It is not the ressonance of the steps that brought me the ghosts. One expects echos on large spaces, in particular ones with flat, reflective surfaces like a sports center. The place is actually nice, in retreat from the great avenues and their traffic, warm in winter, shady in summer, peopled by the lively kids of the neighborhood in colorful clothes, playing basketball or kickboxing.
Neither it was its architecture, clearly from an industrial past with its apparent bricks, but in a way modern, simple, well kept and tidy. The place is full of light, and the light is somehow filtered to a mild, comfortable luminosity. When in there, people can concentrated on the physical activities and the organisation of it, the discreet building is just a cozy background for a saturday afternoon.
It was only when I read the small sign there that I started to notice the building fully. It indicates that the place was a concentration point before deportation for the jewish community during the second world war. The sign led me to dig into the buildings history, and besides this horrible years one can find others: the place was originally a local market, it also served as a meeting place for unions and politicians that shaped our times. With the eyes half shut and a little imagination it is possible to picture the crowds that passed there, recreate the events, the cruel and sad as well as the energetic and visionary.
The building was always a passage point, a crossroad, nobody can claim his family tradition history there. It is not associated to a cult, religion or group. It is and was always a public, civil place, even when it was cruelly misused. One could expect it to be souless, it is not. When one pays attention to it, its ghosts come in and out, hurried, spreading the weight of its history, our history, around the whole neighborhood. The unsuspecting passerby may not see it, those walls host our common ghosts.
Neither it was its architecture, clearly from an industrial past with its apparent bricks, but in a way modern, simple, well kept and tidy. The place is full of light, and the light is somehow filtered to a mild, comfortable luminosity. When in there, people can concentrated on the physical activities and the organisation of it, the discreet building is just a cozy background for a saturday afternoon.
It was only when I read the small sign there that I started to notice the building fully. It indicates that the place was a concentration point before deportation for the jewish community during the second world war. The sign led me to dig into the buildings history, and besides this horrible years one can find others: the place was originally a local market, it also served as a meeting place for unions and politicians that shaped our times. With the eyes half shut and a little imagination it is possible to picture the crowds that passed there, recreate the events, the cruel and sad as well as the energetic and visionary.
The building was always a passage point, a crossroad, nobody can claim his family tradition history there. It is not associated to a cult, religion or group. It is and was always a public, civil place, even when it was cruelly misused. One could expect it to be souless, it is not. When one pays attention to it, its ghosts come in and out, hurried, spreading the weight of its history, our history, around the whole neighborhood. The unsuspecting passerby may not see it, those walls host our common ghosts.
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