ohb

Auschwitz

Lads I don't know whether to say that everybody should go to Auschwitz or that nobody should ever set foot in there. I cried and cried. I can't understand how the guides can do it, really, I know you can say its their job, but to have to stand everyday in a room, filled with the hair of women and children who were ruthlessly murdered, can't be an easy thing to do. I think perhaps it was the hair I found the hardest, its easier to distance yourself from a pile of shoes, suitcases or glasses, but when you are presented with mounds of hair that was once part of a living human being, its difficult to remain impartial.
All day I was shadowed by the memory of that woman I met on the train from Vienna to Budapest two years ago. I remember everything about that day, though it was only afterwards the significance began to register. She and 36 other members of her extended family had been sent to Auschwitz, she and her mother were the only two to emerge. I was afraid to look closely at the photos of the children today, for two reasons, for fear that I would recognise her and for fear that I wouldn't. She told me that from the day they were 'liberated' to the day her mother died, they never spent a night apart, her mother moving with her and her husband to London. Her husband was a diplomat/politician, reasonably high profile I suppose, as she spoke of Ted Heath and other familiar names. She sat opposite me, talking, laughing, smoking and drinking cans of Coke, which she maintained helped ease a stomach condition she had, so much more than the word 'survivor' suggests.
I felt an overwhelming sense of fear today also, a fear of our ignorance and complacency. We all say that something like the Holocaust could never happen again, and I'm not scare-mongering but how much do we really know of what is happening in the world. I'm not just talking about high profile places like Iraq and Afghanistan, but of all the thousands of refugee camps that are home to millions of people around the world. I know these are incomparable and are not to be equated with the systematic brutality of the Nazi camps but if you think about the living conditions and facilities, I'm sure that some parallels could be drawn.

posted by orlagh @ 12:09 am