So, let's see:

[skull_bearer]

Money spent: I don't want to know. Easily in the thousands.

Time spent: This year, most all of last year and half of the year before. Two years and growing.

Books read: I have no idea. Climbing to three digits, if not there already.

Films seen: Easily a dozen, probably more.

Stories written: Far fewer than I could have. I was trying to challenge myself. However, if it all went tits-up, I knew I could always rely on this.

Trips taken: Two in a year, three if you count this one. Insane considering I'm doing this on a student's budget.

Themed visits:
Imperial War Museum (countless)
Jewish museum (1)
Madjanek (1)
Auschwitz (2)
Plazow (1)
Therizenstadt (1)
Mauthausen (1)
Dachau (1)
Buchenwald (1)
Sachenhausen (1)

Other: Learning German in order to read more books.

Enough. Enough. This is devouring my life, and there is no end to it. When the Past Tense bunnies bit, I never imagined it could lead to this. I wanted to be a writer. Now I want to be a historian. I remember the first Holocaust book I picked up. I can even name it, because I've since bought it. 'Auschwitz and After', by Charlotte Deboe. I picked it up the year before last while working as a data collector. I'd reached my quota and hid in the library of the small town we were raking over.

Two years. That September I went to the Imperial War Museum for the first time, bought the little notebook that has since become my lucky charm and wrote about the Holocaust for the first time. Past Tense notes. The next year I saw the camps for the first time. No idea what'll happen this year.

Happy birthday.

Comments

[splintertalon.livejournal.com]

Damn, yo.

Don't overdo it, though. Too much of something can oversaturate it in your brain and turn it from a useful interest into a chore, or worse.

[skull-bearer.livejournal.com]

Oh, I doubt that. I seriously doubt that. All things satisfied, from sadism to faint interest, to that lovely, sweet poison taste of fascism. I'm very happy indeed.

And I've got a book that shows me how to travel or Treblinka and Belzec. Bloody nazis, building them in the middle of fucking nowhere.

[splintertalon.livejournal.com]

Those dang inconvenient nazis. >:O *fistshake*

What's the photography policies like in these places? I've been loosely plotting a visit, though I haven't chosen a location yet. I'd like to try to get something artistic out of it, but not cross the line between 'historical and darkly interesting and tasteful' and 'OH WOW IT'S MORBID LET'S TAKE FUCKING HEAPS OF PICTURES YEAH I'M BEING SO ALTERNATIVE AND DARK'.

[skull-bearer.livejournal.com]

Death Camps are about as artistic as being hit in the face with a frying pan, and have about the same effect. You can take pictures, but when I was there I didn't take them to be 'cool' or for artistic value. I took them because I absolutely had to remember every last moment I spent there.
The only place I remember you weren't allowed to take photos was inside the Auschwitz crematorium.

Incidentally, if you're planning to visit one. I would actually reccomend goign to Madjanek over Auschwitz. There's more there, the nazis only had time to blow up one gas chamber before the Russians got there, and the rest are still standing.
Also, and this is pretty weird, it's a lot scariers. Auschwitz is more a memorial than anything else, it just feels heartbreakingly sad. Madjanek on the other hand, is far easier to imagine what happened there.

[splintertalon.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I suspected that was the case. Originally I had no intention to do any photo work, but the first thing everyone I mentioned it to said was 'OOH ARE YOU GOING TO MAKE SUPER DARK ANGSTY PHOTOS' (since I'm a photography student, everyone equates everything I do with it) and in the end I figured it might be okay to do some for posterity. thnking about it properly, I'm not actually very keen to do so, even though my pseudo-intellectual classmates will probably bitch and moan that I haven't brought back morbid stuff for them to fawn over. Students are dumb like that.

I'll bear that in mind. I probably won't be going for another year or so, so I'll have time to do a lot of research beforehand.

[skull-bearer.livejournal.com]

Go, take the pics, and find out so much about it that when they ask you for the photos, you can give them a very educating (and uncomfortable) time. If you don't want to, don't, but I am glad I took mine.