Let the Truth be told - forever.

I am an avid cinema-goer. I like to watch the previews and select a couple of must-see films to see in the coming weeks. These days there are often so few people in the auditorium that I am surprised that the industry remains profitable. Perhaps my own selections are not mainstream: not in tune with popular viewing pleasure.

Some films have an effect that lasts well beyond the cinema experience. I am reminded of Spielberg's incredible Jaws. I went with my parents and can honestly say that we were all petrified and perched on the edge of our seats.

In 1993 I went with my husband to preview Jurassic Park, unsure at the time whether the movie would be too scary for my young son to view. The scenes with velociraptors still remain with me and like Jaws, the sound track still evokes an emotional response.

There is one film experience that I will never forget because the effect on the viewing audience was simply incredible. Leaving the cinema after a film, the departing audience are usually chatting, discussing their favourite scenes. Leaving the cinema after watching Schindler's List was a completely unique experience. Everyone left in complete silence. The effect was profound.

I knew all about the holocaust. There was a TV series called Auschwitz that had educated and informed my own generation of the brutality of the Nazi Jewish genocide during WW2. I expect that for many in the audience that night, the Spielberg portrayal may have been a first encounter with the truth about the Nazi death camps that murdered over 6 million Jews.

What I find so difficult to understand, is not that the younger generation may not  aware of those horrific events, but that there are people who vehemently deny that they actually took place. It is my hope that the Holocaust should be taught in schools across Europe in graphic detail. Only in this way can we be certain that a new wave of Nazism cannot take hold in the future. The truth has to be told: the eyes and minds of every future generation must be opened wide.

The Naked Truth

They were forced into cattle trucks

And shunted to this place,

So far from prying eyes,

Where looming towers

Overlook the rows of huts

Cramped with rough wooden bunks.

They are stripped of belongings,

Heads shaved and barcodes
Cruelly inked into their forearms.
Names replaced by numbers
Pride replaced by shame.
Dehumanised.

A man they call ‘the doctor’
Mauls the women’s breasts
And then selects
Rejects
Some to the left -
Some to the right.

Now they stand huddled in queues
A hundred at a time
Stripped and hopeful for a shower
They muddle in
They urinate and defecate in fear
As the cannisters release the pungent gas.

And now their bodies lie tangled

In piles of naked inhumanity
Shovelled into brutal ovens
As their ashes fall
Like snow upon the ground
Without a sound.

Hundreds of futures
Lost forever
And yet decades on
Many try to deny the Jewish holocaust
The naked truth
Must prevail. 

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Stripes

I have to admit that I was stuck. The theme this week is ‘stripes’ and the only thing that sprung to mind was the uniforms given to internees at concentration camps during the holocaust.  The acclaimed novel, Boy in the Striped Pyjamas was written in 2006 by Irish novelist John Boyne, who recalls that unlike the months of planning devoted to his other books, he wrote the entire first draft of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas in two and a half days, barely sleeping until he got to the end.  He obviously had something that needed to be said. As of March 2010, the novel had sold more than five million copies around the world and reached number one on the New York Times bestseller list, as well as in the UK, Ireland and Australia. The film of the book was released in 2008.    

My first sojourn into serious writing was while studying for an Open College Network ‘B’ Unit in creative writing. We were very lucky, the final exam was a ‘take home piece’ – we were given a selection of photographs and instructed to write a poem, a short story or a dramatic monologue. I went straight into the library, found a desk and wrote a poem about one photograph. It was a curiosity-type, shop window.  I reeled the first draft off in a round an hour and left for home feeling very pleased with myself. Perhaps another hour of refining would secure the exam and I could email it in. That would have been great.  Unfortunately, I looked again at the other photographs and when I looked at one in particular my mind began to take over.  The image would not leave me alone.

 

 It was a black and white still of some gentlemen’s coats and hats, hanging on pegs in the vestibule (hallway) of a slightly unloved terraced house. It was an unremarkable photograph but it took me on a five day journey into the truth about Bergen- Belsen. I wrote a dramatic monologue, researching not only the statements of eye witnesses to the liberation of the camp but preserved memories from conversations, over thirty years earlier, with a colleague who became a lay–preacher following his own experience as a young soldier, entering the camp in 1945.

Bergen -Belsen was not a death camp. Prisoners were not sent there to be gassed.  Many were not Jewish: They were dissidents. Dissenting voices, just like ours. They were writers, academics, intellectuals, musicians, poets.  They were interred because they disagreed with the Nazi government and were unafraid to speak out. A former army garrison, meant to house 1,000 became a disease ridden pit of death, packed with over 60,000 prisoners, all held without crime.  It was also a repository for displaced Hungarian Jews and Russian POW’s. Over 35,000 innocent people died at Belsen through typhus, dysentery or starvation,  shortly before or after liberation. Those who survived were found living and eating with 10,000 unburied dead.  The camp was raised to the ground after liberation but a stone memorial now stands, where the gates to hell once opened.  

Stripes can be wonderful.  I should think of the seaside at Blackpool, of vivid coloured sticks of rock, striped deckchairs, donkey rides, buckets and spades.  I had that kind of wonderful childhood.  I still live in Blackpool but at first mention of stripes, the image that stands out for me is of the striped uniform used to degrade my fellow human beings.  My hope is, that if we always remember those terrible crimes against humanity that our children and our children’s children will find a way to understand each other, to accept our differences and to live together live in peace.  

 

 

 

 A person

I see your face,

once full of life, now desperation.
Eyes deep in fearful sockets,
cheeks tracked by tearful deprivation. 

I see your suit,

stained sour with degradation.

Poor poisoned weeds,

browning from their dehydration.

I see your limbs,

protruding from striped humiliation,
camouflaged against your prison bars,
you are translucent in emaciation. 

You disappeared inside your cover,

my brother, sister, friend

and I declare with all I have that’s human, 

this hate must end.

 

 

Thanks for reading.

 

Adele

 

 

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