Ever since reading Elie Wiesel’s book, NIGHT, I’ve identified with Madame Schächter, one of eighty Jewish people corralled and hermetically sealed inside one of the cattle wagons on the rail journey to Auschwitz from a ghetto in Sighet. The text tells us, “Madame Schächter had gone out of her mind.” Initially she moaned, confused as to why she had been separated from her family. She soon grew hysterical. “Fire! I can see a fire! I can see a fire!” When her fellow prisoners looked out the window and saw no fire, they attempted to silence her. Nevertheless, she persisted with her cries. They soon tied her up, gagged, and hit her. As the train approached its destination (Birkenau, the reception center for Auschwitz), Madame Schächter screamed, “Jews, look! Look through the window! Flames! Look!” When the Jews looked through the window this time, they saw flames “gushing out of a tall chimney into the black sky.”
Madame Schächter, someone I call a prophetess, could “see” things the other Jews could not or would not acknowledge. In today’s political climate, there are people who DO see the fire and flames. We cry out. Some of our fellow citizens attempt to silence us. “Give him a chance.” “Let’s come together in unity.” “Stop being so negative—it will turn out all right in the end.” Continue reading “I See the Fire by Esther Nelson”
Feminism and Religion 