Dunkerque

Harrowing. So many questions, so much soul-searching.

How do you switch off from the horrific truth of the Holocaust?
Who are we to talk about living in 'a climate of fear'?
What would you give to fight for your cause? For your pride, dignity, faith, for justice.
Would you give your life…even under torture?

"Not in my name": I think of the French Revolutionaries who died, head held high, while I walk alongside my friends in an anti-war march for troops to leave Afghanistan and Iraq. How great their cost and how insignificant mine.

I cried at a photograph of a solider at a Polish concentration / forced labour camp in Russia. He stands proud, skeletal fellow prisoners laying at his feet, naked to the waist except for his last remaining piece of uniform - a cloth hat - staring determinedly eye-to-eye at the man on the other side of the fence. That man is Himmler, the head of SS and the man responsible for the horror he was experiencing. I don't understand the notions of pride and dignity, at least not to this extreme. But I was proud of this man. And of the millions who stood up against evil oppression - only to be crushed by its disgusting malevolence. But not for nothing, we now know.

The blessing of hindsight.