«That number is a part of me»

A redução da pessoa a um número teve no nazismo um dos seus expoentes máximos. Admito que no nosso subconsciente esta associação esteja ainda marcada pela atrocidade. Nunca fez mal ouvir as lições da História. Nesse sentido são pertinentes as reservas apresentadas por VPV, no Espectro. Após uma reunião de trabalho, e numa conversa informal, foi abordada precisamente esta questão da redução da pessoa ao número ocorrida no tempo do nazismo. Por curiosidade, andei a ver algumas coisas sobre o assunto. Junto um depoimento - «The number is a part of me» - que nos deve fazer pensar. Vale a pena ver o documentário, apesar da extensão (aprox. oito minutos):

«The number is a part of me» (ver o depoimento de Helena Jockel)

Helena Jockel loved the bright, friendly students she taught at a Jewish elementary school in occupied Hungary. But her world ended when the Nazis evacuated the town's Jewish ghetto in 1944. In this CBC Television clip, the Halifax resident says that, a half-century later, she remembers the names of all 28 students who rode with her in a cattle car to an uncertain fate. "I hoped that I would be able to help them," she says, pausing, "And I never, ever was." Arriving at Auschwitz in Poland, Jockel and others were herded on to a ramp. There, Dr. Josef Mengele, "the chief selector," decided with a wave of his finger who lived and who died. It was humiliating to be reduced by a tattoo to number 16505 in the Nazi death machine, she says. "It never, ever came into my mind to get rid of that number. That number is a part of me, a part of my experience." Jockel also describes an encounter with a female SS soldier, the "beautiful music" of the Allies bombing the camp, her eventual liberation and why she will never return to Auschwitz.

Rodrigo Adão da Fonseca