Séamus Ahearne: ‘It was unbelievable. I was naked, I had no hair, and I had a number on my arm.’ Anita Lasker-Wallfisch. She played the Cello.

Burns Day.

Thursday was the 25th January. It was Burns Day. I should have been in Scotland for a Burns Supper. His wit, his carelessness, his take on the foibles of human beings, lifts the spirit.

The 80th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.

It was on Monday the 27th January. We talked at Mass of the experience of a visit to the concentration camp. Those of us who had been there were left with very similar feelings. We had to go there. We felt the silence. We saw the hair, the cases, the spectacles, the shoes. We had very few words. How could this have happened?

The Last Musician of Auschwitz.

It was on BBC2 at 21.00 last evening (Monday). Music saved many. The musicians were better fed. They both hated what they were doing and loved it. They had survivors’ guilt. The programme was powerful and shocking. It was a contrasting image of beauty and inhumanity. We soared to the heavens in the wonder of music, and we were dragged into the depths of depravity, by the brutality of the stories and imagery. How can we ever make sense of what human beings can do, and have done? The programme was both obscene and sublime.

Robert Burns comes to mind with – man’s inhumanity to man.

“Man Was Made to Mourn” Robert Burns, 1784.

Many and sharp the num’rous ills
    Inwoven with our frame!
More pointed still we make ourselves
    Regret, remorse, and shame!
And man, whose heav’n-erected face
    The smiles of love adorn,—
Man’s inhumanity to man
    Makes countless thousands mourn!

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch ended the programme (The Last Musician) wondering about the state of the world and asked:  

“What have we learned?”

Can any of us begin to understand or explain how human beings can lose all traces of ourselves as graced people?  

Seamus Ahearne osa      28th January 2025.

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