In the Land of Vulgar T-Shirts, a New Low Doesn’t Raise an Eyebrow

“Belsen was a gas.” That’s what his T-shirt said as he went jogging by. “Belsen was a gas.”

What did he mean? Did he really think that Belsen was funny? But who in his right mind would think that what happened at Belsen was a joke?

Maybe he didn’t know what Belsen was. Or maybe I was overreacting. But where do you even buy a shirt like that?

He was jogging along Sepulveda Boulevard. When he passed the windows of the restaurant, it was filled with about two dozen people eating a blue-collar lunch. They all glanced at him as he went by. But no one gave him a second look. No nudges. No raised eyebrows. Why?

Maybe they didn’t know what Belsen was. Maybe they forgot. But how do you forget that Belsen was a factory that produced only one commodity--death? That more than 10,000 human corpses were products of Belsen? And that 40,000 more were waiting on the assembly line when the British army liberated them?

So I wondered why people didn’t react to the jogger’s T-shirt. Why no one found it repulsive, insulting. I would have settled for simple curiosity about why the husky jogger with the blond, close-cropped hair was wearing a T-shirt that said “Belsen was a gas.”

I imagined some analogies: “South Africa is a riot.” “America bombed at Hiroshima.” They didn’t seem as poignant. As sick.

I know--people thought that this fellow was a punk-rocker. That this was another form of rebellion, like slam-dancing or a Mohawk haircut. But he wasn’t a punk. He was too well-groomed. He could have been a young executive, a loan officer at a bank, a policeman. He was just out for some exercise. Wearing a T-shirt that said “Belsen was a gas.” And no one seemed to think that odd.

Why? Was it media overkill? Have atrocities become video wallpaper, so commonplace that we don’t pay attention unless it happened this morning and the networks were there? Is it because our President paid homage at the graves of the men who belonged to the organization that committed this atrocity, so how bad could it have been?

I don’t know exactly why I, an Irish Catholic who tired of the trivialization of Holocaust movies and TV specials years ago, was outraged by the jogger’s T-shirt. But I was.

I searched for reasons to explain it. Any reason at all that would allow me to avoid the obvious one. That the jogger was a neo-Nazi. A bigot. That his run down Sepulveda was basic training. That his energy was fueled by his hate for Jews, or whatever it was that Jews represented to his sick mind.

And he knew that he could get away with flaunting that hate in public, that no one would notice, no one would care.

That’s what frightens me.