It is easy to become cynical when people post news about animals in distress. Djurrättsfrågor as well. Who cares? When children die of hunger every minute?
I belonged to them.
Not anymore.
Something happened. The dog happened.
A, it turned out, highly personal individual.
compassion for vulnerable people and starving children has declined. It is rather that the understanding of the suffering in the world has expanded into a black hole with unclear edges where it can fit so much suffering that affects people and animals that I need to actively turn it off in order to stand out. How else to live? No, it is not at all bad for me, I just want to explain.
Survivor Hédi Fried has devoted decades to tell schoolchildren about the Holocaust. Now she and illustrator Stina Wirsén created a picture book for children who have not yet started school. That really is too small to be subjected to the unbearable truth about one of humanity’s greatest crimes. They do it with great care for their young readers, with a simple, but tragic story is based on true events and is about when the very foundations of a family’s existence is at stake. The reason why this is at all possible to take in a dog.
From ”the History of the Bodri” Illustration: Stina Wirsén
In “the History of the Bodri” works, namely the family dog as a form of identification and the security of a constant for the reader. Bodri is located in his kennel in the yard during the Stina Wirséns deep blue of the akvarellhimmel with stars white as icing sugar. “I sleep well at night, because I knew that Bodri watched over my family and our little town”. But soon, there is so much more to be very careful for than “the big dog that lived on the other side of the street”. Adolf Hitler materializes in a dark cloud over the transistor device. And on the park bench where the girls usually sit have someone suddenly attached a sign: “Forbidden for jews”.
Read more: Hédi Fried and Stina Wirsén do children’s book about the Holocaust
though he did not know me”. This incomprehensible inexorable hatred. But a child will accept enough of this, as a child accepts the monster or a nasty troll as a prerequisite for the tales of evil and good. A small child needs no further description than that. Not yet.
When Hédi Fried, her little sister, mom and dad are put on a train to the concentration camp becomes the dog left. What is Hédi and her sister endure in the concentration camp, we are told by a few scarce, but still absolutely sufficient sentences: “The adults disappeared. We froze and were afraid (…) We almost died in the camp, my sister and me.” Stina Wirsén paint the emaciated children behind barbed wire and with dark eye sockets. Separation, longing, loneliness – everything is channelled through the dog waiting under his tree while the seasons change.
And Hédi think of Bodri, which run after the train until he is not bothered anymore. Thought he certainly did. It is heartbreaking to imagine. But it is also through the relationship with Bodri, the colorful images as links to a life outside, hope, the still living dog, as I think a child can ever take in this story. It is in any case a way to start. A way to get started a call.
her sister Hédi Fried survived. Surely did not Bodri there, but Bodri must survive in this story. Everything else is still realistic. It must, as always, of, for example, Astrid Lindgren, be a glimmer of hope. Knight Kato must die, After Nangijala, there must be a Nangilima. And this understand Hédi Fried.
Time enough, readers, to find out how it really was, and in time they will read “An island in the sea” by Annika Thor, or “Anne Frank’s diary” or plow realistic documentaries on Youtube. The truth about the sisters is on the Forum för levande historia website. Of course, no mention of Bodri. It is perfectly in order.
Stina Wirsén is regularly involved in Today’s News. Therefore, the reviewed book by Gunilla Brodrej, who works at Expressen.