| | | This just popped up in my fb feed--a sacred photograph.
At Dachau in May 1945, when American soldiers liberated the camp, one survivor was handed a simple cup of clean water. He lifted it slowly, as though it were a goblet of gold, and held it aloft like a toast. His voice, weak but steady, whispered: “To life itself.” That gesture, small and quiet, carried the weight of years of suffering. In Dachau, water had been rationed, dirty, often polluted with disease. Prisoners drank with fear—fear of punishment, fear of sickness, fear of losing what little strength remained. To sip freely, to know the water was safe, was to rediscover a trust in the world that had been stripped away. The cup became more than water—it became a symbol of survival. It was the body’s first recognition that it could live again, that nourishment no longer came at the cost of terror. Liberation was not only freedom from the camp’s barbed wire, but also the return of simple human dignity: to drink when thirsty, to feel the coolness in the throat, to believe tomorrow might exist. In that lifted cup, the survivor toasted not victory or vengeance, but the most basic, enduring truth—life itself. #fblifestyle
See less |
|
