We forget that there was a time when nobody smiled in photographs. But that was in the early days of photography. By the time the thirties had come everybody smiled and laughed and looked happy just as they do today. Look at any of the pre-war pictures to be found in Holocaust museums – there’s plenty of smiling and laughing and happiness.
Nobody smiles in the Theresienstadt propaganda film.
This is a film of the entire population of a town on Death Row.
Although as I write these words, I realise it’s not strictly true.
The children smile.
The children smile and they laugh.
Especially when they are eating.
And it’s good to be able to think that at least Julia and Suzanne aren’t two of the lost, unsmiling faces looking out at us from that movie.
That would be almost like saving them.
Like bringing them back.
Imagine if that were possible – to bring back one, just one of the six million.
What about one of the children?
Just one.
So that they could live out their life and die a gentle death. It seems so little to ask and how wonderful a thing it would be.
But of course it’s impossible.
And so it eases things for us a little to be able to think that at least Julia and Suzanne escaped all of that.