The world turns but does not go on. How can a mother conceive? Have you seen the photos? Who could conceive such scenes? Have you seen the bodies? Have you felt the anonymity” Who could conceive such scenes? Near one hundred years have passed and the photos still confirm that day. Nine hundred years more and will the confirmation still stand? Will one still recoil from such sights? Will the photos have been dismissed?
In nine hundred years will time have healed? In nine hundred years will we have lost our souls? Will we ask a question in nine hundred years? Will the lies be truth by then? The questions attack my mind and fear seeps through my brain. Why do I live in fear? Why has humanity become steeped in fear? Is fear who we are?
Have I become a question? Are questions my only option? Are there no answers? Have we been tricked? Perhaps there are no final answers. What evil genius conceived of such a device? Who were the people deceived? Who gave the first answer? How could we have known how destructive this machine could be?
The little man with the mustache had answers. Did anyone notice he had no questions? Did no one feel the dissonance? Were questions allowed? Did questions slice and disturb? Was there need to defend? The little man with the mustache, were there more who wore the mustache? But how could there be even one? Somehow, I feel safer with one.
What is this place where working makes you free? Where is this place where such evil sarcasm reigns? Where are these places where freedom dies? Yet, with their lives they made them holy places. What truth is it that survives such contradiction? Can anything but human behavior produce such contradiction?
How does hate possess so fully ones mind? How does hate so fully take control? No, the photos are not economic or political matters. No, these bodies aren’t explained by such. There is no power in politics or economics that can produce this! I am an old man and my eyes are weak, but I can see there are no economics or politics in these photos. There is only hate.
Why am I so attracted to a young girl’s diary? I blush as I read. I glance around afraid. I glance around afraid I will be caught intruding into this private world. I come without an invitation. These words were not meant for my eyes. What can I do? I cannot put it down. Do I read seeking forgiveness? Somehow, the words I read and the photos speak together. They don’t speak of hate. How could they not? How could they not?
How is it they don’t speak of hate? How it it they don’t speak of retribution? I listen but only hear my guilt. Was this not before my time? I grasp time to stay afloat in this sea of madness. How can I be guilty then? If not for the photos I might escape? Everything devolves into a question. I look again at the photos and feel every other function of language collapse.
No! I was not the photographer! Or was I? I lose my grip on time. My grip collapses! I cannot hold on here. How can I read this diary and still live? I would call for help, but how can I be helped? I was not the photographer!! Such an action is beyond my courage. To have taken these pictures, was I that close to what I see? I have proof! Of what exactly do I have proof? This is the question the diary throws at me. Fear creeps through me, slowly and cold. Yes, of what do I have proof? Where ever I hide I hear the diary speaking. Is it my name it calls?
My mind grapples with the reality. It goes black. I have to cease comprehension for it is too dark. Comprehension is worse than a torment of hell. My brain is exhausted. Eighty years have passed and we have not made peace with these photos. Eighty eternities will pass and we will not have made peace with the reality they represent. Can there be a peace? If a peace should come, there will follow a forgetting, and we can never forget. It is far beyond evil to which we witness.
The young girl’s diary would console me if not for the harsh, pointing finger of consciousness. The camera blindly makes sure we remember and don’t reconcile. The camera laughs and sneers at us. What if there had been no camera? What if there had only been words to fortify our memory? What would have been lost?
These images sink into my consciousness and find a home. Do they connect with something that is part of me or are they part of me? I feel I drift into this reality I see. Am I in a transmigration of Being? Have I been deaf to my own being? Have I been blind to who I am? These photos look too familiar. Do I have a connection to them?
My sense of time has been destroyed. It is something, now that lies outside my mind. I no longer feel its constraints. Inside this timeless consciousness I become aware of a different reality released by the photos. I step back and look away. I am overpowered. The doors and windows of my mind slam shut. The windows turn black, and their blackness stares into me. Am I the photographer? How can I know? How can I be certain?
The young woman who writes in the secret place. The young woman who almost traversed hell. Who is this young woman? What is this life she experiences with such joy and openness? Who is this woman so wise? Where comes her wisdom? Where comes the love she shows us that guards her from the hate? Where comes the love? Does the hate that surrounds her make her wise?