End of the Line

#35, Artistic Interpretation

Oil Painting by Dr. Pat Mercer Hutchens

Someone was the last one in line. The very last one to be dragged all the way from their country and home, herded like animals in a cattle car, stripped, humiliated, pushed in a crematorium, gassed, burned in ovens and then thrown out over the ground like fertilizer. Most people probably don’t think about such a thing, but if your loved one was there, if your wife and baby was there and you just happened to make it through the slave labor, well, you would think about that the rest of your life.

What if the Nazi guard had stopped two people back? What if you had been cleverer and been able to do something What if some countries had taken in more refugees? What if the truck line of liberators had not had a flat and gotten there a few minutes earlier. What if. What if. What if.

One famous quote, “Save one person and save the world,” sounds good in movies and poetry, but it would not matter one iota to the one who made it and had lost everything.

What can be said is that not very far from the end of one line, another line of war and killing starts. How can we learn to live together? Will we ever be able to look at “others” as we look at ourselves?