The Shoah – colour coded by Eileen Padmore
I meant to keep a journal on the 2011 trip to Poland but words wouldn't come. Then our guide suggested we try to see it all in colour. What did he mean? I thought of Schindler's List with its 2-dimensional monochrome approach – except for the little girl who appeared in red until she emerged one last time, faded and dead on a cart, lost among a tangle of bodies. No, not for me the clamouring nightmares, the vivid playbacks that still bedevil survivors. I was more comfortable with discussion, ideas, opinions because to experience what happened in colour is unbearable. But seven decades on, the stones still cry out in mute testimony, their naked messages ready for those with courage to receive. I had to make a conscious decision to create space, enter into the silence and work out the colours. The full colour palette of autumn was upon us when we visited the picture postcard woodlands of Zbylitowska Gora, site of the cold blooded slaughter of some 10,000 living beings. ...