Traverser la cendre
"you carried the naked bodies into the flames.
you took out the ashes after the flames
making piles with the ashes
you were Sonderkommando prisoner of the special extermination camp commando,
chosen by the Nazis to keep the gas chambers running.
and in turn evacuated executed and burned so you can never tell
among you bone-crushers
piling the residue recognizable as human bones
breaking them no bigger than gravel.
meld them to the earth.
You tell"
Persecuted and dehumanized, they wrote, then buried their words, sealing their testimonies in the earth. Resisting so that their words survive, so that one day we can unearth the unspeakable, hear the inaudible, grasp the appalling and confront the horror. Michel Simonot summons the dead in a tragic, moving poem like the immortal song of the victims of the Shoah.
By the gesture of saying, director Nadège Coste sublimates the language of this searing text, both humble and monumental. Through the vigor of actress Laetitia Pitz's body and breath. And by a theater that stages what it says, the only possible way to cross the ashes and reach us.
