Arbeit macht frei (Auschwitz).

Today we had a good-bye lunch with one German professor. She chose our office as a place to spend her sabbatical break and soon she flies back to Stuttgart. Two other older Germans joined us and it was all nice but the looks. It is kind of visible mark imprinted in European people. At least i felt this tension. It is something we don't talk about but it is somewhere there at the back of our minds. And I just finished to read a news from last Saturday Herald which says that: „A Nazi concentration camp guard has been deported from the USA to Austria“. Josias Kumpf used to work at Trawniki labour camp in Poland. This is a small town just few kilometres from the country-side i was brought up. My grandma who passed away last year used to tell stories about running-aways, about the smell of burnt bodies, about brave people who risk their life to save Jews and about the ones who took advantage of war to rob them. Poles knew they were next in line.

The camp organization was deadly precise. Josias took part in a shooting on 03.11.1943. It was part of general plan of camps aggregation. Small ones like this one in Trawniki were meant to be closed down. Action was called Erntefest („Harvest Holiday“). All of the Jewish men, women and children died.

I can feel how bad thing is to get older. This all knowledge about dark side of humans gets stuck to you. I think this a true art of life to stay optimistic while looking at your own wrinkles. Tomorrow I will try to fly around 0,5 metre above the ground : )

Source: Sydney Morning Herald, 21-22.03.2009, page 17 and http://www.trawniki.hg.pl/