On the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz

Trip to Auschwitz, and I don’t go.

Why would I? I’m English,

not History, with its dark corners and smells.

But I like to think I keep abreast,

am in the know, and care.

So I visit the library instead,

which is bright and ordered,

its inmates subdued;

and visit a book with pictures.

It is true there are scenes in this.

Men hard done by as though the years

before the war never ended, good times

and industry never arrived. These men are all

tummies reduced to backbone, and

their eyes are clearly not right; too deep,

more socket than eye.

Yet mostly there is a black and white

ordinariness to it all; take the girls

— slight girls, in pinafore dresses,

their hair pinned in bobbed waves

against a yard, neat in the sun,

and inside the tidy rows of beds,

camp beds.

Or the domestic curiosities

in the commandant’s home;

everything looks rather fine.

Indeed, ordinary, familiar.

What strikes me in this is the singular

thingness of it all.

The thingness of us all.

Hair, skin, fat, teeth,

locket, lamp, soap.

Take this tiny pile of tiny bones.

brittle, I imagine at a distance, with age

on the page.

such beautiful bones,

delicate and thin and elegant and light;

unstruck.

Bruna Gushurst is a historian, university lecturer, teacher, friend, mother, daughter, sister, wife. She has also been an unsuccessful saleslady, travelling muffin-man, and Bingo-Hall card runner. She writes stuff.