On Katyn and Kebab. And so it happened that on the 14th April this year, on the birthday outing to Warsaw National Museum, incidentally and by sheer luck I witnessed commemorations of Katyn Massacre. Katyn is a painful wound in Polish history. Still bleeding, almost impossible to forgive. A tragic story of twenty two thousand Polish elite officers and intelligentsia mass executed by Russian secret police NKVD in the Russian forests near Katyn, in April and May of 1940. The hat with a red star on the pic is the one that the NKVD soldiers wore at the time of the genocide. The black truck-the very same one which transported Polish officers to their final destination-mass graves. I sat inside, in one of the solitary compartments, and closed my eyes for a few seconds trying to feel what went on in the mind of men who sat there, respectively, in that pre-death chamber 73 years ago. Death was not the scariest thing; it was the feeling of ultimate apprehension, relentless and savage, that froze my blood in terror. We are coming now to the story of Arab and Kebab. One may think there is no connection. Is there no, really? Why did Russians decide to take on a systemic genocide of the Polish elite? Why did Hitler decide he wanted to get rid of Jews and other ‘inconvenients’ (my own paternal Grandfather being one of them)? I don’t really know. There are so many theories and answers. But I know that all genocides witnessed by history of the human kind stem from the contempt for another human being. From disrespect, vanity and often-fear. From a self-righteous claim to superiority. From greed and jealousy. And furthermore, those who put others down, by gesture or word- spiteful, sarcastic, cruel- are they aware that by rejecting others they really reject themselves? That by expressing hatred towards other human being whom they don’t even bother taking time and effort to get to know, they are really expressing their own fears, insecurities, often dissatisfaction stemming from personal life? Those who disdain another human being- beware. Give love and respect, and you’ll receive same ten times fold. Give hatred….Well, fill the dots yourself….
Posted on: Thu, 13 Jun 2013 15:41:40 +0000
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