WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS
Hanns F Skoutajan
It has been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. That’s a bit of a come-down for us who slave over syntax and spelling, who strive to make sentences flow, who try not to play too loose with facts.
Would that I had become a graphic artist, a painter or photographer like Edward Burtynsky who tells the awful truth of man’s profligate ways with the environment through the lens of a camera. He shows the story with photos pf mountains of used tires, endless vistas of oil pumps and derricks, the hell holes of Fort MacMurray and much much more. I have recently visited his gallery at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa. Should it be “anti nature” in this case? Surely those pictures are more powerful than any multiple of thousands of words.
All this became very personal for me a few days ago. I had engaged in one of my frequent forays into Google to check how I might have been misquoted. Better than not being quoted at all, I suppose. To my surprise I saw my name but the narrative was in Dutch, a language that I do not understand.
I clicked the symbol which said “Klicken” and before me unfolded “de Beelderbank,” an album of photos from WW 2, postwar and prewar, of soldiers, farmers pushing carts loaded with mattresses and other worldly goods out of war’s way.
There were also pictures of refugees from other lands e.g. Czechoslovakia. Among them to my utter surprise was one of a young Hanns Skoutajan, age 9. It was taken in November 1938 - 75 years ago, at the YWCA in London, England where my mother and I were located prior to our ongoing journey to Scotland and reunion with my father.
As one of the more politically endangered activists he had been shipped out ahead of us.
On this photo I sport a radiant smile . No wonder for I had just unpacked my miniature electric train which according to the caption was the only toy my parents allowed me to bring along. I recall “back home” wrapping the tracks, the engine and five cars in my shirts, socks and underwear and stuffing them into the back pack to be portered by me to Britain and beyond - who knows.
Mother and I had managed to circumvent our enemy, Hitler’s Reich, by travelling through Poland by real train and then by ship from the Polish port of Gdynia to Britain . There was one, at least one, hot spot on that journey - the Kiel Canal that crossed German territory from the Baltic to the North Sea.
I witnessed with some trepidation as officers in their hated/feared Nazi uniforms with the swastika held in the claws of an eagle on their caps, boarded our ship. Was it to arrest us? Happily it turned out that they were the canal pilots. There is a reason why I have a warm place in my heart for the colourful Union Jack. I first saw it flutter from the mast of the MS Baltrover and trusted in its protection. It was another ten months before the war broke out.
On the photo my little train sits on the floor in front of me in this new exile. I beamed at the camera at the presence of my beloved toy now free of laundry.
But the Trix Express train’s “Odyssey From Tragedy to Freedom” was far from over. It was yet to cross the stormy Atlantic and half a continent, yes, by train, always safely tucked in the rucksack on my back.
The train, no longer functional, is long retired like myself. It rests on a bookshelf in our living room as a memento of my life’s journey.
That photo on the Dutch Beelderbank is indeed worth thousands of words. I have written many of them about that journey, its circumstances and destination and the many adventures en route. Indeed the picture has invoked these words that I gladly share with you, my readers.
Welcome!
SQ 11/08/2013
