This is my web log. But it's not a log, as in "journal," it's a log as in "turd."
Abraham Bomba described his experience as a barber in Treblinka:
"We worked inside the gas chamber for about a week or ten days. After that they decided that we will cut their hair in the undressing barrack. [The gas chamber] was not a big room, around twelve feet by twelve feet. But in that room they pushed in a lot of women, almost one on top of another. But like I mentioned before, when we came in, we didn’t know what we were going to do. And then one of the kapos came in and said: ‘Barbers, you have to do a job to make all those women coming in believe that they are just taking a haircut and going in to take a shower, and from there they go out from this place.’ We know already that there is no way of going out from this room, because this room was the last place they went in alive, and they will never go out alive. . . We were waiting there until the transport came in. Women with children pushed in to that place. We the barbers started to cut their hair, and some of them—I would say all of them—some of them knew already what was going to happen to them. We tried to do the best we could—to be the most human we could. . ."
"[The women] were undressed, naked, without clothes, without anything else—completely naked. All the women and all the children, because they came from the undressing barrack—the barrack before going into the gas chamber—where they had undressed themselves. . . .I felt that. . . I got to do what they told be, to cut their hair in a way that it looked like the barber was doing his job for a woman, and I set out to give them both, to take off as much hair as I could, because they needed women’s hair to be transported to Germany. We didn’t [shave them]. We just cut their hair and made believe they were getting a nice haircut. . . In one day there was about, I would say, going into that place between sixty and seventy women in the same room at one time. After we were finished with this party, another party came in, and there were about 140, 150 women. They were all already taken care of, and they told us to leave the gas chamber for a few minutes, about five minutes, when they put in the gas and chocked them to death. . . ."
"We waited outside the gas chamber and on the other side. On this side the women went in and on the other side was a group of working people who took out the dead bodies—some of them not exactly dead. They took them out, and in two minutes—in one minute—everything was clear. It was clean to take in the other party of women and do the same thing they did to the first one. Most of them had long hair—some had short hair. What we had to do was chop off the hair; like I mentioned, the Germans needed the hair for their purposes."
"A friend of mine worked as a barber—he was a good barber in my hometown—when his wife and his sister came into the gas chamber. . . I can’t. It’s too horrible. Please."
[At Lanzmann’s urging he continues, and the translators relates what Bomba said:] "They tried to talk to him . . . . [He] could not tell them this was the last time they stay alive, because behind them was the German Nazis, SS men, and [he] knew that if [he] said a word, not only the wife and the woman, who were dead already, but also [he] would share the same thing with them. In a way, [he] tried to do the best for them, with a second longer, a minute longer, just to hug them and kiss them, because [he] knew they would never see them again."
(from http://www.uiowa.edu/~c032150/shoah.html)
This year Kristi and I decided to drive across the country for our holiday travels. On December 23rd we found ourselves hoping that God would provide an adequate vehicle capable of transporting our family unit, after Satan claimed the Vanagon camper.
We performed initial testing with the Saturn wagon, cramming me, Kristi, Addie (in her car seat with all her associated baby paraphernalia), Pipsy and Skooch into the car with more junk piled on top. We ran this test configuration (sorry, no photos) to Sacramento and then down to Fresno, and it proved traumatizing for Skooch, who was displeased by not having sufficient space to move his legs or turn around. We didn't want to deprive Skooch of the basic rights that even chickens are legislated to have in California, and we didn't want to get arrested upon re-entering the state during 2009. The Saturn would not be adequate, but we were still planning to leave California Dec. 26 in order to arrive in Chicago by Dec. 30 to visit our nephews during their vacation time.
We are now safely in Chicago, and I am happy to report the following critically important stuff from along the way:
added later:
I nearly left out something from along the way: I listened carefully to "Daydream Believer" and analyzed the lyrics. Clearly the song is about the the United States' attempt to stop the proliferation of communism at Vietnam during the 1960s.
| Oh, I could hide 'neath the wings Of the bluebird as she sings. The six o'clock alarm would never ring. | Enjoying peace while nothing threatens liberty |
| But it rings and I rise, Wipe the sleep out of my eyes. My shavin' razor's cold and it stings. | Advancing communist threat Preparing for war A fight in Vietnam is politically painful |
| Cheer up, Sleepy Jean. Oh, what can it mean. To a daydream believer And a homecoming queen. | Sleepy Jean = South Vietnamese govt. Believing in continued U.S. support homecoming queen = Jane Fonda |
| You once thought of me As a white knight on a steed. Now you know how happy I can be. Oh, and our good times start and end Without dollar one to spend. But how much, baby, do we really need? | white night = U.S. Describes prosperity in U.S. support can't cost U.S. citizens anything Oh, maybe the communists aren't really a priority |
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