Visiting the Jewish Memorial in Berlin on the weekend made me think about the trip I took to Poland with a friend recently, and in particular, our visit to the Auschwitz Museum. I think my trip there will be something that I will always remember clearly, and I've not been able to stop thinking about that place since then. It seems to be the small, everyday objects I saw there that stick most in my memory, and, I expect, it's like that for many of the people who walk through the museum and the nearby Birkenau camp because in a way, it's easier to process and focus upon the small things. In the preserved part of Auschwitz, visitors can walk through with a guide and look at some of the remaining possessions from the people who died there. Things like wire-rimmed glasses, suitcases, clothing, small tins of shoe polish and wooden hairbrushes. Also, glass cabinets full of shoes, children's toys and clothes and, most disturbingly, hair. You can't take photos of those things- just of the buildings outside. But I'm fascinated by how it's these things that I, as a tourist there, have taken away with me. The plait of hair I could identify behind the glass cabinet. The tiny red shoes with dainty straps. The certain style of wooden chair.
I transferred some of my journal notes from the trip into an embroidery when I returned home- 'remaining objects'. I added the red flower at the top because someone had placed a tulip on one of the bunk beds at the Birkenau camp that day we were there.
I transferred some of my journal notes from the trip into an embroidery when I returned home- 'remaining objects'. I added the red flower at the top because someone had placed a tulip on one of the bunk beds at the Birkenau camp that day we were there.