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April 18, 2008
The Witness
I recently told the story of concentration camp victims having to return to the scene of the crime after the war - for themselves. They needed to see the hell no longer existed - that it was over, finished, done. Then perhaps they could get on with their lives.
This prompted one woman to reflect back on her childhood as a concentration camp. Father was the commandant who had the pick of the children. Mother was the assistant who ensured orders were carried out. Yet his wasn't a concentration camp people were taken to. Rather, it was one they were born into, and told all the time it was 'Love'.
This is a hard camp to leave in later life, especially when the commandant and assistant deny everything. Holocaust denyers make recovery all the harder. We all need a witness sometimes - to say how things were. So let me be a witness for this brave and wonderful woman, as she steps out. Let me be a witness to what she endured day after day, year after year, in the concentration camp outsiders called her 'Family Life'.
It was so. But is no longer so.
Posted by Mr Bojangles at April 18, 2008 10:48 AM