Perhaps the pain was too deep in those who were trying to establish new lives and not draw attention to themselves. A generation later, questions are still being asked about the enemy. There seems to be a desire to understand motivation, and some poems were born of programs where children of Nazis and children of survivors spend a weekend together to work through these intense feelings. Several of the poems that are included express the desire to understand, to connect, and struggle with whether or not forgiveness is appropriate. Included is the perspective of a German son who also struggles with incredible sadness combined with the eternal questions of his own family and nation.
Visual imagery includes the machinery of the Holocaust constructed in sculptural form.
Poetry dips into past and present images of Germany as German Jews return for visits and must reconcile themselves to the land of their ancestry, the land that also determined to end that lineage forever. In these pieces there are melancholy memories of a time when family was united, when culture and study were a part of everyday life. Intermingled are reminders, like blades cutting through old photographs, of systematically being denied that life until life itself became denied. There is sadness and anger and also a desire to understand and put these long unresolved feelings to rest. There is a need to believe that this will not recur, that people are still people and not monsters.