While looking for photos from Vimy Ridge in honour of the Grand-Père of Vimy, I found some old photos made from colour slides that my Papa took in Europe during the early to mid-1950s.
The photo on the left is of the Natzweiler-Struthof Crematorium, part of the only concentration camp established by the Nazis in France (the novelist Boris Pahor was a prisoner in Natzweiler-Struthof).
What struck me most about this photo is the clothing worn by the people walking towards the site. It’s so similar to the clothing worn by people in the 1940s, that I realized that this photo couldn’t have been taken more than a decade and a half after the crematorium was liberated in November 1944.
I’ve never been to any concentration campsites, but even in looking at these photos I feel incredibly sick… especially seeing the gallows (the 1950s) with the Vosges Mountains in the background.
