Breathe
By Susana Moscatel
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
From Amsterdam I once again contemplate history. The one that was explained to me as a child. The one I had to face again when I was old enough to understand the implications. All the times I have read the diary. When I had the honor of working on the play that tells the story of that dreamy, hopeful girl in the most terrible darkness. I am with a wonderful delegation of young people from all over Latin America in the attic of the house where Anne Frank hid from the Nazis with her family. Where they were still there just before the trains stopped and the Jews of Holland stopped being deported to the death camps. Just before. Too late.
From this cramped space I see the very young people around me. Many of them no more than twenty years old. Most of them are not Jewish, they were not told this at home or school, they found Ana on their own initiative, searching for her words. By miracle, it sometimes seems, with that urgent need to defend memory, they got here by their own effort, talent and humanity. They are the winners of a scholarship from the Anne Frank Center in Argentina, in many cases they can't believe they made it this far. But their eyes and their hearts are what I am here to document. It is their memory that will live on. Their human condition has me in awe. There are Mexicans, Argentines, Chileans, Colombians ... Our own stories are intertwined with those of World War II. There are the grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo. There are us, with our dead and our dead too. Ana continues to dialogue with them. And they teach me. I see everything with new eyes. I will tell you more about them, who will come later to deal with history. Despite the constant work of the enemies of truth.
Despite the lies of some "revisionists" I would like to think that there are more who want to keep the memory alive. In our case and in the case of the guys who won the scholarships, we got here this time thanks to a German company; Merck, who have over three hundred years of history and who, like so many millions of Germans who recognize that dark and devastating period and seek to make historical reparations however they can. These grants are certainly a great way to do that. They approached us at Opinion 51 with this project. I appreciate it beyond anything they will ever imagine.
Anne Frank is more than a symbol. She is more than her own story. I will tell you more about this experience in the coming days. How we connect with the disappeared of Argentina, of Mexico. With those heroic grandmothers, brave mothers who never stop searching. As Ana wrote, "I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart". Tragically this is not always the case. But that is why we are here. With that desire in mind and hope well placed in the new generations.
This story will continue ...
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of Opinion 51.
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