The Pittsburgh Press (January 10, 1946)
I DARE SAY —
The asbestos curtain
By Florence Fisher Parry
Shock and sympathy have swept into the hearts of millions at the kidnaping and murder of Suzanne Degnan.
Yet horrible as was her death, it was sudden; terrible as was her fear, it was quickly over. Millions of little children just like Suzanne Degnan have died and are dying all over the world, unspeakable, horrifying deaths which we, WE could have averted, and still can reduce and prevent.
The other night I couldn’t sleep so I switched on the light and picked up the current issues of “Life,” “Atlantic” and “Harper’s.” It proved to be morbid reading. “Life” showed the death march of the few remaining German women and children who set out, 150 strong, from Lodz in Poland, and, reduced to a mere half dozen, got to the railroad tracks into Berlin and stopped to weep over a dead three-year-old child who had made the 270-mile journey.
These were Germans who, we are told, will die in greater numbers than they did during the horrific Black Plague of centuries ago. All babies born in Germany this year will die. Only those three years old or older have a chance to survive. The terrible boomerang has come, and Germany’s population will be reduced even as Germany reduced the populations of the victim countries around her.
Six million Jews are dead by deliberate contrivance, but those who survived are now dying slower, even slower deaths. Europe is a shambles and its people are scavengers, licking the sides of garbage cans and perishing of the cold. The last days of the war in Europe disclosed the horrors of Dachau and Buchenwald, and we were horrified and told ourselves we did not know all this, even as the German people protested that they did not know of it. while we were griping over gasoline and butter rations, millions were dying horrifying deaths and eating the hearts and livers of their dead comrades in their ghastly struggle to keep alive until deliverance came.
Challenge to the mind
We could say we did not know of this when it was happening, but we know it now. We cannot say any longer that we are ignorant of the physical sufferings and the spiritual indignities of those who have survived the war in Europe. every newspaper and magazine that we read tells the story. Yet even now we are able to draw down a kind of asbestos curtain over our eyes, our ears, our hearts, so that the burning human catastrophe can be shut out and we can live and keep on living in a soft warm cocoon of our own delusions.
I say “we” – I mean I! I mean you! In my cupboard are sweaters and shoes and underwear, old gloves and stockings, bedding even. Could all this be there, shoved away out of sight, unused, if I really faced the fact of all this human misery, I could not rest until all I had that I could spare went to help these desperate human beings.
Today as I write this, the Victory Clothing Drive has started in this country. Do you hear its call?
I read some words of Arthur Koestler. They were written a year ago. That was before we had uncovered the horrors of Dachau and Buchenwald. This is what he writes:
“There is a dream which keeps coming back to me: It is dark. I am being murdered in some kind of thicket. There is a busy road at 10 yards distance. I scream for help but nobody hears me, the crowd walks past laughing and chatting.
Who are the mad ones?
“Clearly all this is becoming a mania with me and my like. Clearly, we must suffer from some morbid obsessions whereas you are healthy and normal. But the characteristic symptoms of maniacs is that they lose contact with reality and live in a fantasy world. So perhaps it is the other way round! Perhaps it is we, the sufferers, the screamers, who react in a sound and healthy way to the horrible reality which surrounds us, whereas you are neurotics who totter around in a screened fantasy world, because you lack the faculty to face the facts.
“Were it not so, this war would have been avoided, and those murdered would still be alive! Statistics don’t bleed. It is the details which count. We are unable to embrace the total. We can only focus on little lumps of reality.”
Think of it in this way. Think of it now. This sweater hanging in the closet, this old blanket, this underwear. You are sending them to a Victory Clothes Drive. You are clothing a child who is freezing to death. He’s blond, just the size of your own little boy. You are covering a woman in labor. She is suffering the pain you suffered – remember? You are warming the body of a man with a dream, with a talent. He has eyes like the eyes of your husband and your brother.
Draw up the asbestos curtain.