The Shadow of Liberation

Shadow of Bronze Sculpture at Westerbork

 

The shadow cast by a sculpture at Westerbork Transit Camp in the Netherlands entitled ‘Liberation’.

It is wrong to assume that with liberation from bondage comes freedom from the past, the memories and the hurt.  The journey has only just begun and freedom may be a long way off.  The nightmares continue and those who must live with the liberated also suffer, for the shadows have been cast.

Hope in a place of death

During the Second World War

Wild lupins at Westerbork

100,000 people, including Anne Frank and her family, were incarcerated by the Nazis at Westerbork in the Netherlands, before being transported to concentration camps in the East.  On 12 June 2009, the 80th anniversary of Aane Frank’s birth, I visited Westerbork and found an array of wild lupins in a forest clearing where once fear, sickness and death raged.