Auschwitz-Birkenau: First Phase
Progression 2
Video Stills | Video Clip | Drawings Made During Video | Stream of Consciousness Narration | Complicit Trees
Video Stills
I decided to create another selection of drawings and this time to talk as I drew about what I was seeing in my mind, about what I was thinking while I was there inside Auschwitz-Birkenau.
I also decided whilst doing this that I should video the results, partly so as to capture my words and partly to view the process of my own drawing from an entirely new angle.
Below are four thumbnails taken from the final video:
Through this process, I have created - as well as the video - a new set of 36 drawings (made during the video) and a piece of text (a transcription of the video).
Video Clip
Video clip showing one of the drawings being made.
Drawings Made During Video
A selection of the 36 drawing made during the video.
Stream of Consciousness Narration (Transcription)
I can see a tower, the same tower I’ve seen many times, in films, in photographs, I can see all the railway track, it seems to start nowhere now, comes from nowhere, but even though it has no beginning it has an end. There are people standing around, we walk through the gate into Birkenau into the space. The Tower demands attention. I stand by the side and look at the windows, eyes from the past still looking, still looking at the terrible things that happened there, I turn around to face it, the panes of glass and bricks, and the big arch through which so many people came, and walk away to the railways line. The railway line splits into three. There is the ramp, the place where people were offloaded and sorted, two lines one on the left one on the right. Those on the left, women children, the old, the sick were sent straight away to their deaths. The gas chambers located at the end of the line. The gas chambers are themselves now just piles of rubble, piles of bricks, piled like the bodies pulled from out, pulled from within, blown apart in an attempt to hide the crimes. Yet even if, even if the tower itself was destroyed, if all the barracks were destroyed, I’m sure the ground would still hold the memories. Every step you take you walk on ash, you walk on the dead. We go inside the barracks and see the bunks and look through the windows at each end. By looking through one window you can see through every barrack right to the end, to the gatehouse which everywhere you stand finds you with its eyes. Everywhere is trees behind the gas chambers, wire and sentry posts. Within these groves people would wait, families would wait to be taken to their deaths, places that are so peaceful now. You can see the trees in the distance and even these hide terrible secrets. They stand, they stand as if nothing has happened. There’s something different about them, even though they look like trees, they could be trees in a wood in England or wherever, they seem different, there are no sounds, no birds, they seem ashamed of what they hide inside. In the distance the tower still stands, looking, these are they eyes of death. You can see the long stretch of the horizon, the entire horizon seems fenced as if there’s nothing on the other side, there really is no escape, this is it. The wind sometimes blows, it tries to coax from the trees their secrets, not even the leaves seem to talk, don’t seem to make a noise. You can just hear a dog barking somewhere in the distance, perhaps in a house nearby or maybe an echo of all those dogs that barked before, herding people from off the train. For many the tower would have been the last thing they saw. They would have glimpsed it, the tower, its roof, its windows, its mouth, the other gate, the fence. Then it’s time to go. We stand at the end of the railway and wonder which way we should travel back to the gatehouse, by the barracks, straight down the ramp, a choice that is itself a burden. For many there was not that choice, some went to the barracks, but most went to the trees, to their deaths. The trees seem to turn their backs when you walk through them, those in the distance seem to grow directly from the past or in the past. In many respects they are doing just that, growing from the ashes of people, people to whom they gave shelter, shelter from the fear, the fear of what was to come, or were they acting on behalf of those who were doing the killing, by hiding the gas chamber? The trees were lying. The sentry posts almost seem alive, although there are no soldiers standing inside with guns trained on those arrived, they still seem to look, they are like the soldiers one hears of stuck in a jungle who are unaware the war is finished that their task here is done. The gate house is different, it knows its time has passed but doesn’t seem ashamed in anyway. Its almost as if it relives every moment in its glass eyes, glass eyes which are far from being blind. They don’t reflect what they see around them now but rather what has been, what the tower wants to remember. The end of the line literally. So we walk back, see the tower. It gets closer each time, each step, each impossible step. How many people wished they could do what I’m doing now? Just decide to go home. With every step I plant my foot on the ground in the ashes of those who perished. In the ground are the memories, the hopes, the dreams, the aspirations of so many people, over a million people and from these hopes and dreams, wishes, luck’s cut short. The trees take their nutrients and grow, forever reminded of those days in 1940, in the 1940s. The houses of death which they hid. Those trees would have reminded people perhaps of better days, a temporary respite from the fences and the, may be even the shouting. They might have remembered past days, picnics, stolen moments with a loved one, moments when they too were children. And there they sit waiting, expecting nothing less, nothing more than just a shower. They are stripped and sent into the chambers. Their bodies burned. As we leave we turn and look through the gates, the trees in the distance, the barracks, we take with us all those hopes and dreams and wishes. The impossibility of an escape.
Complicit Trees
Everywhere is trees behind the gas chambers, wire and sentry posts. Within these groves people would wait, families would wait to be taken to their deaths, places that are so peaceful now.
You can see the trees in the distance and even these hide terrible secrets. They stand, they stand as if nothing has happened.
There’s something different about them, even though they look like trees, they could be trees in a wood in England or wherever, they seem different, there are no sounds, no birds, they seem ashamed of what they hide inside.
The trees seem to turn their backs when you walk through them, those in the distance seem to grow directly from the past or in the past.