‘It is a commonly held belief, although a myth nonetheless, that the birds refuse to sing amongst the remains of the death camp at Auschwitz; but it is certainly one of the quietest places on God’s earth. Perhaps this is because it is somewhere from which He turned and walked away.’
Simon Norfolk has photographed sites of genocide. The names ring like a death toll for the twentieth century – Rwanda, Cambodia, Vietnam, Auschwitz, Dresden, Ukraine, Armenia, Namibia … Charged with emotional intensity Norfolk’s photographs document the human traces left behind: a tooth Iying in a field, or the worn steps of a death camp.
December 9th, 1998 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations convention on genocide. With the twentieth century now at a close this book is a profound comment on its worst atrocities.