Camouflage

Congratulations

Camouflage

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You’re the words

They hide amongst

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Evil’s hunted

While strolling lonely

So it lurks in crowds

Out in the open

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It loves to roam free

Spreading an invisible

Aura of fear

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While you stand around

Spouting sermons on

Freedom

They slip on the cuffs

And lock up the

Weak and the needy

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Driving neighbors

Just past your

Half-open door

Pleading in the

Flickering candle-light

You squint in to read

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Waving them off

Their cries

A disturbance

Your banquet set

The only thing of

Importance

K.B. Silver

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People will make you feel afraid of looking stupid or treat you like you're in the wrong when you stand up for what you know is right, like you are attacking them. Stand strong.

I will never forget hearing first-hand accounts from Holocaust survivors. Brother and sister Kissel, members of my congregation as a child. I never let their words leave my mind. I replayed the important message they imparted to us regularly.

As people of Jewish descent, born in Germany, members of the religion at that time called the International Bible Students, the Kissels had little hope of avoiding capture. Forcibly identified with a yellow star and purple triangle so everyone could participate in the persecution.

They explained things hadn’t changed overnight. Hitler didn’t walk up to the podium after gaining power and take everyone away all in one go. The more powerful he became, the more he could force those “friends” and followers he was making along with his plans. The bigger the group that is doing something, the more right it looks.

It was part of the plan to hide their evil among ordinary people. Once he manipulated the masses into going along and cheering him on, no one would be capable of seeing the atrocities for what they were. They would be unable to cope with the guilt of participating. Or so the Nazi high command thought.

There was a tipping point; people were only willing to go so far. Polls taken in the US today show the same disconnect. People professing support for "action on immigration," when presented with the realities of enforcement methods, find them distasteful, or even abhorrent.

When the Kissels shared the tattoos on their forearms, they were similar but not identical. They differed by several digits of course, but time had wrinkled and floated the ink of the numbers in their fragile skin. That image will haunt me forever. An image and experience fewer and fewer will naturally have outside of the holocaust museums set up around the world, until none will have had this experience as the survivors of WWII die of old age.

Never again is what we write on our social media; we light candles each year and send donations to charity, while actual fascists march in the streets around the world, killing our brothers and sisters. In some cases, erasing the physical evidence of the reality they lived through. It is happening again and not by accident. A coordinated effort is being put forth to create the atmosphere and conditions to make it happen again. The mere concept of never again can not and will not prevent the devastating eventuality.

Choose life, yours, your family's, and the world's.

I decided to share a piece that says something I feel is important, since this was a soapbox challenge. Thank you for taking the time to read