A Movie and the Plight of the Hungry

There is a film called, Boy in the Striped Pajamas, which is about the friendship between a boy in a Nazi concentration camp and the son on the camp commandant.  The movie explores some of the propaganda that the Germans were instilled with by their government.  It explored the turbulent emotions and ideas that tore families apart.  For me one of the most striking things was a propaganda movie that showed the Jewish prisoners playing games, sitting at a table outdoors eating a meal as a family, and demonstrating what a lovely place the camp was.  We know now the horrors of those camps.  My family has a friend who was interred at two German labor camps: Clermont and Frontabalag(sp?).  He still has items and is working with French museums to continue writing the history of what happened to the many who passed through the gates.  One image that he has is of children lined up.  They were being taken to the trains to be sent to the concentration camps.  They had been separated from their parents.  He himself was an American born to French parents.  He tried to escape through Italy, but was detained, arrested and taken the to camps.  As an American he said that he was often put with a group of other Americans, paraded and showed off to reporters and photographers, but never allowed to speak.  He was used for propaganda purposes without knowing it. 

The same friend has been having my family watch closely what is happening in Syria.  He sees many correlations starting with the refugees fleeing.  Now media is starting to report that the Syrian people are being starved.  Some reports in our news this week suggest that the UN has found sarin poisoning in the blood of some of the dead they have come across.  It is frightening to think that the world is trying to forget what was to justify its actions now.  Let us not forget.  Let us stand strong too and remember that these are men, women, and children who are like us in every way who are being injured, starved and killed in Syria.  The politics is incredibly complex, but on a humanitarian level, what can we do to help the people?