Barrack Diary IV: Broken

The Barrack Diary Series highlights Birkenau concentration camp photographs I took in the summer of 2009. Like my father-in-law, who described in his memoir Witness of Annihilation his own nightmares of living in the barracks in Janowska concentration camp in the 1940's, I experienced the dim, broken, viscerally disturbing spaces of these barracks. These images are meant to horrify, make uncomfortable, and to urge us to remember this awful time in human history. But I also want to step beyond the horror, to acknowledge all those who suffered so terribly. I want to try to understand the roots of human nature, which on the one hand allows such tragedies, and on the other hand capable of great empathy and compassion. In working with images of the Holocaust, I struggle to find appropriate balance between the horrific nature of this history and my ultimate aim, which is to question our motives and actions, and direct our thinking towards a better world -- a world that admonishes intolerance and takes seriously our human stewardship on this precious planet.