how to be offensive in 140 characters (or less) ((as it was received by the editors of the op-ed page at the ny times))

I'm a self-confessed Twitter addict. Its successes are well reported, for instance it played a major part in opening a window into Iran last year. It may have very nearly caused the fall of one of the most vile regimes on the planet. But, lets be realistic, so many tweets (such a cringe-worthy word) serve nothing of that sort of purpose. Tweets are just the ways our new culture explains the phenomena of daily life. The things we see, that which interests us, our plans. In this regard, Twitter might be the pulse of culture.

My family's heritage in central Europe is mostly a mystery to those of us still alive. In large part, the paternal side of my family doesn't want to know what occurred before we got off the boat in New York City and made our way to the steel city of Cleveland. We simply do not talk about it. Until i went to the Czech Republic last summer, no one in my family had been back to Bohemia, much less to Tábor and Písek, what we know to be our ancestral homes since the turn of the last century. My great aunt did her fair share of genealogical research, but that was in the 1950s and she was only able to go as far back as about the 1880s. She was able to follow some leads that seemed to indicate that some family members (the 2nd cousin twice removed type, or however that goes, the not directly blood-related kind, but close enough for them to have common ancestry) were in the camps in World War II.

Some lived. Some died. Some disappeared.

She thinks she traced some to Terezin, the main Czech transit camp, before being sent to Mauthausen and Flossenburg and perhaps Dachau (which were labor camps for mostly political prisoners). However, given the Iron Curtain's effect on information, we don't really know anything more than that.

Imagine my dismay/shock/horror when I read on Twitter today:

''I would love for this stupid sickness to go away so I can enjoy Dachau tomorrow and Neuschwanstein on Wednesday!!!''

Neuschwanstein is a perfectly lovely place, I hear. It is great great for tourists, a fine day out by all accounts. I hear it was built after such a thing could have been useful as a defensive fortress by some mad Bavarian royal. I don't know much about it really.

Enjoy Dachau. No two words can horrify me more. What is there to enjoy? How will you enjoy it? How will you know when you have 'enjoyed' sufficiently? Does it entail posing for pictures inside the barracks? Walking where they walked? Saying 'oh how horrific'-maybe you''ll say so sincerely, or maybe you just feel that you ought to. Maybe you'll tear up, maybe. Maybe you'll collapse on the ground. Maybe you'll vomit after looking at the exhibits. Maybe you will imagine what it truly would have been like for you to work for 16 hours without food, everyday of the week, until your merciful God finally saw fit to take you to a better place. Maybe you'll walk into the gas chamber and think: 'This is just like from the movies, I hope my friend doesnt try to close the door and shut me in here, that would suck!' Maybe you'll escape to a corner of the camp to have a quick talk, not realizing that it is the exact spot where a stack of sixty-pound bodies once stood in the sun. Maybe you'll be distracted by the three children playing hide and seek. Maybe you'll picture yourself there and imagine a guard randomly shoot and kill the person standing next to you, for fun, you won't though. Maybe you'll notice how close the camp is built to town, the same town where the folk plead ignorance to the atrocities after the liberation of the camps, but could see over the fences from their 2nd floor windows. It is their grandchildren who are no doubt still living in that very same town. It is their grandparents who probably spat and dumped wastewater on the prisoners if they were walked through town. Maybe you'll notice how the ovens look strikingly similar to those which cook food. You may even smell burning flesh. Maybe it will make it an impact on you. A real impact. I'll still wonder what were the first words out of your mouth when you walked out through those open wrought-iron gates. I hope you enjoyed your visit to Dachau.