I Can’t Breathe…
Hendrika de Vries is the author of When a Toy Dog Became a Wolf and the Moon Broke Curfew: a memoir about her childhood in Nazi-occupied WWII Amsterdam.
“I can’t breathe…”
“I can’t breathe” whispered George Floyd as a white man in authority put his knee on his neck and crushed him to death.
“I can’t breathe” whispered the 100,000 Americans, most of them weak, poor or old, as they lay dying of the Covid-19 virus while the president of the United States said it was a “hoax”.
“I can’t breathe” whispered the children of polluted cities as corporations poisoned the air and set out to destroy our fragile planet.
Did they try to breathe? I, a child who had survived the murderous cruelties of the Nazis in WWII Amsterdam, often wondered when I heard adults in the family whisper in horror about the millions of men, women and children sent into the Nazi gas chambers. Today, I wonder if they too whispered “I can’t breathe” as the deadly gas filled their lungs.
Do we not know that white supremacists, fascists, those who have built their power on the backs of slaves and ideals of superiority, have always had their knee on the neck of those who they regarded as “inferior.” They have always needed a “scapegoat,” an “other,” to explain their cruelties and inhumanity.
When my mother, who joined the Resistance in WWII and hid a Jewish girl in our home, was asked why she risked everything to hide a “Jewess” she said simply, “Remember, not one of our children is safe unless they are all safe.”
So, we wonder about riots and protests when we have a president who fans the flames of hate and division and spurs his macho thugs to violence. Really? White supremacy is built on the spurs of hatred, on beliefs of superiority, on rights to colonize, own, control and kill those who are deemed “inferior.”
It has been 75 years since my mother and I survived the traumatic events of Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. I am a grandmother now. I have lived a blessed life, and in our richly blended extended family I hope to still hold in my arms a great-grandbaby or two. And whatever the color of that baby’s skin, ethnicity, lineage or gender, I will offer up fierce prayers for its right to breathe and I will bless it with my mother’s words: “Not one of our children is safe unless they are all safe.”
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Hendrika de Vries is the author of When a Toy Dog Became a Wolf and the Moon Broke Curfew: a memoir about her childhood in Nazi-occupied WWII Amsterdam.
Her memoir has been awarded the 2019 May Sarton Women’s Book Award.
Read more on www.agirlfromamsterdam.com
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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, On Writing
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Thank you for this. I was hesitant at first to post anything political, but how hypocritical it would be to write a novel about the lingering effects of injustice, war, etc. etc. and then not speak up when it is all around us again.
Thank you.