大象传媒

In my first story I told you about the girl hanging between two trees and how we children had been forced to watch. When I thought about the incident before including it in my poem, I was convinced that all the details were correct.
Later I realized that this was not so, but in a very weird sense.
I realized that I have a very sharp photographic memory of life in the camps BUT THERE IS NO SOUND in any of the scenes.
In the old days I could practically hear people's thoughts. My hearing was very acute and I love listening to beautiful voices. Or music, Bach preferably. And yet there was no sound.
So this is my question to you: is there anyone else, who having lived in a concentration camp, has come to the conclusion that one of his/her senses was "deleted"? I can only conclude that subconsciously it was a decision I made. But why? Were the sounds more horrible than the picures? If you could see what is engraved in my memory, you would also find this hard to believe.

Years ago I read a story in the Mabinogion which I found very enlightening. Looking for a tale about Parcival I came across Bran the Blessed. Bran is given a magic cauldron by a grateful guest.
But this is not the usual Celtic cauldron which may or may not be a forerunner of the Grail. In this cauldron you throw dead soldiers and they come out alive.
BUT: they cannot speak any more.

That's us after the war, I thought, alive but unable to speak about our experiences because nobody wants to listen. And I remembered something Hemingway said about a young man who came home after fighting in Europe and he might just as well have talked another language. There is no greater loneliness.

I loved my job, but I stopped teaching before I was 65, because I could not work any longer. Then I went once a week to a clinic where people were treated for their
post traumatic stress disorders, or just simply in our case, a "concentration camp syndrome" This clinic, Centrum 40-45, was in the grounds of one of the Leiden University clinics. When they started, they had a wonderful but very controversial specialist, professor Bastiaanse, who it was said, used LSD to help people unlock their memories. By the time I enrolled LSD was no longer used.

I realized during the therapy how vitally important it is to talk.
And I wonder when I look at the soldiers fighting in Irak, or thinking of those who fought in the first Gulf War, (who did not even have their medical conditions checked afterwards - if what one hears is true. "Gulf syndrome, there's no such thing") or in any place where they experienced untold horrors, I wonder if there is any such place as my Centrum 40-45 to take care of these people here? If there is not, see to it that the medical world wakes up. And talk to your soldiers, ask them questions, let them tell their tales - ten times, a hundred times.

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