Imagine

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I want you to imagine.

You live in the town where you were born, where you have family and friends, where everything is familiar. One of your friends or family is getting married, and you put on your best clothes, pick up the flowers you have bought, and catch a bus to the Church.

Or you are on your way to or from work, looking forward to a coffee  and a day or an evening with people you know and like - or perhaps love.

Or you are on your way to fetch children from school.

And then comes łapanka - the round-up. You are living somewhere in Central or Eastern Europe at some time between 1939 and 1945 and the German army is arresting hostages - anyone who is available. The hostages, normally between 50 to 100 of them for each German allegedly killed, will be driven to the forest and shot. Suddenly your life is over. There will be no Priest to confess to.

The wedding party will wonder where you are. They will find out, because the Germans will post on walls and telegraph poles a list of names of those they have murdered.

You will never work or see your loved-ones again.

Your children will wait and wait at the school. They will have to grow up without you.

And you stand in a queue, waiting to get on the bus or lorry which will take you the forest to be shot, like the two ladies to the left and right foreground, in your best clothes.

Thinking about it brings me to tears.

And prayers.

MAY WHOEVER READS THIS SPARE A PRAYER FOR THEIR SOULS AND FOR THEIR FAMILIES STILL LIVING.