Meta de Leur: The Haze has Vanished
Info / context to the poem
Meta de Leur wrote these lines on January 29, 1945 for her camp companion Alem van Staveren-Vet. She wrote in a book whose cover consisted of flowered cloth scraps, secretly made by Aat Breur in the concentration camp bookbindery. Each of Aat's friends received a different motif - one flowered, the other striped.(...)
These little books have remained, with names, addresses, verses, songs, poems. Also with cooking recipes, written down in pencil and tiny handwriting - recipes for the most delicious dishes. An absurd, bizarre sight for someone who has never known hunger. The handwriting often suggests that the scribe was more familiar with hard work than writing poetry. And yet most of it has been lost or destroyed. That it could be created at all is a miracle; if it has been preserved, an even greater one. (Dunya Breur: Ich lebe, weil du dich erinnerst. Frauen und Kinder in Ravensbrück, Berlin 1997)
Images and documents
Lake Schwedt
The Ravensbrück Memorial Site borders the northeastern shore of the lake. The ashes from the Ravensbrück concentration camp crematorium were poured into Lake Schwedt.