Like children who have developed spiteful personalities, they seek to demolish all that is civil, all that is just, all that is built from a sense of fairness and reason.
They feel aggrieved and speak the language of the aggrieved, a bitter ranting hatred that throws nets and shadows over everything that shines light.
It doesn't come from nothing. For too long the greedy and the corrupt have been able to ransack the common wealth and the common good. But these are not avengers for the broken and oppressed. Rather these are the ruthless, and intoxicated with power they seek to obliterate all who are not like them.
In rising up together to overcome them, a new vision that is life-affirming and freedom-loving will emerge. Humanity will come again to reverence the Earth and its abundant life, the miracle of our being here, and come again to love beauty and honour the simplicity of contentment.
A song from Auschwitz III, 1943 by Joseph Wulf from the film Zone of Interest
Sunbeams
radiant and warm
Human bodies
Young and old
And we
Who are imprisoned here
Our hearts
are not yet cold
Souls afire
like the blazing sun
Tearing, breaking
through their pain
For soon we'll see
that waving flag
The flag of freedom
yet to come.
Until the Nazi invasion of Poland Joseph Wulf worked as an agronomist. Then, as a Jew, he was confined to the Krakow ghetto along with the folk poet and songwriter Mordecai Gebirtig whom he came to know. Wulf escaped the ghetto and joined the resistance but was captured and deported for slave labour to Buna-Monowitz, a subcamp of Auschwitz.
During his time there he organised singalongs with the other labourers and he vowed that if he survived he would commit his life to exposing Nazi crimes. He helped to preserve the work of Gebirtig and he also taped two of his own songs “Sunbeams” and a song about missing his wife. The voice heard in Zone of Interest is Wulf’s own.
Tragically, Wulf ended his life in despair in 1974. He had written to his son, 'I have published 18 books about the Third Reich and they have no effect. You can document everything to death for the Germans. There can be the most democratic government in Bonn — the mass murderers walk around free, live in their little houses, and grow flowers.'
Turn off your screens and look around. Unplug your ears and tune in to the sounds played in the wind. Feel the tenderness in your human heart and know the intelligence of your own mind. Feel your own feet, as they walk your own path, following no one.
'Stay woke' in its original meaning from the early 20th century when it was used to describe a heightened awareness of social and political issues, particularly those related to race and inequality. Be kind, be patient, be considerate, grant understanding to others, give grace and not offence.
