Auschwitz, Gas and Small Blue Things

Today I am
a small blue thing
Like a marble or an eye
With my knees against my mouth
I am perfectly round
I am watching you

A little down today. People are getting hurt and there doesn't seem to be anything I can do about it. I suppose I'm probably asking too much of a penguin but nonetheless....It's so much more real when they are people you know.

For some reason, I've been thinking about solitude recently. Now you'd think that with all of us down here, huddled together for the winter, we'd be yearning for a bit of solitude after all that socialising. But actually, it's almost the complete opposite. Even though we are all sleeping in each other's pockets, it's actually quite lonely really when the weather's bad.

You can't talk to anyone when the wind howls round your ears. You can't go off and have a chat with your mates because they're on the other side of the huddle and by the time you get round to them they've had to move somewhere else. You'd think that when the better weather comes we'd all be out socialising, chatting, catching up on old news. I suppose we are to some extent but all I want to be at the moment is ALONE! (Well, except for Fricka, but then she's seldom here when I am so.......)

Funny, I suppose. In the midst of this teeming rookery, all you want is solitude! Ah well, will be back on the long trek to the sea in a day or so, lots of time for reflection then.

I have been thinking a lot recently about responsibility - you can tell from previous posts, can't you? Now pride in what you do, whether it's your job, or raising a family, or cooking a meal, you want to do the best that you can, don't you? Well, in recent weeks, I've been listening to someone doing the best job they can for their boss, covering their arse, pointing out all the pitfalls, making sure that what they do is as watertight as they can make it, all well and good, you might think? Only trouble is, it's cost three people their livelihoods.

And this got me thinking. Rudolf Hoess, camp commandant at Auschwitz, 'bragged' that he did the best possible job he could. It was his defence. Only trouble was, he wasn't processing cattle at a slaughter house, he was processing people, human beings! So where does doing your job stop and being Rudolf Hoess start? It's a serious ethical question, I think. Everyone will draw the line at a different point along the continuum from helping your boss to gassing Jews and who is to say where one merges into the other? Did the bureaucrats at the Wannsee conference, working out how many Jews could fit in a box car, how big the crematoria needed to be to cope with the bodies from the gas chambers, rail timetables, were they any different from someone who helps his boss do the best job possible? I honestly don't know! I wish I did!

You see, I'm not sure I see how you stop yourself going from one to the other. How you stop yourself going from covering your boss' arse to gassing Jews!

The little ditty at the head of this is by Suzanne Vega. I didn't ask her permission but I hope she will not mind too much.