Let's aesthetize the horror. Let's walk for the horror. Let's make up, photograph, smile. Portraits glued on candles. 10 shekels. "Oh, she did Auschwitz". Let's note the horror. 1, 2, 3 let's sing. "I survived, I survived, I survived." Refrain. Any music that is served at any fair, mixed with the stultifying neon lights of parties that we prefer to forget. 

And then the silence.

The old family and archive photographs come to mind, lost in the sober interiors of the "survivors" and in the streets stuck in the middle of public lampposts. No commentary or artifice. Even less confetti or the presence of the national anthem. Showing the unspeakable if not listening to it. That's all. 

Since on stage the attentive ear is absent. Since women are no longer women but survivors, symbols, and above all, instruments of pecuniary logic and Zionist policies. "Any comment on Trump?" asks one of the hosts after the peace speech of one of the participants… "No!".

So we cut, we triturate, we recite the war to make it more impressive, more enticing. Sellable. The war consumed, bought. "But it is important to say it! Certainly, but it is still "too long". Short version of the memory. And then the first lady supports the event. And the buffet. And the mundane conversations and its usual hubbub. Memory interrupted.

So yes, these retirees gain a place to sleep, to spend their "old days". But what about acceptance; life after survival? Of their "inner world" supposedly exposed in the contest?

It is only smoothed out, sanitized, swallowed up, drowned under the cosmetics that are coldly handed to the winners whose smiles gradually fade away. 

 

Rémi Journet
Tënk's editorial assistant