“Along a limpid stream a sipping dove
Beheld an ant, which, bending o'er its brink,
Had fallen in whilst stooping there to drink.
To reach the shore the ant now vainly tried,
Amidst this dreaded raging ocean tide.
The kind bird promptly threw a blade of grass,
By which the ant again to shore did pass.
A certain beggar wandered there,
Barefoot and hungry, seeking better fare;
A bow and arrow he had got:
The bird of Venus saw, sought to destroy,
Nay, thought he had her in his pot;
And licked his lips for joy.
While he prepared to make the dove his prey,
The ant severely stung his heel.
The fellow turned, for she had made him feel.
The dove, alarmed in time, flew far away.
“Pigeons,” said he, at loss of dinner sad
“Are not, I see, so easy to be had.”
- Jean de la Fontaine, The Ant and the Dove
Photographer Micheline Pelletier entered the small room where her subject, Simone Veil, awaited. “I want beautiful pictures!” Veil had told her over the phone a week previously, with her unrivalled gentleness of tone. It was a commission that Micheline took very seriously; what more valuable thing had she to offer this survivor of the Shoah, the revered Simone Veil? Nothing seemed to move her, not even the photographs in history books that struck horror into most mortals – the skeletal forms piled up in ditches, the naked women lined up to be shot by the Nazis in the open fields, or the children wearing the yellow star as they raised their arms in the ghettos of Warsaw. No, nothing of that sort rattled Simone Veil now, she who felt as a lone ant that has survived the anthill’s collapse, after months spent enduring the pangs of hunger, watching the moonlight glinting off the rooftops of Auschwitz concentration camp. They said it was that same moon that pushed and pulled the tides back in Nice, yet the two places felt universes apart. Simone Veil had been only sixteen. The smell of death lingered in the train that bore her away to Poland, out of the motherland that had failed to protect her children. How would she die? And what would become of her remains? Sometimes she ceased to think entirely. The spirit is reduced to naught when the enemy strips you, humiliates you, and dehumanises you. The day it happened she had been walking to school, ready to celebrate the end of exams with her friends. The two Germans had stopped her in the street, and their celebrations were ended forever. She did not know her fate, and yet she foresaw it: Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Simone Veil was a survivor. Upon her return to France she became a politician, fighting for women’s rights and serving in several ministerial posts. The ant nest of the death camps would remain etched in her memory forever. She still bore the tattoo on her arm: 78651, cursed to the skin. Simone Veil wanted to photograph this moment in her life. It was the dawn of the twenty-first century, and future generations needed to hear her story. “How about a dove?” Micheline Pelletier had suggested during their phone call. One must not disappoint Simone Veil; steadfast as a carved statue, white and smooth as a marble column.
Simone Veil waited patiently for the photographer – and the dove – to arrive. Pelletier was late, and the survivor was left alone with her memories. The brutality returned to her in every detail: their night-time arrival at the Auschwitz camp, the train doors that finally rolled open after days of internment, of the stench, of the degrading overcrowding. The cold violence of the soldiers who would cry, “Raus, Raus!”, their voices mingling with the barking of the dogs. The cold nipped at their skin as the men, women and children stepped down onto the platform, mere shadows of human beings. Thin, terrified, beaten; aged by the sleepless nights and the unbearable waiting. They saw the vast sheds of the camp lined up behind the great metal gate, which bore the words Arbeit macht fre – “work shall set you free.” How could one forget, or explain? “Ah! Here at last is the dove!” exclaimed Simone Veil as Micheline Pelletier entered the room.
“What lovely white feathers!” Simone Weil told her. Micheline Pelletier set the little cage on the ground. She removed the dove with delicate care, for the survivor wished to caress its throat. The dove flew from the photographer’s hands and settled on the politician’s shoulder. Michele Pelletier rose to retrieve it. “Don’t worry, she’ll sit on my finger in a moment. She knows peace when she sees it,” Simone Veil reassured her.
Micheline Pelletier set up her camera, and the dove settled on the survivor’s hand. All that remained was to click the shutter and the moment was captured, suspended in time forever.
Alan Alfredo Geday
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