Skip to content

  • Home
  • Subscribe / donate
  • Events calendar
  • News
    • Local
    • National
    • Israel
    • World
    • עניין בחדשות
      A roundup of news in Canada and further afield, in Hebrew.
  • Opinion
    • From the JI
    • Op-Ed
  • Arts & Culture
    • Performing Arts
    • Music
    • Books
    • Visual Arts
    • TV & Film
  • Life
    • Celebrating the Holidays
    • Travel
    • The Daily Snooze
      Cartoons by Jacob Samuel
    • Mystery Photo
      Help the JI and JMABC fill in the gaps in our archives.
  • Community Links
    • Organizations, Etc.
    • Other News Sources & Blogs
    • Business Directory
  • FAQ
  • JI Chai Celebration
  • JI@88! video
Scribe Quarterly arrives - big box

Search

Follow @JewishIndie

Recent Posts

  • חוזרים בחזרה לישראל
  • Jews support Filipinos
  • Chim’s photos at the Zack
  • Get involved to change
  • Shattering city’s rosy views
  • Jewish MPs headed to Parliament
  • A childhood spent on the run
  • Honouring Israel’s fallen
  • Deep belief in Courage
  • Emergency medicine at work
  • Join Jewish culture festival
  • A funny look at death
  • OrSh open house
  • Theatre from a Jewish lens
  • Ancient as modern
  • Finding hope through science
  • Mastering menopause
  • Don’t miss Jewish film fest
  • A wordless language
  • It’s important to vote
  • Flying camels still don’t exist
  • Productive collaboration
  • Candidates share views
  • Art Vancouver underway
  • Guns & Moses to thrill at VJFF 
  • Spark honours Siegels
  • An almost great movie 
  • 20 years on Willow Street
  • Students are resilient
  • Reinvigorating Peretz
  • Different kind of seder
  • Beckman gets his third FU
  • הדמוקרטיה בישראל נחלשת בזמן שהציבור אדיש
  • Healing from trauma of Oct. 7
  • Film Fest starts soon
  • Test of Bill 22 a failure

Archives

Denkmal

0 Flares 0 Flares ×

This is not about Dachau, although
these things happened there.

When my son and I visited the Denkmal,
as the Germans refer to Dachau,
it was late afternoon,
and it was deserted.
The weather was rainy and cool.
Vancouver weather: warm for
December in Bavaria,
I was told.

We walked around, peering
curiously into the barracks
where the living dead stared with eyes
like those of African night mammals
at the stunned American cameramen,

and then we stepped into the “Duschbad,”
and then into the crematorium
and then back outside into
the drizzle –

Finally, I stopped to look at the bronze memorial
to the “Unknown Prisoner”: a stooped, skeletal
Muselmann
in rags, ashy and green from the wet Bavarian winters;

leaving a pebble on the pedestal, as I had been taught,
I turned to leave.

My son had lingered behind.

Fifteen, tough and big;
standing quietly in front of the pitted bronze,
his black football jacket dripping rain,
sloppy, untied Adidas hightops
and blue/white acid-dyed jeans soaking through –

he slowly reached up
to his soggy old Detroit Tigers
baseball cap,
and politely

between wet thumb and forefinger,

tipped the brim.

Graham Forst, PhD, taught literature and philosophy at Capilano University until his retirement and now teaches in the continuing education departments at Simon Fraser University, University of British Columbia and Banff School of Fine Arts. From 1975 to 2010, he co-chaired the symposium committee of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre.

Print/Email
0 Flares Twitter 0 Facebook 0 Google+ 0 0 Flares ×
Posted on December 11, 2015December 9, 2015Author Graham ForstCategories Op-EdTags Dachau, Denkmal, Holocaust

Post navigation

Previous Previous post: Ludicrous standards
Next Next post: Going from brokenness to wholeness
Proudly powered by WordPress