6,000,000 dead in the congo since i left highschool...

the atomic bomb museum in hiroshima and the jewish museum in berlin are places where the inhumanity of man is presented in such matter-of-fact, excruciating intimacy, that one is moved by an overwhelming sense of empathy - based on our common experience of being human - and one's view of life is changed. auschwitz needs no introduction, we all know of the horrors that occurred there. but the way the site is mismanaged, turning sorrow into cash by way of duplicity, and churning thousands of people through dry presentations of items with no human stories - nothing personal that one could access the site by - left us feeling angry and cheated for days afterwards. information presented by signs and tour guides were often conflicting, sometimes leaving out facts, at other times exaggerating. surely the truth is enough in a place like this? what more could possibly be needed? what a terrible, terrible shame for the victims, and to all humans who have inherited this historical legacy.

i will make one note though. of the many hundreds of thousands of gays that died under the nazi regime, about 15000 died at auschwitz after short lives as the lowest rung of all prisoners. upon liberation, some were forced to complete the sentences (for sexual perversion) that the nazis had given them by british and american lawyers who saw their crimes as valid. they are the only minority group who didn't receive compensation from the german governments after the war. and yet, of these thousands of victims, not a single sign, not a single utterance by a single guide was made of their existence at auschwitz among the long lists that were presented of other peoples murdered there. how are any of auschwitz' victims served by the exclusion of some of their members from history? does this not reduce their suffering too? why does politics play such a role in what we are allowed to remember? and if ever i wonder whether i'm over-reacting, i only need to check into a krakow hotel and get a snigger from reception staff when we insist on a double bed and not two singles, or walk through a medieval town square during a glorious sunset where loving straight couples walk hand-in-hand without thinking twice, but where i - with a pang of shame and pain - choose not to hold my lover's hand for fear of having my head bashed in, and then i realise that i'm not over-reacting, and that the way we remember history determines the way we live our lives today. in fact, i'm simply not angry enough.

keep congo in your hearts.