7.9.2025 we visited Bełżec, the concentration camp.
There were tragedies and victims. There were gray photos and uncomfortable feeling. There was a guy from our group. A German guy with a Jewish hat matching his T-short.
I had already been to Auschvitz-Birkenau, so it was nothing new in Bełżec. I had already seen the gas chambers, the shoes and the hair. And glasses, and bags, and hundreds of photos. I patiently listened to the same data again. I sadly observed the grayness of walls. Because we need to remember. Because the story is hard, like all the important things are.
But I never saw real Jews in exhibitions like that. I never knew he is Jew. And now I see his suddenly inclined shoulders and red eyes, where it was more of him than in his constant smile. So much of real him that I want to draw the moment. Because he is alive. Not a story, but a real person in front of me.
I'll never show him the sketch with a lonely inclined posture of the German guy in the Jewish hat, looking at graphite rocky field.
