A Story

As a child, a few years after WWII, my family bought its first black and white television, a Zenith. I Love Lucy, I've Got A Secret, and Gunsmoke were the favorites in our household. After that talking box entered my life, there were many school days I tried the tummyache ruse to stay home. My fake ache didn't work often but when it did it was great; comfy on the couch, the intermittent moan to justify my truancy, watching daytime live soaps with momma. I remember my older brother climbing on the roof many nights to turn the antennae as daddy yelled through the window "a little more," "no, no, back the other way," and "right there, stop, right there!"

I remember evenings my mom, dad, brother and I sat around the tiny screen watching the town marshal Matt Dillon outdraw hired guns and bad guys who wandered into Dodge on his watch. Being the good guy Marshal Dillon never gunned down outlaws without lots of reason, at least 25 minutes worth of justification in the 30-minute episodes. You cheered when he shot them in a showdown at high noon. Long before political correctism, we referred to his hop-a-long deputy Chester, as gimpy. And I was a teen before I realized that redheaded Ms. Kitty, the pretty painted lady who ran the saloon, was serving Marshal Dillon more than whiskey.

There were also documentaries of the Holocaust, although I don't recall them being called documentaries back then. I was horrified at the films of skeletal bodies in piles, on trucks, in open pits. I'm sure my parents thought they were using modern technology to teach me history, but they should have censored my viewing the programs because the images haunted me for years afterwards. The footage might be considered tame compared to the technicolored digital carnage onscreen today but I think the B&W flickering images had more effect as it was our reality TV, whereas the villain in Dodge City never bled or even had a hole in his shirt after Marshall Dillon shot him dead.

I remember one particular docudrama interview with a woman who told her Holocaust survivor story of being herded into a room with others for a "shower" but it was a gas chamber. She claimed she survived because a guard had not completely shut the door, leaving it cracked, where she was able to put her face and breathe air. She said they entered naked through one door and 20 minutes later the dead were taken out through another door to the crematoria.

Thirty years later, living in a large metro area and access to cable, I noticed at least 3 nights a week on one channel or another, the continued docudrama of the Holocaust. I never again saw the footage with the woman who survived by breathing through a crack in the door, but as an adult I asked myself if such a feat was possible in a gas chamber. Why didn't others in the gas chamber try to join her at the door? Why did no one open the door to run from the gas? I remember as a child dwelling on the horror of that story; how awful it would have been with poison gas seeping in and struggling to breathe through a door left ajar, in a chamber full of human beings screaming and dying. As an adult I asked did Nazi gas chambers leak? Did the Nazi guards not detect cyanide seeping from the door, was the omission of a warning odorant on Zyklon not a risk for the guards? How did she escape being disposed of with the other victims when the chamber was cleaned out?

I questioned a great deal of WWI and II history as an adult and long before hearing the term "Holocaust denier." I asked how could a little nobody thug like Hitler rise to power without major players backing him? Whose global money financed the Nazi agenda? Who were all the players in the campaign to overturn the tables of the global moneychangers? The lone lunatic leader of a cruel and gullible people doesn't do it for me, anymore than "they hate our freedom" does it today. And aren't all wars holocaust? Weren't Nagasaki and Hiroshima holocausts or is it simply they deserved it and we saved lives, and proved a point with not one but two nukes?

I don't deny the death and evil that was waged on the world last century, it continues today. I just demand more clarity and proof as to who, why, where, what. After all, not too long ago history portrayed Indians as savages who deserved smallpox blankets, portrayed slaves as subhuman who deserved bondage; history claims we didn't know what the Nazis were doing, couldn't imagine a Hitler after eons of genocidal conquerors, that we couldn't imagine hijacked planes used as weapons. Bring 'em on, because Gunsmoke are us. History is a story, stay tuned for the next episode, different time, same sponsors, same channel. But there may be a crack in the door, breathe deep.