B-1148

B-1148

John Paul Derryberry

It's Sunday morning at my house. I'm staring out of the kitchen window at the snow-covered creek and field behind our house. The softest snowflakes fall from the sky, and I have a picture-perfect view to match my morning bliss. My daughter and I are in the kitchen. She is playing with her water sippy cup, taking it apart and putting it back together, while I do the dishes. She makes grunts as she problem-solves and smiles when she figures out how to connect two pieces. She can do it now with almost no help from dear old dad. My wife and other daughter are playing a game of stop getting into stuff you shouldn't get into in the living room. I hear my wife say, how did you get that remote? I pushed it all the way under the coffee table, and my youngest laughs and so do I. 

The behind scene noise is CBS's Sunday Morning. A staple show for my wife, and a show that always provides a good pace to our Sunday morning. My daughter asks for help screwing the lid onto the sippy cup, the only task of this process she hasn't figured out. I happily oblige and she smiles when I'm done and leans to give this guy a hug. My heart grows three sizes. The Sunday Morning announcer introduces a story, and all I hear is the number B-1148 and an older gentleman discussing Auschwitz. He states he was 4, 5. or 6 when he entered the camp, and his sister was younger than he. Not that the age matters, they were innocent kids. 
Immediately I look at my daughter and realizes the horrific story of hate was a lot more complicated than I ever realized. Looking at it through the lens of fatherhood adds depth. Item of adds an overwhelming sense of not just the monstrosity of Nazis but also the evil of those who silently said, well, it's not me, so stay quiet and keep your head down. This is what new experiences should do for people: become a husband to a woman, learn about how women are treated differently.  Have a friend who comes out as gay, learn how people degrade them. Hang with a minority and see how people cross the street to avoid them. Stand up for a refugee, see how people turn their backs on them. 

When you look any two-year-old in the eyes and realize how many times in history, people decided to kill an entire sect of the population, your heart aches.  Civilizations have branded and tattooed body parts, so everyone knew the person was less than. This was a lifelong reminder of their below lowest-class status. Whenever these atrocities occurred, a second group looked the other way, and that's how these things take hold in society. The responsible ones are not the group projecting the hate, not the group receiving the hatred, but the group who turns a blind eye, the group that explains it away through a bunch of false ideas around, "it's not my problem."

B-1148, a tattoo on a survivor of the holocaust, says he has lived so it will not happen again. He was innocent, young, with a full life ahead of him, just like my daughters. If it can happen to him, it can happen to them. In 2019, white supremacists chanted, "Jews will not replace us", and our leaders said both sides, those who chanted the hate and those who opposed them, were "good people."  We had the cruel policy of ripping children from their parents arms and trapping them in cages. Children were ripped from their parents in Nazi Germany, too. I know that putting people who crossed the borders in cages is not the same as putting people in concentration camps, but it's on the road to get there. Maybe the distance between the cages and concentration camps is just a block away or it's from here to the moon.  No matter the gap between the two, It's not a journey anyone should step even one foot on. It's a trip humans have  made before, meaning we can make it again.

Not every supporter of this president is racist. I wouldn't even be able to guess at the percentage who are, but it's there. Also, there are a lot of people in the other party who hold and act upon racist views. We've witnessed it. I have people I love who support this leader. I haven't stopped loving them but, when I'm around them, I have not stopped confronting this simple fact, we put kids in cages because of their ideas. That's awfully dangerous, and we do not get to a la cart the leaders we support.  Anyone can cite the need for safety and say we should build a wall. My response, I beg to differ but build your wall without putting kids in cages. To people using religion as the reason for this policy, I respond with: I know of no faith leader who is shouting, put them in cages. Defenders cite the excellent economy, and my answer is: no amount of money is worth putting kids in cages. The easiest way to lose your soul is to sell out your principles for a few extra dollars in your bank account. 

The juxtaposition between an old man telling his story of childhood vs. my kid's current youth hits home.  At four years old, he received a lifelong tattooed scar and death sentence because of his heritage. Contrasting that with my beautiful Sunday morning was the imagery I have been waiting for. The scene I describe could have occurred in Germany with a Jewish family in the 30s before the carnage began. Just a dad bathing in the sun that is his children's innocence, potential, and love.  So I patiently waited to find my perfect framing for this type of awful policy. And yes, I'm aware that no matter how carefully I attempt to thread the needle, some will lash out. That speaks volumes about them, not me. 

So for the second time in this essay, I do not think that everyone who supports the president is racist.  Kids in cages are a fact. It happened, it was sanctioned, and it was wrong. How we did not protest in the streets until the leaders responsible were removed is beyond me. I'm disappointed in myself for not doing more.  I can not move beyond this fact, we ripped kids away from their parents and stuffed them in cages. Strip away party loyalty, personal beliefs, and yes, the fact that crossing the border is illegal, and what you have is a universally accepted cruel action. We get something that looks similar to how Germany treated Jews in the 1930s and 1940s.  I will not be in the second group, I will not turn a blind eye to it, and no amount of economic boom will be large enough to erase it from the history books. Germany made a bunch of money too but we do not remember that first, if at all. We remember they used permanent ink on those tattoos, B-1148 belongs to history, and it's been judged as evil, and so will those cages.