This post centres around possibly one of the most poignant moments of my life. It is about my and a group of clients’ experiences when we visited Auschwitz Concentration Camp last week in Poland. We were offering a Cityscape Photo Workshop in Krakow and felt that it would be appropriate to visit this memorial to human barbarity and seek to show people the utter feeling of desperation prisoners must have felt on entering the ‘camp’.
The mission I offered to the group was that we were not, absolutely NOT, tourists, but visitors/guests and that we were ‘charged’ with seeking to convey the utter horror of this place to those who had never visited, by means of our photographs. This was to be our personal interpretation of the fear and brutality the Nazis inflicted on prisoners – gratuitous violence – to crush their spirits and ultimately to simply eradicate/exterminate them.
No simple challenge this but it did ONE key thing – it made us think. I mean REALLY think.
We left with a profound feeling of sadness but a sense of awareness, hopefully caught by us with appropriate sensitivity.
Hard yes, but, in context very rewarding.
The entrance gate to Auschwitz 1 – and that cruel wording – Work Makes Freedom…
Leave a Reply