| This piece emerged after my
trip to the concentration camp in Daschaund, Germany. I was
allowed the privilege to visit the eerie site while the camp was
closed to the public. While photographing the bathroom
facilities where prisoners were punished by being forced to
spend all day standing within the horrible confines of the
putrid, stench filled room until they passed out in puddles of
filth, the clouds turned dark grey and covered the sky in
daytime darkness. The bitter cold dropped suddenly to biting
frost and suddenly I was being pelted with hail the size of golf
balls. I took refuge under the eaves of the bathroom area,
shivering from the cold and the fear which surrounded me. I
stood helpless from the elements and far from the entrance gate.
Nightfall was closing in and I wondered how long before the
guard who had let me in would wait before coming to search for
me.
I wondered if the guard would come looking for me at all in that
weather.
I wondered what I would do if I had to spend the night stuck in
the concentration Camp at Dashcaund, alone, seeking safe haven
from the elements huddled beside a building which once housed
such sadness and misery.
Eventually the weather calmed and through the darkness of
twilight I found my way out of Daschaund.
I imagined what it must have felt like for the victims of the
Holocaust who saw the futility and impending doom which
surrounded them. Then I thought of the victims of the World
Trade Center Bombing on 9/11 and how they must have felt.
I took some pictures of a door which struck me as being
particularly beautiful within the confines of the concentration
camp and the door served as a visual metaphor for the new life
and opportunity which emerged from the falling bodies of the
Twin Towers on 9/11.
The cross in the painting symbolizes the overly passive and
ineffective stance taken by the Roman Catholic Church in both
human events.
The left portion of the painting represents the grass fields
Daschaund prisoners were forced to stand in for hours, sometimes
days naked and starving in the bitter cold of German winter as a
means of torture and submission, while the citizens of the
creepy little German town of Daschaund turned a blind eye and a
deaf ear. |
