the dead were receiving light and messages.”
Germany’s Original Sin
Contributor Matthew Fox offer an intriguing dimension to the truth about Nazi atrocities. It isn’t enough merely to assign blame to those committing atrocities; that is a given. But those are acts of evil and evil, many believe, derives from the commission of sin. So, then, what was the origin sin of Nazi atrocities?
“it was this clinging to denial that surely constituted the sin behind the sin of the Nazi horrors. How many ordinary German citizens—and clergy and bishops—knew something evil was going on and still lived in denial? Willful ignorance is a sin. In this case, a catastrophic sin that made the Holocaust possible.”
The Abomination of Abominations
When one begins parsing through the history of Nazi abominations, it becomes one of those cases of just when you think the depravity can’t get any worse, it gets twice as worse. Nazi evil proceeds not arithmetically, but exponentially and it is perhaps a losing effort to try to identify the worst of the worst. Not that this means there is any lack of possible contenders:
“Consider the absolutely worst-case scenario. It is in Auschwitz on a day when the gas chambers are falling behind their quotas. To accelerate the pace, children are lined up and thrown upon the open flames. Those toward the back of the line know full well that in a matter of moments the fate of those up front will be their fate as well. And there is nothing they can do about it.”
Hunger
The misery of being Jewish under the oppressive authority of the Nazis is something really quite incapable of fully comprehending. In order to attain full empathy, one would be required to find some sort of ability to believe such a massive black hole of soulless depravity could unify and unite the population of an entire country. And that is probably impossible; how could one read the following and even come close to making it explicable?
“Our hunger was almost unbearable: we were given practically nothing to eat. Each day when we were allowed a short time outside the huts we threw ourselves on the ground, tore up the scanty grass, and ate it like cattle. After such `outings’ the corpse carriers had their hands full, for few could digest this `food.’ The corpses were piled on to the handcarts, which formed an endless procession.”
