Every year on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, I make a point of watching part of the Twilight Zone marathon on the Syfy channel. No matter how many times I see the same episodes, I am always struck by how contemporary and poignant the writing is, despite the fact that the show celebrated its 50th anniversary last week.
One particularly wonderful episode is called “Deaths-Head Revisited,” which was written as the Eichman trial was going on in 1961. In the episode, a former Nazi captain returns to Dachau where he is put on trial by the ghosts of his victims. The ghosts retain their dignity and humanity and sentence him not to death or to torture, but to remember the atrocities he perpetuated on others. It drives the captain insane, which prompts his doctor to ask why Dachau still stands. This is the closing sentiment delivered by Rod Serling.
"All the Dachaus must remain standing. The Dachaus, the Belsens, the Buchenwalds, the Auschwitzes — all of them. They must remain standing because they are a monument to a moment in time when some men decided to turn the Earth into a graveyard. Into it they shoveled all of their reason, their logic, their knowledge, but worst of all, their conscience. And the moment we forget this, the moment we cease to be haunted by its remembrance, then we become the gravediggers. Something to dwell on and to remember, not only in the Twilight Zone but wherever men walk God’s Earth."
One particularly wonderful episode is called “Deaths-Head Revisited,” which was written as the Eichman trial was going on in 1961. In the episode, a former Nazi captain returns to Dachau where he is put on trial by the ghosts of his victims. The ghosts retain their dignity and humanity and sentence him not to death or to torture, but to remember the atrocities he perpetuated on others. It drives the captain insane, which prompts his doctor to ask why Dachau still stands. This is the closing sentiment delivered by Rod Serling.
"All the Dachaus must remain standing. The Dachaus, the Belsens, the Buchenwalds, the Auschwitzes — all of them. They must remain standing because they are a monument to a moment in time when some men decided to turn the Earth into a graveyard. Into it they shoveled all of their reason, their logic, their knowledge, but worst of all, their conscience. And the moment we forget this, the moment we cease to be haunted by its remembrance, then we become the gravediggers. Something to dwell on and to remember, not only in the Twilight Zone but wherever men walk God’s Earth."
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