Photographer: Arnold Newman
The more I stare at his expression, the worse I feel for him. Could you imagine what is going through his head here?
Great question. Can you imagine being in a situation where your loved ones have died, and you have emotional conflict that half wants to return to the most frightening time of your life which happened right there in that room when you and your family hid for your lives from nazi persecution, but everyone was still alive? Imagine having your most recent happy memories of your family mixed up with that terror. How awful.
I hope he thought back to before the times they spent hiding.
I lost my brother after a long failed treatment for cancer. It’s easy to remember the crappy 3 years of hospital visits and associated hardship. But when I remember him, I’m more often thinking of the 30 years before that, and the good moments in between.
Being in that room probably made it impossible not to think about the war though, and there’s no way anyone could be expected to think otherwise.
Also vote against Nazis and fascists so we don’t have to deal with these again.
Stories like this are why I’m absolutely convinced that if God does exist, they’re the kind of guy that likes to burn ants with a magnifying glass.
I am so sad for him.
Yep, if a god exists, they’re the biggest piece of shit ever to have existed.
The only charitable explanation I have for god is that the conditions for life on earth are just a side effect of whatever god was trying to do in another part of the universe entirely.
This galaxy isn’t full of god’s chosen. Merely the forgotten or never intended.
Hell, there’s a theory that the universe we see is actually the inside of a black hole. (It’s not a super widely accepted theory, mind you.) I could accept it as god has already discarded us.
If I believed in the existence of ‘god,’ anyway.
Diary of Anne Frank should be mandatory reading and is worth reading multiple times at different stages of one’s life. Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl is also up there.
I’m not sure which is considered the best but these are the ones I’ve read:
Not Fun fact: Anne Frank did not get executed. She died from disease in the concentration camp.
Haunting.
