A review of ‘A Wounded Landscape.’
Last night I experienced the Paraorchestra playing the hauntingly beautiful Symphony No.3 (The Symphony of Sorowful Songs) by Henryk Górecki at Bath Abbey. The second movement is based on an 18 year old girl’s prayer, written on the wall of a Gestapo prison in Poland in 1944.
An appropriate soundtrack to one of the most profoundly moving and absorbing photobooks I have read - 'A Wounded Landscape Bearing Witness To The Holocaust’ by Marc Wilson.
I'll borrow the words of Sylvia Kerner (from P.676) to explain why:
“We talk about six million Jews, the victims of Nazism, but I say that there were many more. Me, I am a victim of the Holocaust. Even now after more than 60 years, I still cry. And I still don’t understand how it happened. Why? How did the world let it happen?”
How did the world let it happen?
I cannot comprehend how one set of humans could be so cruel to another set of humans. Each of the 22 stories hit me in the gut and made me ask this question again and again.
How did we let it happen?
As generations pass recollections are diluted, or shared less often. They pass into history. A different time, abstract from the present. Such events can't happen again? Can they?
The point of this book is to make sure they don't.
As a history graduate I learned the importance of looking backwards to understand our present and guess our future. Nothing is unprecedented. One way to stop history repeating is by ensuring these memories continue to be shared and the lessons continue to be learned.
It all starts with petty prejudice. Small amounts at first and then it grows. There is still plenty of it about.
A book that deserves time
Marc Wilson's opus is 738 pages short.
A book that deserves time. Time to dwell on the 350 photographs, read intently the 22 personal stories, pore over the captions and maps in an attempt to have a modicum of understanding of the horror.
The book shines a light on the personal stories of people who still experience the impact of the holocaust. They tell stories of people who survived (goodness knows how) and of those who were gruesomely murdered.
The book mixes personal recollections with current photos of where the events took place. Everyday photos of a goal post, a municipal bin, the edge of a forest, a pond, a road, a home.
Locations we walk by which witnessed starvation, slavery, massacres and death marches.
James Bulging writes in the introduction:
"The idea that the world in which the Nazis committed their crimes could be so close as to be inextricable with the world we live in today - my world - was not something that I had properly prepared myself to think about. It happened here."
The photos of everyday places resonate because they show how these events could happen anywhere and to anyone of us. Today, I sit in my home, a log fire burning; feeling warm and secure. I imagine how that could be quickly ripped asunder. It takes one person with a horrific vision to persuade enough people to share that vision, make it into a policy and implement it with mechanical brutality.
Your sanctuary is safe no more. Broken by a jackboot.
This is a book that has earned its right to be read widely.
Thank you to Marc Wilson for dedicating years on this project, to the people in the book who bravely shared their experiences and to Wayne Ford for his book design.
Photographic footnotes
1) August Sander’s masterful portraits of 1920’s and 1930’s Germans include a series called ‘Victim of Persecution’ taken c.1938. Many of his photos were destroyed by the Nazis. His son was arrested in 1934 and jailed as a political prisoner for 10 years.
2) Marianne Breslauer’s photos of 1920’s bohemian life in Germany shows a more carferee time before the Nazis took power. She had to change her name in 1934 and emigrated in 1936.
Personal footnote
I don't have any personal connection to the Holocaust. I have never knowingly met any survivors.
My surname is German due to my great-great-grandfather moving to Yorkshire in the 1860's. All my great-grandparents were born in England.
My closest experience was visiting Aushwitz in 2016. It was profoundly moving. Much of what I saw has remained with me. One moment in particular is also a repeated photo in the book. Titled 'Gas chamber, Auscwitz 1' it depicts a wall with marks on it. Marks of fingernails scratching the wall in pain as gas filled the chamber.
Unfathomable. Cruel. Industrial killing.
It happened in my parent's lifetime.
Finally, two of my own photos from last night’s performance of ‘The Symphony of Sorrowful Songs.’
