The story is told as it was recalled to a holocaust survivor's adult son. The story follows the day to day life of a Jewish family living in Krakow, Poland beginning in the early thirties and continuing through the years of the Second World War. It relates the demise of many members of the family in the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau, the survivors' experiences in the aftermath in a displaced persons camp and their subsequent relocation to other countries. The son then goes on a mission to trace his family's steps during the war years.
It was about 10 o'clock one Saturday morning when I struck up a conversation with a soccer mom. We were both standing on the sidelines watching our kids play a soccer game.
Her name escapes me now but she made the usual inquiries as to my current art project. Not having a project in the midst of production I told her of an idea I was pondering - to visit the country of my family's roots - Poland. In particular, I told her about my idea of photographing scenes at Auschwitz and Birkenau. I must admit I paused at the mention of these two notorious destinations just to gauge her response. After a short while she casually commented, "aren't they some kind of prison?" Nonplussed for a moment, I chose to change the topic. We fell back to the standard and safe chitchat - the weather, our children's improving soccer ability, and local news.
But this woman's response about the death camps nagged at me. I expect the mention of such names to conjure up images of torture, death, and figures wasting away with disease and starvation while staring out from behind barbed wire fences. Don't get me wrong here - I don't expect everyone to be fluent in every aspect of the Shoah. Or to be able to quote dates, statistics or names (except maybe Anne Frank). But surely anyone's basic knowledge about these places must be more than "some kind of prison" or so I used to think. "Kind of prison" should not be a description linked to history's greatest genocide and to this day what is the world's largest cemetery.
We are in a time now that many Americans call "post September 11th." We are reminded at every turn - do not forget 9-11. At the latest count 3045 people were murdered on that terrible day and in my mind I still keep seeing those images of aircraft crashing into buildings. To us right now, it is such a fresh memory. We need to make sure the world does not forget the victims. We feel the need to honor their memory. Compare that number lost to the eleven million people murdered in the concentration camps of World War II - to the survivors, the need to keep the memory alive is vital, yet how many people are like the soccer mom in town? In fifty years, will there be people asking what happened on September 11, 2001 in New York City? It strikes me that there is simply no way to avoid the need to repeat and re-teach the lessons of history - we cannot forget those who have been murdered in our midst and we cannot forget those who have been murdered in the past.
It makes me want to get it all down on paper - for me, for my children, for any person who wants to listen.
