My daughter, Bonnie, went on a field trip to Washington DC when she was in middle school some years ago.  Part of the visit was to the Holocaust Museum which had recently opened.  She was so moved by what she saw that she composed a song, “Warsaw Polonaise,” shortly after returning, in memory of the people and the horrors they endured.  Years later, my wife and I went on a trip through Eastern Europe.  I remember that I was in the midst of a somewhat significant career setback.  Probably a routine thing these days, but it was a big depressing deal for me.

Then we visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.  I knew from the moment I walked through the gate that my problems were nothing.  Less than nothing.  A mere pothole on the road of life.  This was where evil flourished.  From the motto on the gate:  “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work will set you free) to the “showers” and the ovens, I knew that this kind of terror should be swept away forever.  Tragically, it has not.  It recurs in ethnic cleansing, tyranny and civil wars.  It rejuvenates because evil is pernicious.  It grows because it’s always someone else’s problem.  It thrives because good people allow it to.

This video unites my daughter’s and my remembrances of this place and time.  I finished it about 10 years ago and put it aside.  It’s tough to watch once, but going over it hundreds of times in the editing process proved unbearable, so I had to let it go until now.  My apologies if it is difficult to watch, but evil is ugly and terror is ghastly yet we live side by side with them every day.