Ghosts of the past
Sep. 30th, 2004 04:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
misscamAlmost four years ago now, fifteen year old Benjamin Hansen was killed by neo-Nazis within walking distance of where I attended University at the time. His only crime was to have an African mother. And I felt as if it was me they had stabbed and left to slowly bleed to death under a cold winter sky. This should not be. This is Europe 60 years after WW2. This should not be. This poison should not linger still. But it does, and all I have to fight it with is the ghosts of the dead haunting me – and the anger their voices give me. This should not be. This will not be.
I wrote that to a challenge over at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
dabblings and it left me thinking. The murder of Benjamin by neo-Nazis has of late come up again in the media, due to the murder of one of his classmates (this not racially related). It's been almost four years now, but I've come to realise his murder is one of those things I will remember as shaping me. I did not know him. I probably never would have either way, but he was as much a Norwegian as I was and no damn ghost of Hitler shall tell me otherwise.
And when I read news like this, I can almost feel his ghost haunt Europe like an ill wind.
He is still here.
I wrote that to a challenge over at
dabblings and it left me thinking. The murder of Benjamin by neo-Nazis has of late come up again in the media, due to the murder of one of his classmates (this not racially related). It's been almost four years now, but I've come to realise his murder is one of those things I will remember as shaping me. I did not know him. I probably never would have either way, but he was as much a Norwegian as I was and no damn ghost of Hitler shall tell me otherwise. And when I read news like this, I can almost feel his ghost haunt Europe like an ill wind.
He is still here.
