I: Introduction—A History Lesson
The word ******* was derived from the Sanskrit
svastika,
meaning good fortune,
or well being.
The shape is a monogram,
the interlacing of two Brahmi words,
a hooked cross which, over 5,000 years ago,
represented the rays of the sun,
the four directions of our natural compass,
and the four elements of our world.
Earth, wind, fire and water,
the symbol was balanced,
sitting firmly on its base
like a poised animal
on its haunches.
In other interpretations,
the symbol was a sacred text
explaining, “here is how the sun moves across the sky.”
A map of the heavens,
a lesson in astronomy.
The *******, when standing on its base,
is still sacred today
in many religions.
It is
the Buddha’s footsteps,
the seventh saint in Jainism,
and the four possible places of rebirth
in animal and plant world,
hell, earth and the spirit world.
In the 1870s the ******* was changed forever.
An archaeologist engrossed in discoveries
from ancient Troy and Mycenae,
Heinrich Schliemann,
found the symbol likeable
and claimed it,
because as a man he had the power to define.
He designated it
the symbol of his people—the Aryans—
and soon this is what it became.
By 1907 the ******* was turned at an angle
physically
becoming a hooked cross precariously balancing
on its side.
Its meaning, however, was turned upside down.
The cult of Aryan supremacy
claimed it,
and finally ****** adopted the
bedraggled image
as the symbol of the **** party
marking the beginning of its legacy
as an image of hate,
a harbinger of genocide,
and unthinkable atrocity.
In the course of twenty five years,
under the direction of ****** and Himmler
and Heydrich and Daluege
and Jeckeln and Prutzmann
and Eichmann and Mengele
and countless other men with vacant expressions
and the ability to spell death with pointed fingers
the ******* came to mean loss
of integrity, of citizenship, of basic rights,
of personal safety, of property,
of an untarnished image of humanity
of hope.
Under the *******
unraveled a calm, coordinated,
and systematic extermination
of 6 million Jews
200,000 gypsies
70,000 handicaps
and unknown numbers
of people of color,
political prisoners,
homosexuals
and deportees.
Under the *******,
there were gas chambers
and the burning of children’s bodies.
There were prison-like ghettos,
and there was no humanity.
Part II: A lesson in Linguistics
First, language is meaningful only
because of shared understanding.
Words mean nothing,
symbols are vacuous
unless we share recognition
of the things that they signify.
All language is arbitrary
if we cannot agree on what object,
or emotion or event in history
are called forth by the words that we say.
Second, to be able to change meaning, you must have power
and you must have time.
Trust me,
if I could rewrite the meaning of every blood-soaked word
I would.
I would scrub them clean of their histories.
I’d redefine them,
make them useful,
maybe even kind.
But I can’t, and neither can you.
At least not alone
and not on command.
Because I’m sorry to say
that that’s not how language works.
I’m sorry to say
that a symbol made synonymous with hate
cannot be used innocently,
cannot only mean what it meant before ******
and Himmler
and Heydrich and Daluege
and Jeckeln and Prutzmann
and Eichmann and Mengele.
Even if you claim to redefine it,
even if you claim to only use it for what it once was
even if once it was beautiful,
like the stalwart path of the sun,
the ******* has innocent blood on its hooks
and it eyes us sideways like a crooked lamppost
burdened with memories we cannot dismiss.
We remember.
As a society, we remember,
because pain is a finicky creature
that will not be reasoned with,
or re-defined out of existence.
We cannot use the ******* without remembering the pain
how it was ironed onto the starched coats
and painted on the national flags
of those who murdered
6 Millions Jewish men, women and children,
200,000 gypsies
70,000 handicaps
and unknown numbers
of people of color,
political prisoners,
homosexuals
and deportees.
Even if you say so.
Even if you claim to only use it for good.
We remember,
we remember.
Part Three: A Story
In elementary school my Hebrew teacher was Mrs. Wygodski.
When I was ten she seemed ancient.
I remember her shaky hands, but the steadiness of her voice.
Most of all I remember the numbers on her forearm
from when the Nazis decided she was no longer a girl,
but a numerical value.
I remember her telling us about the concentration camps
when they shaved her tiny girlish head
and gave her *****, ill-fitting clothes,
when they took her arm and erased her
like a message in the sand,
and she became a number.
In elementary school someone wanted to play a joke
so they scrawled a *******
on its side
in large black ink on the white board of class.
The symbol was the first thing you saw
when you entered the room.
I remember
when she came in she was smiling
as usual
her grey hair down, her kind, open face,
a miracle of a woman,
to withstand the darkest night and still smile.
I remember that Mrs. Wygodski said it is important to forgive
but I could never understand how she forgave the Nazis.
She would look at us and say
“hate is the darkest tunnel,
and harder to climb out of
than forgiveness is to bestow.”
The day she walked into the room with the *******
looming large on the white board
I will never forget the look on her face.
As the symbol spoke to her directly
it unearthed everything she spent years flattening down,
memories she sifted through for decades with trembling fingers,
images she shelved in the recesses of her mind
to make room for the possibility of tomorrow, and the warmth of smiling children.
For a moment
that symbol broke her,
and in that moment, the ******* once again stole her humanity,
and turned Mrs. Wygodski into the number
they once told her she was.
Part Four: Land of the Free
Today thousands of hate groups continue to use the *******
teetering sideways
the way that ****** intended it.
Once a symbol of good fortune,
it is now the most widely recognized symbol of hate
the world has ever known.
Used in the United States
the ******* has opened its claws
and staked claim to the beating hearts,
and hopeful sovereignty
and promised dreams
of countless African Americans,
who became the targets of the same bottomless hate
that engulfed millions in the holocaust.
Under our star spangled banner
the ******* has overseen
thousands of racially driven lynchings,
ongoing police brutality
the imprisonment of one out of three black men
and the bombing of black children in their Sunday school dresses.
In Oregon,
the ******* celebrates the sealing of borders,
is embraced by the very groups
who once outlawed black existence
in our very own state constitution,
the same groups
who once dictated the state’s refusal
to ratify the 14th amendment
of equal protection,
and the 15th amendment
giving African Americans the right to speak
at the ballot box
and be heard
by their government.
In the land of the free, the *******
is still tattooed on chests
and ironed to coats
and scrawled on the walls of my classroom.
In our communities
there are
the European Kindred,
the Northwest Hammerskins,
Volksfront,
the National Socialist Party,
and the Ku Klux ****.
And they wear the *******
because they recognize its meaning,
the meaning we all know
the meaning imbedded deep
by the pointed guns of the Einsatzgruppen
Today,
here,
they wear the ******* because they want to swallow the world.
Part 5: In Conclusion
To whoever drew the *******
last week,
last year,
in every year before that
in the bathroom, in the hallway, on my classroom wall and desks.
I forgive you.
Not because I want to
but because Mrs Wygodski would.
I will give you the benefit of the doubt.
I will believe you didn’t mean it.
I will believe you didn’t know.
I will still have hope in your humanity
because what choice do I have?
This is my refusal to become what the Nazis wanted,
what hate groups still want.
That is how I resist.
I refuse to hate you,
I refuse
to hate.
However, now that I’m addressing you directly,
I want to take this moment to make clear
that when I see the *******
this is what I see:
I see Mrs Wygodski,
with her kindness that was like a spring
flowing from somewhere dark and unseeable
and I see her face when she walked into a room with that symbol
and I see the colors of her world bleed out.
I see my missing family members,
who I never actually had the chance to really see.
So I imagine them,
my grandfather’s aunts, uncles and cousins
from a shtetle somewhere in Poland,
erased completely from history, from record, from existence
by ******* wearing men
who forgot how to be human.
Finally, I see my students.
The rest of them,
with their still young impressionability
and their beautiful array of skin colors, backgrounds, ethnicities, cultures
and their intact understanding of love.
They are the hope that our grandparents thought was lost,
and this ******* is their antithesis.
It is the undoing of their sanctity,
it is you spitting in the face of everyone who is not you.
And if you do that intentionally,
if you do that knowingly
and with purpose,
well, that
is unforgivable
This was a powerful poem written by my teacher, Sam. I really loved the power of her words and the mental image it left in my head. Enjoy!