Sunday, February 06, 2022

A Haunting Picture from World War 2

Update: Here's the true story of this train and its rescue, and more pictures.

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I found this picture on, I think, YouTube. All I know of it is that it was taken by an American GI, of Jews leaving a train that was on its way to a Nazi concentration camp, a train the Americans (Allies?) has stopped, liberating the prisoners onboard. 

I find this picture to be joyous and tragic and haunting and uplifting all at once, and more. I know the woman and her child in front are saved, in the center of the picture, but the person who really gets to me is the women in back of them on the left, in the black coat with her arms out and a scarf or hood over her head. I can only guess, but she looks like she was just a few minutes ago beyond all hope. She looks like a ghost, like a skeleton, like she was just dead. She has black pits for eyes, sunken cheeks, huge forehead. And now she seems risen from the dead, out of a grave, just now realizing she is alive again, that she is no longer a breathing corpse but is just now again a human being. She can't smile wide enough. She's not yet on even ground but she knows it is there at the top of the hill, and even though her face is unclear it seems to have a look I've never seen before. Or maybe I'm imaging it. But that's part of what a great picture does.  

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