Eli Weisel once said, when speaking to Congregation B’nai Jacob, that to really even begin to understand the suffering of the victims of the Holocaust one had to imagine one mother, and see her standing in a line holding her six month old infant. Let that infant actually be someone you know and love. Then watch as a Nazi guard grabs the infant from that mother’s arms and throws him into a gas chamber.

On the evening of Nov. 10 I didn’t have to use my imagination. I and others had the privilege to witness the misery imposed upon the thousands of young women working

in garment sweatshops in Bangladesh. Janu Akther and Nasrin Akther stood before us and spoke of the atrocities which was daily life for women like them. Living in rows of windowless hovels, starting as young as twelve years old, girls were working 12 to 20 hour days, seven days a week, drinking filthy water, barely eating, being beaten and threatened, and then at the age of 25 or 30 being thrown back onto the street.

Janu and Nasrin now know the products (mainly caps for colleges) which they helped produce for wages as low as eight cents an hour, or one cent per cap, went on to be sold in the United States for about $17 – more money than they would earn by working 212 hours. Unadulterated, unchecked greed is the simple, but obvious explanation for the evil practices which have created and continue to sustain such conditions.

I sat in the audience and watched these women (also including Sk. Razima, President of the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity) as they spoke. Such a thin line separated them from me. Pure luck allowed me to be sitting well-fed, attired in clothes whose cost constituted months of their salary, educated and well-housed. I thought of my daughter tucked into bed at home, at

7 years old she trusts that the world is filled with goodness.

She is fortunate. It is easy for her to feel so secure and trusting. But what courage and leap of faith it must have taken for the women before me to believe that they could make the world a better place. That people in the very country that destroyed their lives (i.e. the United States) might be willing to work with them to bring about change. Their dark eyes looked tired and worn and their voices sounded ageless or ancient, yet the spark of their Being filled the large room. The imperative to answer their call hung like a sliver of sunlight in the chilled space…”I am not only my Brother’s Keeper, I am my Brother” – W. Van Dusen.

If you are interested in contributing time, energy and/or ideas to the Bangladesh Appeal, please contact the Clean Clothes Campaign at their PICA office by calling 947-4203.

Reesa Greenberg lives in Bangor.