OH!wilho

Below is my entry for the Alan M. Schwartz Essay Prize – “Inspiration and Transformation on the March of Remembrance and Hope” by the Canadian Centre for Diversity, which was submitted on June 30, 2007. I was awarded the prize on August 23, 2007.

A Frozen Second
Wilson Ho

Two months and counting, I have yet to process and truly comprehend the Greatest Experience of my Life. I found it difficult to express and share the MRH experience in words which would be true to its essence and do it justice. What I witnessed were no longer figments of my imagination, but fragments of my memory.

My first week home was disorienting. ‘Disorienting’ is the one word which can best describe what it felt like for me. I was lost and at such a lost for words, I felt handicapped being unable to share all that I have witnessed. It did not help when people wanted to know what I learnt.

As I sit here, recollecting my thoughts without any help from the pictures I took while on the trip, I cannot help but pause and realize how much of my memory was photographic. Without my pictures then, I was rendered incapable of explaining the experience to others, and through it, to be able to relive the experience for reflection. I also realize how there were some moments which impacted me more than others, and I reckon them to be different from person to person.

I would forever recall the initial moments, like a baby’s first step of exploration, and hopefully, with luck on my side, discovery, not just of truth per se, but of one’s self. I was desperately struggling to not possess expectations and yet I was filled with uncertainty and eagerly anticipating the unknown. Infact, the night before Auschwitz, I wrote “I anticipate. I apprehend. I contemplate. I do not expect.” I would remember sitting behind our two Holocaust survivors as they were introduced at the Orientation and thinking about how happy and glad I was they were here with us, still present among us. They survived along with their life story. How my thoughts then shifted to those who did not. No longer is the loss ours, but one of Humanity’s.

One moment which I remember most vividly was at Auschwitz-Birkenau during our ceremony. The morning earlier had not been easy; it had been a rough day. We were standing, hand-in-hand, singing along, and all the while my eyes were fixated on Judy. I noticed her standing alone in the background apart from where the chorus was. She was gazing away into the ruins at a distance. The blank stare belies her physical presence; I knew from the look in her eyes she was back in the past, which perhaps may be a haunting in no manner I would ever be able to fathom.

Dissonance was a big theme of our experience. For me, it was clearest at Płaszów, and I quote my journal post:

Today I was sitting on the green, green grass of Płaszów.
The weather was beautiful and nothing like how it was during our two days in Berlin.
It was difficult to imagine there was, behind such a beautiful place, a very real dark past.

While I was seated on the ground, I fiddled and played with the blades of grass pricking around my legs to while away time.

Running the blade between one’s fingers from base to tip, the grass was silky smooth.
Yet, to do otherwise, the tiny hairs were sharp and prickly.

Need I say any more than that?

To think about the future is easy,
but to take a look back into the past is difficult.

Throughout my time on MRH, another theme which resonated the most for me was those of guilt and goodbyes ─ two things which mean very much to me. Before the experience, I have long said guilt and regret are the worst emotions personally for they would beget me much grief, and if I had to pick one, it would be guilt ─ not because one is worse than the other, but because with guilt comes regret. The vice versa, on the other hand, is not necessarily and in a sense, regrettably, always true. Watching an episode of Oprah ─ yes, I watch Oprah ─ post-MRH on the cathartic meeting between Amon Göth’s daughter, Monika Hertwig, and Helen Jonas-Rosenzweig, reminded me of how important closure was and brought the message home to me.

Two weeks after MRH, I still felt like a lost soul picking up the pieces and moving on. It was surreal. Slowly readjusting and easing myself back into reality, it was then, when like an epiphany, it struck me. I would not go so far as to say it paralysed me with fear, but it struck me and brought me back to a time a couple of hours upon arrival in Berlin. It was more than a snapshot captured of that moment; it was a memory transcending all senses. Solemnly we stood in silence under cloudy skies on the grounds of the Wannsee Villa, when Morgie, our informative guide, lectured us on the Final Solution, and stressed the incomprehensible fact that those present and responsible were all educated intellectuals. Unbeknownst to me then was what it would come to mean for myself.

There has been much strife recently over my home country’s stance on religion and racial politics, so much so it was even featured in an article titled ‘A nation at odds over Islam’ on the July 27^th 2007 edition of the Toronto Star. Connecting the dots, the stark fact laid before my very eyes. One of the more prominent members of parliament caught up in the controversy was educated at the London School of Economics, while another graduated from the University of Oxford. Yet, they were proponents of Ketuanan Melayu. Or Malay supremacy.

I am not trying to make a political statement; I am merely expressing disappointment. I also do not expect the situation to disintegrate to a state similar to the Indonesian racial riots in May 1998. Well, not on my watch at least. I am thankful there are other enlightened ones who seek and strive for humanity.

Through the MRH, I am not only, first and foremost, inspired, but enriched by the lessons taught, the knowledge learnt, and especially the people who made everything all the more worthwhile. Through the therapeutic singing and the tears, I was changed. I was transformed. I did not hold back from sharing in the pain. I expressed. I emoted. It may not appear much to others, but to me, it is of personal significance; I was being very open about what I was feeling then. To a group of random strangers no less!

Growing up in Malaysia and Singapore, the experience also proved invaluable to me in allowing me to better understand the Jewish faith and cultural life, which I have always found to be intriguing.

Being from a region which was faced with its own crises during World War II, such as the Sook Ching Massacre in Singapore, there are not many people who know much about the Holocaust. Then of course, there are those who deny the Holocaust. To deny the Holocaust would be to deny the existence of those who lost their lives. It would be to deny them the basic human right of dignity.

I feel it is my obligation to educate the ignorant and enlighten the indifferent. I wish my words shall resonate with the core of their being, that of humanity which resides in all of us, to eradicate further perpetration and perpetuation of crimes against humanity with time to come.

In my MRH application essay on my idea of utopia, I expressed my dismay with the worldly state of affairs, and how if change was expected to be achieved, we would require a conscious realization of our own voice and vision of utopia. “Because when we lack the vision, we kill the Will” – the collective will to make it reality.

The task at hand and whatever else which lie before us as MRH witnesses would reveal itself to be a formidable challenge. However, we, as a collective, as a family, could be the spark unto the flames of change and the light of hope. Mahatma Gandhi once said, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” With this, I am compelled to implore us all to act today.