Lost shoes and sweet laddoos: Songs of innocence in holocaust memorials

I have to write something for Holocaust Memorial Day, said Danka, can you help me? Danka was a rather shy, elderly student in a writing workshop of mine in Cambridge and I agreed. Over a coffee, Danka read out what she had written. It was all about the fragility of civilisation and the need to build bridges between communities, peoples.

This is all very worthy, I suggested, but could you be a little more specific? You were a child at the time. What in particular do you remember about the war? Where were you? Danka thought for a while and then she said: I was at the Gates of Auschwitz. Or was it Auschwitz? I can’t remember. Oh dear.

I dropped my coffee cup. Danka, I said, trying to recover from my astonishment, you can’t remember whether or not you were at the Gates of Auschwitz? Nobody else in the world is ever going to say those particular words. What’s the story?

It transpired that Danka had been transported to Auschwitz but was kept there for only a few days before being transferred to Dachau. By great good fortune, she had survived – as her parents had not – but her memory now…

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