Childhood is one of the most important periods of our lives, and it has an incomparable role in shaping our later personality and achieving what kind of life we have.
But there are indeed some people around us who have no childhood, and their memories of childhood are drowned in the dust of history. This is not to say that their childhood does not exist, but that they deliberately buried their childhood memories in the depths of their consciousness in order to survive better, so that it no longer jumps out and affects the present, so that the present self can live a better life under the condition of forgetting childhood.
Georges Perek, a contemporary French avant-garde novelist and a Polish Jew, had a missing childhood, and his memories of his childhood were actually very vague.
His childhood was in the heart of World War II, and as Jews, he and his family were suffering from the Holocaust. It is believed that such an experience must have had a profound impact on his childhood. But for him as an adult, the only fragments left of such an experience have become incomplete, unsystematic, and very vague.
However, writers have the obligation and mission to re-excavate their childhood and make it appear to the world again. Therefore, the author continues to discover the secrets of his childhood, and reflects on that history through the excavation of childhood, so that more people can understand the extreme persecution of human beings in that history.
Therefore, Perek also wrote such a work of fiction and non-fiction, "W—My Private Auschwitz". The original title of this book that we are more familiar with is "W Childhood Memories".
It is made up of two parts, one of which is connected by the author's real childhood memories. This part of the text is extremely fragmented, but this is exactly in line with the characteristics of our memory, especially some memories that are intentionally buried, and of course only bits and pieces remain.
However, it is from these fragmented memories that we see the real living conditions of the author and his family members, such as the father who went to the battlefield and died on the battlefield, and the mother who was sent to a concentration camp and was later proven to have died there.
And this heartache and even despair is even more vividly expressed in the second part of the author's novel, the story about W. W is the author's virtual space, and on such a small island, people must engage in extremely bad activities. And these bizarre activities of theirs, or what can be called competitions, are not of practical significance, they are just a chance to live for them.
Such a space is very similar to Auschwitz, thinking about the way people are treated in the concentration camp, there is no reason to speak of, the rules are changed at will, and human nature is extremely painfully oppressed here. Here, being alive is the only mission, but there is no way to achieve it easily, and you even have to sell your personality and pay a despicable price to achieve the mission.
As a writer, his mission is to tell us some of the truest aspects of our humanity. And the writing of the most brutal history is also necessary to achieve this mission. And the memory of Auschwitz, about the most tragic event in human history, should of course also be an important material for the writer's reflection.
Then let us dig out the cruelty of the past from history through such a book, through the author's own memories and reflections on Auschwitz, record it in writing, and preserve it for future generations, so that more people can understand such a cruel history, reflect on that history, and avoid human nature falling into absurdity again, and avoiding history from reappearing. #文学##小说###反思文学#