What on earth....
Ok, so I was de-fuzzing my hair brush this morning, washing all the crud that hair products leave in between the bristles- it is a time consuming job, plus the enthralling nature of plucking wilting, greying hair that has merged to become blobs of grey matted stuff is a pleasure I could well forgo. In addition it has a very ominous connotation for me.
So... as I was de-fuzzing the hair brush this morning... it reminded me of the stacks, piles and hills of hair in the Auschwitz museum that I visited when I was 18. Now I went round this museum looking at the bits and pieces and of course it was horrible, but the amount of stuff that was around you, you did kind of become sensitised to it. In the end, at about ten o'clock at night when I was on the plane home, a sense of disappointment welled up in me. It didn't move me like I thought it would. Millions of people had died there. That was their stuff. That was their hair that was cut forcibly from their heads. Nope. Not a tear. And I am quite an emotional person, though I have realised over the years it will come into play at the most bizarre and inconvenient time for me. Other times when I could really do with a bit of a cry I stow it up and appear uncaring.
I went home, went to school, began writing the speech to present to the school about "our experience" of Auschwitz. Huff. Well, I was merely jumping through the hoops of what the teachers wanted to hear, what the first years wouldn't think too traumatising and what the older years would think boring.
I was still fine. So come Monday morning I brushed my own hair and went to go and do this stupid little oratory number. There I was standing in front of the school and WHAM! Bloody wonderful timing. Photos were being shown I think, or I remember looking at some photos before I went on to do my bit and I think I was saying my part when my mind went blank. I hated speaking in public then. It was all a blur, all I know was it didn't go very well... I think a traumatised rabbit caught in the headlights with a very annoyed fellow student who had gone on the trip with me, saying "What IS wrong with you!"
I think it had something to do with my brushing my hair in the morning and then seeing the photo being paraded in front- then, just like in the movies, the fast forwarding effect with flashes of memories taken like photographs. A pile of shoes. Knitted baby clothes. Suitcases. Hair brushes. Glasses. Etc.
So on defuzzing my hair brush, like today, it always reminds me of the greying hair that had been lopped off those poor individuals- once brown, blond, red, black- now sits in a museum slowly rotting whilst unfeeling people parade past it with some ignorant dutiful sense of importance.
Another thing that often sparks me to remember a) the horrors of Auschwitz and b) the humiliating spectacle in front of the school is my friend Jenny's porch. They used to have shoes piled either side of the doorway as you walked through their front door. Really creeped me out. There were old shoes from when they were kids stacked just like those in the cabinets in the museum.
I suppose it makes me feel bad when looking at those shoes or de-fuzzing my hair brush that I associate mass slaughter with half an hour of intense humiliation at school. No comparison really is there?
Anyhooo that is all folks. I think I have probably depressed you all enough for the time being :)
Ok, so I was de-fuzzing my hair brush this morning, washing all the crud that hair products leave in between the bristles- it is a time consuming job, plus the enthralling nature of plucking wilting, greying hair that has merged to become blobs of grey matted stuff is a pleasure I could well forgo. In addition it has a very ominous connotation for me.
So... as I was de-fuzzing the hair brush this morning... it reminded me of the stacks, piles and hills of hair in the Auschwitz museum that I visited when I was 18. Now I went round this museum looking at the bits and pieces and of course it was horrible, but the amount of stuff that was around you, you did kind of become sensitised to it. In the end, at about ten o'clock at night when I was on the plane home, a sense of disappointment welled up in me. It didn't move me like I thought it would. Millions of people had died there. That was their stuff. That was their hair that was cut forcibly from their heads. Nope. Not a tear. And I am quite an emotional person, though I have realised over the years it will come into play at the most bizarre and inconvenient time for me. Other times when I could really do with a bit of a cry I stow it up and appear uncaring.
I went home, went to school, began writing the speech to present to the school about "our experience" of Auschwitz. Huff. Well, I was merely jumping through the hoops of what the teachers wanted to hear, what the first years wouldn't think too traumatising and what the older years would think boring.
I was still fine. So come Monday morning I brushed my own hair and went to go and do this stupid little oratory number. There I was standing in front of the school and WHAM! Bloody wonderful timing. Photos were being shown I think, or I remember looking at some photos before I went on to do my bit and I think I was saying my part when my mind went blank. I hated speaking in public then. It was all a blur, all I know was it didn't go very well... I think a traumatised rabbit caught in the headlights with a very annoyed fellow student who had gone on the trip with me, saying "What IS wrong with you!"
I think it had something to do with my brushing my hair in the morning and then seeing the photo being paraded in front- then, just like in the movies, the fast forwarding effect with flashes of memories taken like photographs. A pile of shoes. Knitted baby clothes. Suitcases. Hair brushes. Glasses. Etc.
So on defuzzing my hair brush, like today, it always reminds me of the greying hair that had been lopped off those poor individuals- once brown, blond, red, black- now sits in a museum slowly rotting whilst unfeeling people parade past it with some ignorant dutiful sense of importance.
Another thing that often sparks me to remember a) the horrors of Auschwitz and b) the humiliating spectacle in front of the school is my friend Jenny's porch. They used to have shoes piled either side of the doorway as you walked through their front door. Really creeped me out. There were old shoes from when they were kids stacked just like those in the cabinets in the museum.
I suppose it makes me feel bad when looking at those shoes or de-fuzzing my hair brush that I associate mass slaughter with half an hour of intense humiliation at school. No comparison really is there?
Anyhooo that is all folks. I think I have probably depressed you all enough for the time being :)
6 comments:
My history teacher never taught the second world war. She refused to discuss the holcaust.We did it in RE instead. I don't have any intense emotions attached to it, but I remember being in a hotel in Holland. I was watching a documentary on Rwanda, and I couldn't sleep the whole night.
Disbelief, I think think that was my general stance. Its not real, how can so much suffering go on?
x
I'd say I was fairly emotionally sensitive. I have better control than I used to. My emotions can become like they are trapped in a bottle. Their strength out weighs my capcity to express them.
x
yeah- emotionally sensitive.... I like that phrase. I ahve seemed to gained some control over my emotions too.
I think that the Holocaust should be taught more, as we don't want it happening again. Yet on the same page, I shouldn't be scared of de-fuzzing my hairbrush!! It isn't fair that so much of this crap goes on in the world. At the end of the day, we cannot correct our past, only amend our future!
Thanks as always Psyconym for your comments- you're as supportive as ever!
NSSM - For me it wasn't hair - I have none - but glasses. Seeing images of spectacles they once had but were stripped off - to be recycled. As if they would never see again - and their last glance captured in the lens.
The Holocaust can't be captured in the whole. We need to see the specific. We don't have any comprehension of, say, Rwanda, because we don't have specific images that evoke the intimate life of those who were massacred. At Auschwitz there are these residues, these stains, almost the bodily smell of them. That's why hair, shoes, glasses touch us so much - because they touched them.
OF
thanks, OF... it is indeed personal and touched us because it touched them.... very astute
OF - Good comment well observed. I was chatting with soemone form the Society of Archivists on the impossibility of us really understanding. Our rindiviudal realities are just different.
I've never been to a death camp, and so have not had the opportunity to experience the intimacy. I imagine it to be profound, and very individual.
I was looking at pictures of the 'March of the Living', very effecting.
The Not so Spotless - No worries for being supportive, I enjoy your blog and thoughts.
x
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