zlacker

>>david9+(OP)
History books can tell you facts that happened, but they can never truly tell you how it feels.

I feel we're riding a knife's edge and there's a hurricane brewing in the gulf of absurdity.

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Incidentally, I feel like this is why it is so hard to actually learn from history. You can read about the 1918 'Spanish' Flu, but you think "we're smarter now". etc.

>>csours+kk
Something I like to remind myself of is that all past wars, even ones thousands of years ago, took place in as vibrant colors and fluid detail as we experience today, not in grainy black and white photos or paintings.

Also, if your grandpa likes telling war stories, it's only because he survived.

>>nancym+Jr
I was at Auschwitz in summer. It was beautiful weather, the birds were singing, flowers everywhere. Hard to connect this to the conditions in a concentration camp. It would have been much easier in winter.

>>vjvjvj+BM
I was fortunate enough to once have the daughter of a client I took care of in a nursing home ask me if I would escort her dad and her on a day trip as he needed help into the bathroom and such. We ended up going to a Ukrainian hall in Vancouver BC where he was going to meet some old friends.

The older ladies busy making handmade perogies was such a delicious treat.

But I also got to meet Stefan Petelycky. He wrote the book: Into Auschwitz, for Ukraine

He ended up there and was one of the lucky ones who made it out. When he pulled up his sleeve and showed me his tattoo, the number he was given there, a chill crossed my entire body and an overwhelming sense of sadness hit me.

I of course had heard about the concentration camps but seeing a tattoo in person made the event much more real where I could connect to the tragedy in a way I never did.