While everyone is busy with new year resolutions, I had the great news that one of my photos was published in O Mundo da Fotografia Digital, December 2009 edition. It's called [ Halt! ], and it was taken in Auschwitz, last October, during a visit to Poland.
I was talking to my good friend Vlado afterwards, and discussing what a visit to the concentration camps might do for a person... I truly believe that everyone should visit them once in a lifetime so that you can understand what went on over there, how the gravest mistake mankind ever made took place, but I also must agree with Vlado: some images I really don't want to have in my mind.
The memorial to the victims of Auschwitz - Birkenau says "For ever let this place be a cry of despair and a warning to humanity, where the nazis murdered about one and a half million men, women, and children, mainly jews from various countries of Europe."
I wont state any of the statistics that can be found over the web about the atrocities committed, instead, I'll leave you with a set of pictures that I simply call [ I will never forget ]. In order, we have the rail track leading into Birkenau camp, which is about 6,0 km long and 4,5 km wide; one of the hall ways of one of the many (too many) buildings of Auschwitz (which is really small compared to Birkenau); Block 11, the block of death; and finally inside, two pictures from one the many corridors that are filled with the faces of the human beings that endured this dark episode of mankind...
This first set of pictures of the year is not intended to darken 2010, that will be a great year, I'm sure, but it was some of the reflections I made in this past days, together with the reviewing of The Pianist, that brought all of this back.
Vlado, you were right, but here it is: I will never forget...
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