The Flowers of Majdanek
How many feet had shuffled down this lane?
I couldn’t begin to imagine.
The suffering. the pain, the overwhelming fear…these life draining forces still evident no matter the passage of time.
As I walked from barrack to barrack these forces began to weigh on me. Was I even worthy to trod the same path?
But then I saw them, delicately waving in the cool, sunkissed breeze.
Flowers. Here in Majdanek?
I bent to admire their soft beauty and they whispered my name.
“How are you here,” I asked, “in this place of death? It matters not the passage of time. How?”
“We are here to tell the story of life, death, and remembrance. True, this was a place of inhumanity, of death, of blackened hell. But we bloom each year as witnesses. We must bloom here, in this place, the final resting place of lives who deserved only the best, but received the worst.”
“We can only whisper. Each year we bloom to share their stories on the breeze. We whisper so that you can shout. Tell of Majdanek. You must tell of those who were never given the chance to bloom.”
As I stood, a tear dropped to the soft petal. “I will tell your story to all who will listen….to remember.”
“I promise.” my whisper now, my shout to fulfill.
Crista Good is a teacher at Wirt County Middle School.