Words about a visit

by Lisandra López (Macau)

Making a local connection Germany

It was a Saturday that could have been like any other. But it was not. That morning, with the cold that for a Cuban accustomed to the high temperatures made every part of the body tremble, visiting a concentration camp, I heard about people who gathered in huge squares with little clothes at degrees below zero; about walkers who stayed on the road; of how the mission of each day was to arrive alive to the next. And I wondered if so many times they didn't ask for what. Maybe they had some hope somewhere. But that feeling never accompanied me when I toured the barracks with their huge bunk beds, when I went to the classrooms, today museums, and saw immense photos that made them even more intimidating, gadgets to transport corpses, uniforms, infinite lists of names that do not tell me nothing, but for others they are the sadness reflected in traces of data and directions. “They were shot in the neck through a hole in the wall while listening to music; they were led to believe that they went to a medical examination and stopped at the gas chambers; they were taken to the infirmary for any new experiment they could think of. " That came to me as something you want to swallow but you can't, like something you want to forget but you can't. And I will not be able to. Drawings made with food scraps last after such a long time. They refuse to fade and retain what only their authors knew they wanted to convey. We now play that we understand and make the most dissimilar readings. Sachsenhausen shook me, slapped me for every part of me, took me (somehow) to those horrible years. He made me write about death. And it leaves me that mutis that I don't know how to share in any way. Maybe, someday I will find her.