Did They Have Coats?

Do not click to the following link, until you have ten or fifteen minutes to spare.

You'll only need three or so minutes to read it. The rest of the time, you'll need to recompose yourself. And no, this isn't some damnedably mushy hallmark moment.

But if you're not moved by this, I'm not sure I'd care to know you, in the first place.

What I've just read is that important, and bears your close attention.

To many, a forgotten lesson. And as such it bears reading, repeatedly. Moreover, I'd suggest that you print it out, and drop a few copies where they'd do some good.

Like on some liberal asshat co-worker's desk, for example.

If you have kids, have them sit down and read this.

We were there on a bitterly cold day -- flakes of snow, an icy wind, and a simple question came from one of the kids: "Did they have coats?"

Suddenly, The Mrs. started sobbing: great heaving sobs which stopped her in her tracks, and forced her to bend almost double with their power. I held her, and cried too.

After a while, we recovered, and walked on. No, David, they weren't given coats. They were expendable.

This is not a poigniant story. You know all of those endless e-mailed "fwd's", meant to make you feel, either guilty, inspired, weepy and the like? This isn't one of those.

No, this is the truth, laid bare and open, without apology, without qualification and without varnish of any kind whatsoever.

Go and read it all. And pay heed to Kim's message in the second-half of that post. I haven't been there, but he speaks for me, nonetheless.

*UPDATE*.... Mrs. DuToit's account of that day is here. Visit there, and kindly leave a comment to let Connie know you appreciate her and Kim, okay?

Like I said just a couple of posts down.... Never Again!

Comments

[A Recovering Liberal]

Thank you for the link, Jim. This'll likely stick in my head all week before boarding the plane to Berlin next Monday.
Amy

[Rivrdog]

Gawd, that was disturbing. And I learned those lessons at my father's knee 55 years ago. He waited until I was almost 6 to tell me that his parents had to flee the Czar, whose pogroms were the models for Goebbels' atrocities.

I had to find out for myself that I can never research my dad's side of the family over there, because all the records were destroyed, by the last Czar, then the Soviets, then the Nazis then the Soviets again. That's how governments get rid of people. They can erase all the traces that a family ever existed.

Never again!

That clicking noise you just heard wasn't my teeth chattering in sympathy for the freezing kids at Dachau, it was the trigger sear engaging hammer stops on my rifle as I pull back the hammer...just to test it for now, but don't even think about coming for any more of my family.

[Beth]

A few years ago, my husband and I visited Dachau. 50+ years after the fact, there is still an incredible feeling of evil. Literally. As you walk through the gates, it's almost as if something is pressing down on you the entire time you're there.

In a few years, we will be heading back to Germany. Our boys will be with us, and they will be 16. We will make the trip back to Dachau, not because I want to go back, but because my children need to see, need to know the reality.

[Tina]

Never Again!

[Raging Dave]

Reading that is like getting kicked in the gut, hard.

But the truth is much more powerful than anything the Left can bring up. It needs to be said.

[Denita TwoDragons]

That account is painful to me, knowing that a portion of my own family most likely languished behind those frightening walls...

--TwoDragons

[D&DS]

A tremendous POST Jim. I agree, everyone should
have to read it, Especially ALL born AFTER 7-
Dec.1941. A dose of TRUTH never hurt anyone.
Don't know for sure, but...you possibly lost some
relatives in that camp. 'nuf said.
D&DS

[Mollbot]

That is one of the places on my list to visit when I get to Germany one day. I can't understand people who deny that such horrible actions took place... willful ignorance is incomprehensible to me.

[loiq]

When I sat down to read this post, and your link, my coffee was fresh and hot.Now it is cold.

[Acidman]

That one was a gut-rumbler, wasn't it?

[Geoffrey]

Thanks. I think I'll join Kim's pledge.

[Val Prieto]

excellent post Jim. The for the heads up.

[Val Prieto]

Sheesh. Preview preview preview.

Should read "Thanx for the heads up."

[Other Dan]

I was the Senior Welder in a tank battalion with the NATO forces around 1970. Our post was in southern Germany near the Czech border. I waited for 16 months for the Russian tanks to come. They never did, so I went home. I didn't waste any leave time coming back to the States, I used all of it to see as much of Europe as I could. My most poignant memory of all that touring is the memory of my visit to Dachau. All the people who describe their impressions of the feeling of impending doom, hopelessness, the "heaviness" of the place aren't exaggerating even in the slightest. I thought the fuckin' walls were screaming. Those screams echo in my ears to this very day, nearly 35 years later. I will resist the Patriot Act, the Matrix, the gun control movement, and all of those fasist, totalitarian-thinking shitheads in every way I can find. We can't let that happen here.
I read what Kim wrote the day he posted it. Thank him for me if you see him.
Onward through the fog-
Other Dan

[triticale]

To echo Rivrdog, the shtetl in Byelarus from which my mother's family came doesn't exist. Bulldozed, plowed under, erased.