Maybe I’ve scarred for life… or maybe I’m blessed with the truth. Pt. 1

Today I got permission from my second-period (drama) teacher to go to the auditorium for an assembly instead of class.

The assembly was for people in my history class and the grade 12 history class (actually, I think it’s world studies or something, but it’s technically history). A lady who experienced the holocaust (as in was a victim- she was thirteen years old at the time and much of her family died) talked with us.

It was very emotional; we saw a slideshow. Several pictures had what looked exactly like skeletons covered only by bare skin, piled on top of each other. Another photo had a soldier bulldozing the bodies. The lady explained to us that their heads were shaved at the beginning not to prevent headlice- but to be collected and made into socks for the Nazi soldiers.

What really got to me was one particular slide with a photo of people (adults waiting patiently, children horseplaying, a little girl of something like three with a straight face staring straight into the camera) all with yellow stars attatched to their clothes, waiting to go into the gas chamber.

“Look at them,” the lady said. “What was their crime?”

Needless to say, (but I’ll say it anyway) I looked directly in the eyes of that long-gone little girl, thinking That little girl meant the world to her parents; I wish I could have saved them, I would have saved them. and cried silently.

Have you ever seen the movie Marley & Me? You know that heart-wrenching scene, where that monumental event happens? (If you’ve watched the movie you’ll know what I mean- I’m just staying ambiguous about it for the sake of not spoiling it if you didn’t.) What about Bridge to Teribithea? How to Train Your Dragon? (I didn’t cry during the dragon movie but my brother did.)

Well, none of them were as monumentous, heart-wrenchingly unfortunate and upsetting as this assembly. Because these things happened for real. Real people had these things happen to them. And each and every one of those people was just as human as you and I. One of them was standing right before me today.

“I don’t judge you based on your religion, whether you’re Jewish, Christian, Muslin or Hindu; I don’t judge you based on the colour of your skin, whether you’re black, white or asian; I judge you as a fellow human being.”

We’re all citizens of this Earth.

After a thousand tears and (the lady got a little teary-eyed too when she was talking about her parents) a thousand frail people (either dead, dying or barely hanging on) shown on the slides, the assembly was over.

It ran a little into lunch, but it was well worth it. I needed to know her story.

I actually saw someone texting and telepathically, I told them, How DARE you!?!? And they were doing a really crappy job of being subtle, too, flitting their whole head up to the speaker lady and down to their phone within milliseconds. Once again, I had to resist the urge to grab their phone out of their hand, throw it to the ground and stomp several times out of respect for a fellow human being.

But just because you’re a teenager doesn’t make disrespect excusable.

I promised myself; something like halfway through the assembly, that I would go up to the speaker lady after the assembly and ask for a hug.

“Of course you can have a hug!”

Today, I hugged a halocaust survivor.

I’m going to make a promise to myself to hug people more often.

Last year someone in my drama class who I guess is on the more social side of the spectrum kept nagging me for a hug. It creeped me out at first seeing as I’m not even really friends with this person, so I rejected it for days and days until I finally asked him why he wanted me to hug him so badly. He told me he read somewhere that people who are quiet/reserved could use a hug more because it makes them feel more positive, like they belong. So I gave in. I did feel like I belong.

Alex Violet