Today we visited Majdanek Death Camp on the outskirts of Lublin, central Poland. At the entrance to the camp is a gigantic rock that is raised in the air, cutting a striking image against the ever blue Polish sky. What I didn’t know as I walked under that suspended rock was that it was going to squash me– mind and soul. Among the thousands of snapshots rolling through my brain from the day– shower heads, trenches, stretchers inside of ovens, a woman sunbathing just beyond the warehouse of shoes, the still faint smell of burning around the 7 tons of human ash– the one that stands out is a hastily written note, in red. A last ditch effort for a woman to tell her fiance that she is going to be killed.
It is the style of the lettering, loose and fast, like a grocery list jotted while walking into the store; like a note my mother would quickly write and stick in my lunch box before an important day at school; like the note I spit out on a post-it to my finace prior to leaving for my 5am flight to Poland. It is so every day.
It is the color of the ink: red. Blood, Nazi, passion. Love. It must have cut such a contrast to the black and white, uniformed hell from which she wrote. It is probably what made someone pick it up and someone else put it on display.
Per usual when something strikes us deeply, it is the personal; I am engaged, planning to get married in February. What do you write? What words can fill the void of the plans and hopes that you had together? How do you go from one of the best days of your life to walking to your death? How do you take the skills from grocery lists and lunch boxes and 5am notes and apply it to a final death note to the love of your life?
She wrote, ever so perfectly, ever so succendly:
“My dear I am dying. (Something about her stomach hurting). I will love you.”
– Jill Evans