Recalling the Holocaust

Three of the photographs here are macros of exhibit panels prepared by Barbara Andersen, pictured with her husband Bent in the fourth photograph. Barbara, who discovered her mother was a Polish Jew only after her mother’s death, has spent many hours collecting and preparing the panels she shares with the public. The display recalls the horrors of the Holocaust suffered by Jewish people living under the deadly tyranny of Adolf Hitler before and during World War II. Barbara, who said her mother’s “secret” was attributed to fear of anti-Semitism, became a representative of the Bridges for Peace organization in 2004. Her panels, displayed last weekend at the City Library and again at Anacortes Christian Church, provide heart-wrenching chapters of the Holocaust story that some deny today. One particularly touching display for me was a panel that described life (and for many, death) among children imprisoned at Nazi prison camps. A book of prison camp children’s art, writing and poetry was on display. My thanks to the Andersens for their commitment to telling this story so that none might forget.
On Monday, April 12, Associated Press reported that thousands of young Jews along with Holocaust survivors marched at Auschwitz to remember those who perished in the Nazi death camp, and to honor Poland’s late president. “The 10,000 or so people from around the world attending the annual March of the Living walked the stretch of about 3 kilometers (2 miles) between the red-brick Auschwitz compound and the death camp’s wooden barracks section of Birkenau,” AP reported. “At least 1.1 million people – mostly Jews, Poles and Roma – died in the gas chambers at Auschwitz or from starvation, disease and forced labor at the camp that German Nazis built in occupied Poland during World War II. Many in Monday’s annual march also wore black armbands or carried black ribbons in memory of Poland’s President Lech Kaczynski and his wife, Maria, who were killed in a plane crash Saturday (April 10) along with 94 others en route to WWII-era observances in western Russia.”