Regarding the Pain of Others.

• Author: Bloch, Chana
• Position: Poem

Regarding the Pain of Others for Amira Hass and Idith Zertal As Amira's mother was deported to Bergen-Belsen, the local women passed by with their shopping baskets: "They watched us taken away with a curious indifference. Or was it an indifferent curiosity?" The wife of the Nazi schoolteacher in Lanzmann's Shoah: "Day after day, the same spectacle! It was frightful! Depressing. Gets on your nerves. You can't force a whole village to watch such distress." Or the women lined up at the ditch in Ponary, waiting to be shot, who covered their naked bodies, breast and crotch, with their naked hands. Someone recorded their humiliation, someone printed and framed the photo, someone...