Comments on: Lipstick

By: Cathy @ 3 at 1 Copying

Cathy @ 3 at 1 Copying — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 08:48:07 +0000

I absolutely love Anna’s comment, it does remind one of grey photo’s and red lips and things like post card and posters something out of a western more like it.

By: Glow Straws

Glow Straws — Mon, 11 May 2009 17:03:10 +0000

Quite interesting!! You seem to be a person with a different view to life which is nice to see. I hope you continue to stay off the beaten track.

By: Mike Wood

Mike Wood — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 10:17:43 +0000

You may be interested in this poem on the subject:

BERGEN-BELSEN
Women released from the prison camp by the allies were given a lipstick each

They tell me that I’m free…
Can that mean me?

Free from starvation?
Free from degradation?
Free to wear clothes?
Free to choose foods?
Free to see the green
Of trees that wave free in the liberated breeze?
Green in the glow of freedom,
Free to explore the full spectrum of colour once again?
Not just the dull lacklustre grey
Of walls, of flesh, of food, of death
That lies splayed in the limbstrewn limepits.
Fresh in the dumbness of disbelief….
I’m offered a single scarlet stem of truth –
A lipstick so that my lips, grown thin with the lies of survival
May begin once again to glow
In the radiance of my redemption!

jb says: Thanks Mike. And you don’t have a website?

By: AndrewE

AndrewE — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 13:28:29 +0000

I find paradoxes here, within these comments, these ideas, these images and within my own thoughts.

London. In times of peace. I look at people in the street, women’s faces, men’s faces. I see body modifcations, multiplying, painted faces, defects, masks, non-conform traits hidden; the individual endeavour of disguising his/her humanity, to wrap essence in superficiality, to conform, to be individually communal, this I cannot comprehend.

Bergen-Belsen. In a time of oppression. These brutalised women, destitute, locked up like cattle, stripped down to the surface of their humanity – flesh, bone, no words, no ‘I’, left to rot. That these women should choose to paint their lips, this I can somewhow relativise.

By: karina

karina — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 18:18:05 +0000

Is there a book made of the diary, I would like to read some more.

jb says: The source is The Imperial War Museum in the UK. They may know about published material.

By: Paula

Paula — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 08:01:41 +0000

Chilling and poignant, John. No matter the amount of material I have read on such atrocities, every time I shiver and think: this can’t have happened, we “humans” can’t be like this.

By: the narrator

the narrator — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 17:39:23 +0000

As the descendant of a concentration camp liberator who never really slept through a night again, well, these clearly were not images easily shaken…

By: john baker

john baker — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 08:11:05 +0000

That’s more or less the image that Banksy saw, and painted. You can see the reproduction on his site.
Bergen-Belsen was rife with typhoid fever and typhus when the British troops arrived. So much so that another thirteen thousand people died of disease and starvation after the liberation.
Some British soldiers claimed that, when they first entered the camp, the stench of the ten thousand rotting, naked, unburied bodies, could be smelled ten miles away.
The prisoners had been without food and water for a week, and there were no medical supplies.