Search the Community

Thomas Merton (1915-1968) was a contemplative monk who spent 27 years inside the walls of a Trappist monastery in Kentucky. Only in his last year was he permitted to travel at any length. Even though he was never at Auschwitz this poetry places him there so as to let a generous sensitivity and tenacious faith like his respond to this horrendous calamity. Merton stands for all those who, in the light of Auschwitz, ask the question: where was God, and in so asking expose their belief to severe trial. Merton's struggle with this question was lived out elsewhere. Only the location has been shifted in the poetry that follows. Monk in Auschwitz

As another thread is locked, I will write here about Nazis. First I want to say that I saw a video that said Prescott Bush adopted George HW Bush. They share no resemblance except both were tall. Bush's real father was a Nazi, whom the U.S. was shielding. I have had reasons to research the Nazis, the Jews and Revisionists these past months. I am currently reading "Survival in Auschwitz" by Primo Levi. I have watched many documentaries about the Nazi camps and Hitler and his henchmen. Other books I've bought include Hunting Eichmann, Ratline, cd's of the Nazis next door, and "Post-Zionism, Post-Holocaust." In the last one the author, a Jew, names revisionists and tries to tell the public why these individuals think what they do. To me, it's wishful thinking. I believe the first revisionists were French men, Rassinier and Pierre Guillaume. They don't believe in 6 million Jews, Zyglon-B Gas, Gas chambers, and murdering droves of people, torturing others, working them to death, no winter clothes to cover their emaciated bodies. When the Americans came, General Eisenhower told the photographers to take pictures of everything. "Because a day will come when someone is going to say, 'This never happened.'" The films: I had watched them when I was a kid with my parents and my father told me Hitler was the devil. (I went to Catholic School.) A year or so later, he told me Lee Harvey Oswald was the devil. But it was another thing to watch these films as an adult. I couldn't believe the barbarity. These were fellow human beings. I saw bodies thinner than mannequins being bulldozed into mass graves. How can a human being do these terrible things? I learned that Hitler never went to the camps. He was afraid of being photographed there. And he knew what was going on there. His fellows kept in touch with him daily. I have read that the Vatican protected escaping Nazis, helping to get them to Argentina. The Vatican was a safe house. Later on the Catholics said we helped them because they, too, were anti-communists. The Americans and the Russians each took the best Nazi scientists. Some people think Hitler escaped. I have a book on that too. I heard a radio show hosted by a Black Muslim, saying terrible things about Jews. They were garbage, they're disgusting. I knew one person who hated Jews. He believed they invented mental illness so they could whine about something. I told him my favorite movie was "The Pawnbroker." Whether it was 6 million or 600 people treated like that at "extermination" camps and the Final Solution... I saw those films. I saw camps I never heard of. I believe if you're such a revisionist you're a hater of Jews. That's the motive. Maybe jealousy because Jewish people are known for making careers for themselves and are accomplished people. Jesus was a Jew. Finally, I asked A.J. Weberman, who taught the Kennedy Assassination at Columbia U and wrote a successful, impressive book about the Assassination, if the Vatican or the Catholic Church had a hand in the assassination of President Kennedy. He told me NO. I had asked him because I knew he was a Jew. I'm glad to see Len Colby is back. I found his signatures very funny. Kathy C