TW: holocaust, trump, camps Yesterday I met a docufilm director at a coffee shop. He told me about a film he is doing research on about the holocaust, more specifically about TREBLINKA. Located in Poland, it was built and operated by nazi germans. Treblinka served as an EXTERMINATION CAMP. That's right. It's sole purpose was to kill the people that were sent there. It was also one of three secret extermination camps (yes there were three others, and these were the secret ones.) It was made to look like a transit camp for deportations further east. Why did I have the sudden urge to write this? Share this? Go off and do more research and read more about this place? Because this director shared something else with me. It turns out that his family lives in florida, which is just on the other coast of this colonized land mass (country). And when he went to visit his loved ones, he was met with their surprise that there is already a wall between the US and Mexican border. THEY DIDN'T KNOW UNTIL THAT MOMENT THAT THERE IS ALREADY A WALL. I've lived in San Diego my entire life. Aside from being born from a daughter of Mexico, the earliest evidence of my relationship with Mexico is in a photo of my baptism, which took place in Tijuana. I spent nearly every weekend and time off from school playing with my cousins, walking to the little store across the street to buy Sabritas and gummy worms, running across the garden past my cousin as he held his huge dog back from eating me alive, always having pancakes and waffles for breakfast and sustaining myself throughout the fay with tortilla con mantequilla, oh and crushing on all the cute teenage boys. Mexico is where I had many of my "firsts", like my first kiss, my first forbidden love story, my first time at a club, my first/last black-out-drunk story, my first/not last dance on the 6 foot speaker, my first gay strip club, my first car accident (not my fault), and a few more... don't worry fam I'm still alive. Mexico is where a part of my goes to die, evolve, and rebirth into a new.I'm sorry I got lost in a rabbit hole. But do you get an idea about where I'm going with this? There are folks here who have not lived a relationship as close as I have with this wall, who live here in San Diego and are astonished by their surprise. You know, last year for Thanksgiving break I decided to visit my family who lives like a 15 minute drive from the border. I had just come back from El Salvador where many many people were and still are fleeing for survival, something that seems like a natural response for anyone who understands that animal kingdom. However we are are human... anyway... I had an idea of going to a protest in San Ysidro then crossing over in time to make it to a family gathering at my cousins new place. Well, that was the same day the current US president decided to shut down the border down. This imaginary yet very real line in the ground has always been a part of my life. I grew up like many lucky privileged folks crossing making this journey to experience parts of my life. All of this was normalized and engrained into the way I made sense of my life. I want to visit my family? I gotta cross la linea to the other side. "I'll see you on the other side"... "I'm crossing over now"... a whole culture, a language, an identity has been created around this wall. YET THERE ARE PEOPLE IN THIS COUNTRY WHO DON'T EVEN KNOW THAT IT EXISTS? not just one, but TWO? Treblinka, the holocaust, hitler all happened not too long ago. There were some survivors from this camp who have courageously shared their experience with the world. According to resources, the last survivor dead three years ago. Imagine the life he lived before that, during that, after that. Some, like this director, say that a holocaust doesn't start with Treblinka... it starts with a particular way of thinking. then a particular way of being. Where are we on this timeline?
