Today I switched off my computer after lunch (no RC for a day!!) and had a good read. Bought the Chinese version of the book, and finished reading it in the evening. After I put down the book, and though I already knew the ending beforehand (damn it, wiki), I was quite stunned by the ending.
The author uses simple words, and writes from the POV of a nine-year-old, yet it is so powerful. There are no graphic descriptions in the book, yet it invokes a sense of horror and despair. A moving story indeed.
The book is accused of falsifications of history by the critics (about the existence of small children in the Auschwhitz camp). But the book does have a good message in the end: this kind of thing will not happen again, at least not in our time. And may us not meet a fence like that.
I have watched a documentry on NG (title is album from hell, not quite sure) some months back, which showcases the photos taken at the camp. Some of the photos show the hours before the people were ushered to the chamber and gassed. They probably did not know what was about to happen, and some of them are shown sitting on the grass in the sun, probably enjoying the fresh air which had not been available on the trains earlier on. Little did they know they had hours to see the sun for the one last time. Those images are chilling. No matter how many holocausts books or films I have been exposed to, I am still appalled at how such atrocities could have really happened, and at how some people who knew all of these and still lived normally.
All these information is not meant to stir up sentiments, but to remind people of the atrocities which should not have happened in the first place, and not to let this kind of thing happen again.
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