First and foremost, I enjoyed this song which I consider to be a very daring and thought provoking. I think it is a modernday master piece; though I have no intellectual means to fully appreciate and analyze it.
There are many things I feel I can and maybe want to say about related topics such as : Judaism, The Jews, Israel, Diaspora, Money, The Holocaust. So many things that it is really a challenge not to get everything mixed as in an incomprehensible spaghetti dish.
The dead can't speak; neither can they receive reparations or be compensated. Obviously a life lost can't be reclaimed again. The victim's living decendants, if they are so lucky to have any, are not the victims themselves but are the closest there are to the victims.
One day all the survivors will die out; some people are anxious about the inevitable disappearance of people who can personally attest about their holocaustic experiences. As a decendant of survivors and victims I think that abuse/suffering/disposession/destitution and victimization is ubiquitous and untimely; i.e. it is experienced everywhere and at any time. It is just the victims' identity that changes. I am saying that without taking from the holocaust its unique historical status and significance; I merely offer what I consider to be a good approximation to the holocauistic experience or any anonymous victim. Please, look at a person who swaps the streets, the dinners at a local soup kitchen, the refugee, the dispossesed, the victim of war and civil/political upheaval. Combine them all together and compound them with loss of one’s all immediate family and most of one’s extended family, loss of any possesions, loss of homeland and physical and mental abuse. I believe this is a good approximation to the holocauistic experience.
In retrospect, I think the holocaust has changed the mental state of the world to a great extent. The whole civil and human rights movement can be traced back to it. It is too bad that the Jews, as always, had to pay the price, and in full. I guess we are not the choosen people for nothing.
As for "us"... I guess we will return, if we haven't done so already (Germany and Canada enjoy the largest growth in their respective jewish communities for understandable reasons), we always do; we are always there, if not in body then at least in spirit.