loss of imagination

children under house

arrest, afraid of the dark;

will never touch grass

Freedom from Hell

“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom” – Kierkegaard

‘Arrival in Auschwitz is a defining moment in your life. The doors open, you are thrown out, greeted by barking dogs, screaming figures with whips, a stench of burning flesh and a glow of fire. Everything happens at breakneck speed. “Out, out, out!” You are driven off running. You are taken to a building, stripped, put under cold showers, driven into the next hall where they shave off your hair. There are no towels so you are still wet and cold. Then women prisoners smear your body with a mop dipped in green fluid which stings. In the next hall you are thrown some rags and wooden clogs. In the final hall there are women sitting at tables with funny pens in their hands and before you know it needles are piercing your skin. That is when you become a number [39934]. Whistles blow and there is a roll call. Thousands of women are rushing to stand in line. For hours you stand in the rain and people fall to the ground dead. Then you are driven into a hut and you think, “At last, I can lie down.” But you can’t. There are 1,000 women trying to lie down on the bunks. You are lucky to find a corner to cling to. Welcome to Auschwitz. Welcome to hell.’

Kitty lost 30 members of her family in the Holocaust. Her father was betrayed and shot. Her brother died fighting at Stalingrad alongside the Russians. She and her mother came to Birmingham, to an aunt and uncle who’d escaped Europe before the war. Her uncle’s greeting: ‘In my house I don’t want you to speak about anything that happened to you.’ Adjustment took time. ‘I didn’t know how to hold a knife and fork. I was slopping my food out of a bowl. I used to take the bread my neighbours had thrown in their dustbins

A lust for revenge kept Kitty alive at one point: revenge for the friends she lost in Auschwitz and those shot or clubbed to death if they lagged on the death march. After liberation, she was part of a group that rampaged through Salzwedel town. But confronting a cowering German family, a knife in her hand, she knew she could not hurt them. Today, her work takes her throughout Europe, and when she talks to German teenagers, ‘I tell them, “It is not your fault. You are not to blame.”’ They must notice that every sentence she says is imbued with rigorous honesty. Perhaps they also sense the stark dignity shaping her compassion. -By LOUETTE HARDING about Kitty-Hart Moxon

Who can imagine the horrors of the concentration camps?  What must it have been like to at last be free? A child learns to walk by letting go of the chair where her mother sits excitedly anticipating the first step.  Who is standing by to hold your hand as you leave behind what has become a way of life, the living Hell of being a prisoner waiting to die, but determined to live?

If you have ever been abused, mistreated, or violated in any way, if you have witnessed atrocities first hand and lived to tell the story, you know the irony of freedom.  Those who did not survive, who were killed or took their own lives, those who lived but could not cope with the anxiety of freedom, those men, women and children are ghosts hanging on to your coat tails.  They ride with you to the grocery store, the bank, as you drop your children off at school.  They come to you in your dreams.  You see them in the faces of those you pass on the street.  One word brings them back.  Do you feel guilty?  Perhaps.  Grateful?  Hopefully yes.  But most of all I think one feels compelled to tell the story, to share with others what you have experienced and what you know about yourself and the world as a result.  Stories have the power to transform lives, your own and others.  Tell your story.  Honor the ghosts of your past, even those who persecuted you for it is in the forgiving that we learn to live again.

“Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.” – Ghandi

My Hostage – More to Come

I wrote a message to the girl who will be my main character in the book I am writing.  I will officially begin on January 1, 2014, but I thought it a good idea for us to get to know one another a little better before then.  She, the character, is based on a friend I really had in the eighth grade when I lived in South Bend, IN.  Her father was a big wig at Studebaker Motors. He drove an Avanti, a car that was definitely ahead of its time.  The original Studebaker Avanti has been described as “one of the more significant milestones of the postwar industry”.

Her family moved to South Bend from somewhere in California.  I could not believe she wanted to be my friend.  She was so sophisticated.  Her mother was a classic beauty.  She always looked gorgeous and sexy, even first thing in the morning.  I went over there every day after school.  I loved spending time at my friend’s house.  (She will remain nameless until she appears in my novel).  Her two older sisters went to St Mary’s, a Catholic high school for girls only.  They were beautiful too. They, the two sisters, only dated rich Catholic boys who went to Notre Dame.  I wanted to marry everyone single one of them.  I had a crush on their Dad too, who, was to date, the most handsome man I had ever seen.  I wanted to be them, a part of their family.

Can’t tell you anymore now.  Just wanted you to know that she and I have reconnected, if only in my mind, and we have quite an adventure ahead of us.