It takes 80 years to forget.
Nazis brought a kind of perfect horror to the world, a distilled and modern expression of evil. And though I was born after it by a fair couple of decades, there was a cry still echoing out of it:
Never Forget.
But in a reasonably long life now, with each bouncing echo, the sound grows softer:
NEVER FORGET
Never forget
The city I live in now once twisted through these Fascist horrors in complex ways, but public tributes to resistance and suffering can still be found posted and plaqued about the buidings and streets here.
Never forget!
Once, on the arcade of our busiest shopping street, the Nazis hung resisters from the arches as examples and warnings to the population.
Never forget.
And then,
Eighty years later, the population elected a fascist to be the mayor of this city.
“Oh, he’s not really a Fascist,” I think most people around here would say.
But one can only hear that because the last soft echo is gone.
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