Tag: the Holocaust

Where My Family Is From

By Howie Good

 

Photo collage: In the foreground is a human figure wrapped in a coast, face hidden. In the background, an image of Holocaust victims.

 

Artist’s statement: My family originated in Eastern Europe. Any member who did not emigrate prior to the rise of the Nazism—my maternal grandmother’s parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins—were exterminated in the death camps during World War II. No record of exactly what befell them or where was ever discovered, despite intensive efforts by my grandma.

The collage is composed of a historic photo of a barracks in a death camp in Poland. I superimposed and colored by hand the ghostly coat in the foreground.

Howie Good’s handmade collages have appeared or are forthcoming in Mayday, Sulphur Surrealist Jungle, Defunkt, Drunk Monkeys, Blue as Orange, decomp, The Offshoot, Mad Swirl, Mercurius Magazine, Scapegoat Review, Wrongdoing, Willows Wept Review, Writers Resist, Kitchen Table Quarterly, and Otoliths.

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The Notorious

By Alex Penland     

 

Do you remember Yad Vashem? How
the path that leads you through the
exhibit is chronological and single
lined, each point presented on a hair
pin turn of events: here is where a new
legislation was passed, here is where
some diplomat died, here is where the
people thought oh, one more degree
in this pot won’t make the water
boil yet. But then you cross the river
gap to the next section of the exhibit
and are suddenly granted a perception
of time as a whole, not a part, and when
you reach the section where it gets so
bad that you think you must be near the
end you look down the line at all the
bridges and no. You’re half through.
Half through the voices saying we
thought they wouldn’t dare, thought
people were better than they were or
human goodness was more ubiquitous
than it is or some protection was more
sturdy than the flimsy social contract
it turned out to be and things get so
much worse, and the hope of it becomes
less a light in the tunnel and more a
light in the eyes blinding us from the
things that live in the darkness. She
was one of those protections, I think
now, a stone wall painted on paper,
and through the fire it’s amazing she
held the line as long as she did, but
that greasy burning and a squealing
that is not pigs is coming closer now,
and for the moment I am on the safe
side of the shower door, but I can’t
help but look down the crack in the
exhibit hall and think we aren’t even
close yet, we’re not even close to the light.

 

Alex Penland was a museum kid: a childhood of running rampant through the Smithsonian kicked off a lifelong inspiration for science fiction, poetry, and science-inspired fantasy. Their work has been internationally published in The Midwest Review, Story Cities, and the upcoming Strange Lands anthology by Flame Tree Press. Their poetry has been awarded by Writers’ Digest and previously appeared in the December 2018 issue of Writers Resist.  They currently live in Scotland studying for a PhD in Creative Writing. You can follow Alex on Twitter @AlexPenname or visit their website at www.AlexandraPenn.com.

Yad Vashem photo by Anders Jacobsen on Unsplash.