Envoi
From the Book, Unworthy Lives, Pages 80-81
Copyright © 1998, 2008
Jason Lester Atkins
985 Fleet Drive, #347
Virginia Beach, VA 23454
I see the shadow of an ancient Avatar,
summonsing me with a whispering sound,
out of this circling light of wonder seekers:
Summonsing me from my journey of becoming:
Learning love is the sacred engine fueling souls:
Learning non-judgmental love is energy of Divinity:
Reminding me, I am still Elfriede,
Channeling choice lessons from my clinging consciousness:
Reminding me, it is still my birthday:
Guiding me back to visiting Mama:
guiding me above the rooftops of Vienna,
above the rooftops of Vienna's Medical Memorial:
Seeing Mama standing in a room of shelves,
packed with jars of labeled children's brains:
Seeing her holding re-claiming orders:
Wrinkled and bent but still my beautiful mama,
standing next to jars of tiny stolen brains:
Standing next to Elfriede, Maria and Karl:
Looking upward, sensing where I fly:
Seeing for the first time, my waiting face:
Releasing her spirit from flesh, joining me:
Joining in joyous re-union as firefly spirits:
Entering together into the mystery of the light:
Knowing, all my lessons will be lived again:
Knowing, No Life Ends With A Period ..."
Some Information About the Above Poem
Unclaimed remains of "unworthy lives" will be laid to rest this fall.
Associated Press
VIENNA, Austria - One mother took her child to the Nazi doctors voluntarily, all but signing the girl's death warrant. Another was frightened into handing over her daughter. A boy was selected from the street and came back in a coffin.
The Nazis called them "unworthy lives." Across Europe, 75,000 people, including 5,000 children, were pronounced mentally or physically deficient and killed because they did not fit Hitler's vision of a perfect world.
Vienna now plans to get rid of a gruesome legacy of this policy - the brains of some 400 children murdered by the Nazis and stored for medical research in a city clinic.
The children were killed by injection, medical experimentation or starved. Little was said about their murders for more than 50 years.
Fear during Hitler's rule and shame afterward kept discussion of Nazi horrors to a minimum for decades. A real look at Austrian complicity did not begin until 1988, when the 50th anniversary of Hitler's annexation of Austria coincided with the furor surrounding then President Kurt Waldheim and his concealed past as an officer in the German army.
This month, Vienna urged relatives to claim the brains in radio, TV and newspaper ads in Austria and Germany. By fall, those that remain will be buried in a memorial ceremony.
City officials say the existence of the brains - used for teaching and Nazi research on abnormalities - had been common knowledge since the 1980's, when they were transferred to Vienna's main psychiatric clinic, complete with a plaque decrying Nazi horrors.
In Vienna, Leopoldine Karner, 77, spoke bitterly of her struggle to keep her daughter after the baby's bad ear infection was reported to Nazi doctors. They told her to leave Elfriede with them. "I refused," she said, fingering a faded black and white picture with the caption "Mommy and Elferi."
"They then threatened me that if I did not leave her there, there would be 'consequences' for me and the rest of my family." After more threats, she reluctantly complied. The child died - officially of pneumonia.
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