So The Board thought of something for Holocaust Remembrance Day almost a day late. Like many bass players my age, Geddy Lee of Rush was a huge influence on my decision to take up bass guitar. But what I didn’t know until just not that long ago was that Geddy’s parents were Holocaust survivors. In fact, they met and married at the British-administered Bergen-Belsen relocation center, located on the site of the former concentration camp. The title background image is British troops burning down part of the prisoner barracks to control the spread of typhus, the same typhus that killed Anne Frank.
When Grace Under Pressure came out I had no idea “Red Sector A” was about Geddy’s mother’s experiences at Bergen-Belsen. I thought it was a rare for Rush direct commentary on what was going on in Guatemala and El Salvador. But no, it is about Manya Rubenstein’s experiences at Bergen-Belsen:
The most heartbreaking line here is “I must help my mother stand up straight”. If you’ve ever read Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz know that the key to survival was seeming to be healthy, seeming to be useful. Manya’s father and brother seemed unhealthy, and were killed. The Frank Family got to Bergen-Belsen so late that they just let them die in the barracks. Otto Frank was the only survivor.
Back after WWII, the UN established the Convention on Genocide. It was supposed to be Never Again. But it has been again. How else did I think this song was about El Salvador or Guatemala? Why do we have euphemisms like “ethnic cleansing”? What about West Papua? What about Iraqi Kurdistan? What about Turkish Kurdistan? What about Tibet? What about Xinjiang? Yes, the largest, most well-coordinated, genocide since the Holocaust is underway right now in Xinjiang, and no one will stop it. There aren’t exactly death camps, but there are relocations. Denying a people access to the land and capital that sustain them kills them only a little slower than death camps do. I’m a European-American, so I know. The Five Civilized Tribes that adopted European technology were eventually displaced, and displacement is death.
But what are we gonna do? Boycott China over Xinjiang?
the big board 