Mein Kampf

So I need to write about Inglorious Basterds before I explode. Or implode. Either one, satisfy your fancy.

In the eighth grade my team did a unit on the Holocaust in which we turned the hallway and classrooms into a concentration camp and were made to wear Jewish stars of David. We were given a set of random rules and if you were caught breaking any of those rules they would take your star and you would be constituted as dead. If you forgot your star at home, dead. Randomly throughout the unit, class would be interrupted and we would all be hustled outside and forced to line up. One teacher would walk up and down the line, inspecting our stars, deciding whether today would be the day that we would die. Every morning we would walk underneath a banner that read, "Arbeit Macht Freit," or "Work will set you free." These were the words that loomed over Auschwitz.

Shosanna Dreyfus and Sylvia Plath converged and formed the essence of my struggle. Mein Kampf. Not yours. "Daddy," by Sylvia Plath. Read it. Or if I see you around maybe I will recite it for you.

I didn't lose my star. I was one of 5 that lived.

There, where one burns books, one in the end burns men. -Heinrich Heine