The silence of fascist death

Image from The Quint

 

In 1944, the Nazis erected a vast conglomeration of structures in Poland which was fenced with barbed wire. In one of them was found a heap of clothes stripped from the Jewish victims - a pathetic heap consisting of an array of items from men's suits to babies' shoes. 

Another building had three rooms. In the first of these the prisoners were made to remove their clothing; in the second they were passed under a series of shower baths; and in the third they were packed tightly so much so that none of them could move even their limbs. Three pipes led into this room from the outside, and there was a fourth aperture for a guard to watch what was going on inside. 

When the room was filled entirely with stripped human beings packed like sardines, there suddenly came a shower of crystals through the pipes. On contact with air, these crystals generated deadly gases. The guard on duty outside could see the men, women, and children dying inside with exploding lungs. 

The corpses were thrown into enormous trenches which were then covered up. Eventually, however, the Nazis decided to conceal all evidence of their brutality. So they built a crematorium, a series of five ovens, each just large enough to hold a human body. The bodies were shovelled into them. Initially the cremations proceeded slowly since the ovens were not hot enough. But then Nazi science worked the heat up to 1500 degrees Centigrade, and the furnaces began to consume as many as 2000 bodies a day. This way, 1,500,000 people perished at Maidanek alone, in Poland. 

One evening, when the furnaces were in full blast, a group of newly arrived prisoners came by. This was an error as prisoners were not supposed to know of what was awaiting them. One of the women among the prisoners lost her mind seeing the furnaces devouring human bodies. She let out a loud shriek. And another. And it became an endless hysterical shriek. The commandant ordered her to be silent. She couldn't suppress her shriek. At the order from the commandant, two guards seized the woman and threw her alive into one of the furnaces. Her shriek was swallowed by 1500 degrees Centigrade. Silence followed. The silence of fascist death. 

I was reminded of the above incident narrated in Barrows Dunham's book, Man Against Myth, as I read the news about new banners being put up in the temples of Dehradun by Hindu Yuva Vahini. Non-Hindus not allowed. The organisation has demanded similar banners to be put up at Yamunotri, Gangotri, Kedarnath, and Badrinath. 

When will the banners appear all over Hindustan? When will 1500 degrees Centigrade begin to swallow the voices of 20% of Indians en masse?