His profession was always highly appreciated

As we were talking, another man approached us.

He was a painter native to Warsaw, a man of medium height with a hooked nose and a completely black goatee on his bluish-white skin. This peculiar appearance attracted attention from afar and evidenced a high social position. In the concentration camp, his profession was always highly appreciated.

Everyone showed him respect, and on some occasions, he spoke to me at length about his work.

"I paint portraits for German soldiers. They bring me photos of their relatives, their wives, mothers, and children. Everyone wants a portrait of their loved ones.

The SS members speak to me about them with affection, with a lot of feeling. They give me details like the color of their eyes and hair.

I paint their portraits from a black and white photo taken by an amateur and often blurry.

However, despite all the talk out there, I would like to stop painting the relatives of German soldiers.

I would like to paint a black and white picture of the children crowded in the isolation ward. I would like to paint the portraits of all those people murdered by the Germans and give them the paintings so they can take them home and decorate their walls with them. Damn it!"

The man lost his temper at that moment.

Samuel Willenberg, Revolt in Treblinka

I came back to this page after reading Murakami's Killing Commendatore, which is narrated by a portrait painter. A man who has spent years painting faces on commission, from photographs, for people who want to keep somebody.

Willenberg's painter is doing the same job. Same photographs, same blurry amateur shots, same requests about the color of the eyes. He is doing it for the men running the camp that is holding him, and what he wants is to spend that skill on the dead instead, and hand the portraits back.

The same trade, and the whole distance between what it can be used for. That is why I kept the page.