"We are the shoes, we are the last witnesses.
We are the shoes from grandchildren and grandfathers
from Prague, Paris and Amsterdam,
and because we are only made of fabric and leather
and not of blood and flesh, each one of us avoided the hellfire."
- Yiddish Poet Moses Schulstein (1911-1981).
From a recent visit to the Holocaust Museum, Washington DC. The shoes, which remain, of some of the many victims of these camps.
I fear my photo does not do this place justice, as if any photo could, but I wanted to include it in my project, especially as I don't seem to see a stop to any of our unfortunate human tendencies towards eradicating parts of ourselves, although I always hope for a brighter day.
Feel free to skip on down, as this is pretty sobering.
10/1/2020: Finished year 7 (!), with continuing gratitude towards this amazing community. Based in St. Louis, MO. Regular worker-bee and self-taught photography dilettante....
I have been to Auschwitz twice, and the impact of the mountains of belongings is beyond words. Thank you for sharing. Might be a sobering image - but we should never forget.
Very chilling and sobering too. As soon as I saw this shot I thought it was a Holocaust memorial somewhere. I must fav the shot for both its quality and its message to the nutcases out there who'd like to repeat the exercise.
Wow. This is strange for me as I must fav this for the importance of it, but it's incredibly difficult to take it... You're right - we must always have the hope...
