Meaning:
I will not allow that to happen
Background:
This expression appears to date back to at least the 18th century but, according
to Google's Ngram viewer (which tracks references in books by time period),
gained popularity around the 1850s, and has substantially gained in popularity
since the start of this century.
It is almost always used in the first person, even in reported speech. For
example: "The official rhetoric from the business community toward any tax
increase continues to be an over-my-dead-body 'no'" -Boston Globe, 1989
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On Friday, Tim gave me Elie Wiesel's book "Night," an assignment in his
Highschool Holocaust Literature class. "Tell me what you think." he said.
In the space of 120 pages, the author managed to pack a fast-paced narration of
his family's and fellow Jews' gruesome ordeals through Nazi concentration camps.
The slim volume told numerous macabre tales without numbing or boring this
reader.
I finished it on Sunday and was most impressed that from Sighet to Auschwitz,
from Buna to Buchenwald, every Jew prayed, most silently perished but, at least
in this book, no one acted over-my-dead-body.
The closest they managed to it was upon arriving at Auschwitz and learning their
mothers and sisters, separated at the gate, were sent straight to the
crematorium, some young men were trying to revolt.
But the older men begged their sons not to be foolish:
"We mustn't give up hope, even now as the sword hangs over our heads. So
taught our sages..."
What's the point of being smart, older, a sage, educated, enlightened, etc.? The
book seriously damaged my respect for Jewish wisdom, just as God died to the
teenage Wiesel, so far a devout Talmudic student, as he was witnessing
point-blank the hanging of a child in the same camp.
