Oh, the human race! What are we like? I’ve just finished the first eight discs in a DVD set about the second world war, called The World At War.
First aired in 1973, it has lost nothing of its power. A lot of the footage shot after 1942 is almost unbearable to look at as it’s in colour, shot by Americans with their superior technology in everything; thankfully including weapons.
We know from countless TV programs and crime novels that a human corpse is extremely heavy and hard to handle, but in the shots from Iwo Jima where the G.I.s drag the corpses of Japanese soldiers out of their hiding-holes, it seems that a human corpse weighs nothing at all and can be flung about easily with one hand. At least when it’s a Japanese corpse which has had most of its limbs blown off.
And the Japanese soldiers who eventually surrendered although they had promised to fight to the death for the emperor - mere children! The oldest looked about 12 and weighed about 40 kilos. But they were the enemy, a formidable enemy who would stop at nothing.
As were the Jews, of course. As the hours roll by from Hitler’s inauguration speech as Reichskansler in 1933 where the first thing he says is that those “Jewish tongues will be silenced,” through the ostracising, then arrest and deportation and subsequent conveyor-belt killing of Jews, to the full horror that awaited the liberating forces when they burst open the gates of the death camps, the viewer has also become immune to the awful sights.
One scene that stands out is the clearing up of such a death camp - can’t remember which one - by bulldozer. Those limp sticks of stuff, mercifully in black and white, being shoved and rolled around by the earth moving equipment; to think that they were once musicians and teachers, mothers and fathers, normal people living like we do now … impossible.
It’s impossible to think that they once lived in full colour, woke up every morning like we do and thought life was normal. Intellectually it’s borderline possible, I suppose, but is it possible emotionally to picture those lolling skeletal arms, the staring skulls, having coffee in Berlin of a morning while listening to the wireless? No.
One gets immunised. And the people who sent the Jews to the gas chambers were also normal. Don’t know what killing ten thousand people a day will do to a person - but then they were all trained not to regard the enemy as people. You can’t fight a war and regard the enemy as a person like yourself, that would be a total cock-up.
With this in mind I plucked six ticks off the body of my dog Piles last night. This summer has seen a terrible tick-infestation like no other summer. I used to be able to just put a tick-collar on Piles in May and that would be it; not a single tick the whole summer. Now I’ve tried Frontline ($295) anti tick shampoo ($90) and various tick collars. Nothing works.
Last night they were sitting there embedded in his skin, laughing at me who had just spent two hours shampooing Piles and picking off tick corpses. Normally when I pick ticks, I flush them down the sink or throw them out the window.
This time, influenced by four hours of A World At War, I put them on the table and sprayed them with Bio Kill, then stood and watched them die. I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t feel joy, but no sorrow either.
Do they have the right to live? Probably just as much as me or anyone else. But I don’t want my dog to die of tick fever.
Recent Comments