“The secret of success is… to be fully awake to everything about you.”

Painter Jackson Pollock, born on this day in 1912

Holocaust Memorial Day – survivor Susan Pollack MBE (born Zsuzsanna Blau in 1930), reflects on her experience in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. You may find this testimony distressing.

“Once I entered the camp all of my faculties, emotions, fears and hopes diminished. I was dehumanised, and in a different world. I had entered a place that was unknown to anything I could imagine. My emotions seized up and the experience shut me down, and shut me off from the world. I survived by behaving as a robot…

With the Allies advancing, the prisoners were forced on a death march to Bergen-Belsen. On 15 April 1945 I was liberated by the British army. I crawled towards my liberators, unable to walk and close to death. I was hospitalised for tuberculosis, typhoid and severe malnutrition, and was sent to Sweden to recover. I was left with nothing – no family, no education, no money, and only speaking Hungarian.

After liberation, I found that [my brother] Laci was the only member of my family to have survived: more than 50 of my relatives had been killed during the Holocaust… During his time at Auschwitz-Birkenau he had been forced to work in the Sonderkommando, moving bodies from the gas chamber to the ovens. He suffered with mental health problems caused by this experience until his death in 1995.

After the war, I lived in Sweden before moving to Canada, where I met and married a fellow survivor. Together we had three children and six grandchildren.

How do you get over such an experience? Is it possible to walk away and learn to live with all of this? How do you find the strength? Life is precious – you can go in one of two ways – up or down. I chose to walk away and rebuild my life. There was no revenge, and no justice.

In my case I think I rebuilt my self-esteem through the joy of having children and building a family. I also chose to exercise my free will. I find that trying to make a positive contribution to society, such as through volunteering, helps greatly. I now live in London and continue to share my testimony in schools across the country.”

“You’re the Creator.
You’re the Sustainer.
You’re the Destroyer of all.
You’re my lover.
You’re my partner.
You’re my teacher of all.
I bow to you.

You’re the earth from which all things grow.
You’re the water, the eternal flow.
You’re the fire that glows on and on.
You’re the air I breathe in for this song.
I bow to you.

You’re the sweetness that embraces me.
You’re the all-pervading truth and beauty.
You’re the infinite love, bestower of grace.
You’re the compassion, the healing space.
I bow to you.”

From the song Bow to You by Ananda Yogiji and Jaya Lakshmi

Happy St Dwynwen’s Day!

“You are our breath. You are the flight
Of our longing to the depths of heaven.
You are the water which flees from
The wilderness of our anxiety and fear.
You are the salt which purifies.
You are the piercing wind of our pomposity.
You are the traveller who knocks.
You are the prince who dwells within us.”
Waldo Goronwy Williams

“If you were to live three thousand years, or even thirty thousand, remember that the sole life that you can lose is that which you are living at the moment; and furthermore, that you can have no other life except the one that you lose. This means that the longest life and the shortest life amount to the same thing. For the passing minute is every person’s equal possession, but what has once gone is not ours. Our loss, therefore, is limited to that one fleeting instant, since no one can lose what is already past, nor yet what is still to come – for how can we be deprived of what we do not possess?”

Marcus Aurelius

“Slowly, mind, slowly –
Everything unfolds slowly.
The gardener pours
Hundreds of jars of water:
The fruit arrives
Only in season.”

Kabir (15th century Indian mystic poet)

“Only by dying to ourselves do we encounter our true identity, because our true identity is not in our ego but in the All. We are centred in God as are all other things and beings… Our ego is a solitary place, and he who rejects suffering and defies death and refuses to give himself, but wants to retain his self, shuts himself out of that Unity of all things which is God.”

Ernesto Cardenal, Nicaraguan priest, political activist and poet, born on this day in 1925

I Worried by Mary Oliver

“I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers
flow in the right direction, will the earth turn
as it was taught, and if not how shall
I correct it?
Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
can I do better?
Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows
can do it and I am, well,
hopeless.
Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,
am I going to get rheumatism,
lockjaw, dementia?
Finally, I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And gave it up. And took my old body
and went out into the morning,
and sang.”

“Weeds are flowers, too, once you get to know them.”

A A Milne, born on this day in 1882

“We all have the same God, we just serve him differently. Rivers, lakes, ponds, streams, oceans all have different names, but they all contain water. So do religions have different names, and they all contain truth, expressed in different ways forms and times. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Muslim, a Christian, or a Jew. When you believe in God, you should believe that all people are part of one family. If you love God, you can’t love only some of his children…
Our only hope lies in the power of our love, generosity, tolerance and understanding, and our commitment to making the world a better place for all.”