Side trips bring memories of growing up during World War II
(To keep track of Cinematographer Erik Daarstad you would need an IRS size computer. I am not sure, but I think he must have been the inspiration for the first lines of Ricky Nelson’s song, “I’m a Traveling Man.” They are, “I’m a traveling man, made a lot of stops, all over the world.”
Ricky traveled to see girls all over the world but Daarstad travels the world to shoot people — camera-wise that is. Erik’s last stop was Lodz, Poland, to attend Pluscamerimage (International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography). Today, he shares with us two side trips he took before returning home to Sandpoint.)
“A tour guide from the festival took us to the railroad station the Germans used to ship the local Jews, and Gypsies, to concentration camps for extermination. There was a large Jewish population in the city and when the Germans occupied the area in 1939, they set up a large Jewish ghetto.
“In 1944, many of them were sent to labor camps for extermination. Lodz also had a camp of about 5000 Gypsies the Germans had collected from all over Europe. About 600 of the Gypsies died from disease but the rest were exterminated. In Lodz, there were about 300,000 Jews exterminated and 120,000 Polish people killed.
“There is a memorial at the station reflecting on what happened in Lodz during World War II and remembering the people who were sent out from there to the various labor camps. When you stand at the old station, look at the locomotive and box cars with barbed wire over the windows, you can’t help but reflect on man’s inhumanity to man. As I stood there, it brought back many personal memories of World War II.
“I was born and I grew up in Norway. Germany invaded my country in 1940 and occupied it for five years. The one event that stands above all others was the Allied bombing attack that killed my dad. It was a bright, sunny day and I was playing outside our house when I heard the sound of airplanes. Next, I saw the planes appearing from behind the house at a very low altitude, and then I saw and heard the explosions as the bombs were falling.
“My mom came running out, grabbed me, and headed for the basement. Sixteen people were killed that day, including my dad. Even though I was very young at the time, the image of those planes is etched in my mind forever.
“Life was hard and we were very limited in what we could do and say. We were not allowed to have radios, which were the main source of news from the outside. I remember we had a neighbor who had hidden his radio. He listened to the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation), wrote it down and came in the evening to read the news to my grandfather who was blind.
“One evening we heard shouts outside the house. Immediately the papers of written news were tossed into the wood stove to burn. We waited apprehensively for knocks on the door, but fortunately, it turned out to be a burglary down the street, not the SS or Gestapo.
“Terry Sanders and I left Poland and stopped in Berlin for a few days. I was in Berlin in 1978 doing a documentary film and that was the first time I saw the Berlin Wall. It was interesting to see it because we were at the height of the cold war and I had heard so much about it.
“On this trip, it was of interest to see how things have changed since the wall came down in 1989. Terry and I spent a whole day just walking around seeing Berlin — the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, and the piece of the wall still standing. It was just about a short block long and it was the only thing still standing as a reminder of the days when Germany was divided.
“U.S. Checkpoint Charlie was still there as a tourist attraction. East Berlin is now very different. The area where we walked used to be East Berlin but it is now just like the rest of Berlin — very modern.
I returned home on Dec. 11, 2009, and I knew what that girl Dorothy from Kansas meant when she chanted, ‘There’s no place like home . There’s no place like home.’ ”