A Tale of Two Trees

II

The Death Camps all seem to have happened so very long ago – 80 years!  And there are few remaining voices to bear witness, to all the diabolic and precise orders handed down in the name of extermination.

I find it remarkable that these last voices remaining were also the youngest to experience the horrors; innocent children who could only ask ‘Why?’ and who navigated, somehow, the imperceptible deluge of small miracles by which they survived and live among us today.

Other living beings bear witness, as well, to what was there before anything was built – before so much harm came to so many – and long after the flames of furnaces had been extinguished.  These creatures also convey their silent testament, to that justice which only time provides.

This is the tale of two trees.  The first we shall call the Tree of Life.  In biblical times it was associated with immortality.  But in this context, its association is quite the opposite.  

The second tree is called the Tree of Knowledge.  It has stood sentry over some of mankind’s most mechanical and misguided thinking, bearing within its bark all the barbarity that humans, sadly, have only improved upon since.

Both trees share, in kind: a crown, branches, trunks, roots and leaves.  It is the leaves which bud, nourish, turn gold, wither and then fall.  There they decompose, into a ground hallowed by history’s awful burden, and illumined by the One Ancient Sun we all share, in both time and space.