Storytelling is something we all do naturally, starting at a young age, but there’s a difference between good storytelling and great storytelling.

"Everybody should go to Auschwitz once in their life," my mother told me. I didn’t understand what she meant but here I am, on a cold bleak Monday in January, looking up at those famous three words: Arbeit Macht Frei ("Work makes you free").

As we walk under the main gate into Auschwitz I, which now makes up part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum & Memorial, we’re faced with endless rows of identical red-brick buildings, a stark contrast to the snow and ice covering the ground. Originally designed as Polish army barracks before becoming "home" to thousands of prisoners, the buildings now house exhibits and photos detailing the atrocities that went on within those very walls. We walk around slowly and quietly, talking only in hushed whispers, simply because it feels like the right thing to do.

From the enlarged black-and-white photos hanging on the walls, the eyes of a young child stare back at me. As he climbs out of the train carriage his face shows a mixture of confusion and anxiety. The realisation dawns on me that he most probably died within hours of that photo being taken. The thought shocks me more than I could have ever imagined. Did he have any idea of what was to come? I hope not.

Within each building are more pictures, faces, personal belongings and with each one comes stories of terror, torture and murder. The temperature seems to drop as we approach the death wall and gas chambers. Both are void of tourists and the signs request we remain silent as a mark of respect for the thousands who were killed here. They’re not necessary; there is nothing to say.

A brief stop in the museum entrance gives a welcome opportunity to return to reality; it’s surprising how quickly food, drink and warmth enable one to forget the horrors that lay beyond the door. Normality is resumed momentarily but the blissful denial doesn’t last long as a taxi takes us the short journey to Auschwitz II (Birkenau).

Built as an expansion to the original camp, the size of Birkenau is truly staggering, and with it comes the realisation of how many people were imprisoned here. It takes an age to walk the length of the snow-hidden railway platform to the ruins of the crematorium which lay beside the International Monument. The plaque reminds us that more than 1.5 million lost their lives in Auschwitz-Birkenau.

As I stand beside the memorial, I’m wet, cold, hungry and exhausted, yet I’ve never appreciated how lucky I am more than right now. Within the Auschwitz Museum hang the words: “The one who does not remember history is bound to live through it again”. I decide my mother was right – everybody should go to Auschwitz. The world should never forget.

The writer of Just Back: Memories of Auschwitz uses language features and text structures, including dialogue, emotive language and sensory imagery, to interest and engage the reader. The text begins with a quote from the composer's mother, 'Everybody should go to Auschwitz once in their lifetime' and this structural feature immerses the responder in the story and also positions the composer in connection to her family. This makes responders think maybe there is a family connection to the Holocaust. Secondly, the emotive language used in the phrase 'the eyes of a young child stare back at me' when describing photographs of people arriving at Auschwitz during WWII, reminds the composer of the confusion and anxiety experienced by the prisoners and also allows the reader to empathise and identify with the experiences being recounted in this short piece of life writing. Finally, evocative sensory imagery is used to describe how the writer was feeling. She states it was a 'cold, bleak Monday in January' and she also writes about feeling cold and exhausted and hungry. The emphasis placed on feeling cold works on a literal level but also resonates symbolically to develop ideas of harshness and cruelty. Through effective use of dialogue, emotive language and sensory imagery, the composer has successfully used language features and text structures to interest and engage the reader 

The darkness brought with it unusual and uncomfortable sounds. A predator approached. It made a successful kill and masticated its prey, crunching on bones or beetle carapace. It was cold now too, a stark and sudden contrast from an hour ago, when we took our seats in the sand to watch the crepuscular light perform its magic on the unusual shapes of the limestone structures.

I shivered and rose to my feet quickly. We’d walked for miles but surely we could find our way back to the car. If only there had been a moon that night. My mind wandered back to the morning, when an excited Sarah enthused, over breakfast, about seeing the Pinnacles at sunset.

The Pinnacles Desert in Nambung National Park, Western Australia, is an unusual wilderness of limestone towers. These ancient natural sculptures, eroded by sandblasting winds, form monuments of extraordinary shapes and range from a few centimetres to over five metres in height.

We had arrived in the late afternoon, when only a few cars remained in the car park. Until the sun set, it was a beautiful and interesting landscape; predominately flat but interspersed with spiky golden sand dunes, coarse shrubbery and hardy plants.

After dusk, a darkness unfamiliar to a city dweller surrounded us and brought with it haunting shadows and a feeling that we weren’t welcome. The temperature had dropped suddenly, and we were lost.

We were, however, well prepared. Our shopping list in Perth had included torches, cooking equipment, food, a first aid kit, a tent, a map, a compass and water; everything we needed for this situation. 

And they were all safely locked in the car.

There were no signs of human life, no car engines, no headlights but we did know that the main road up the west coast of Australia, the Indian Ocean Drive, wasn’t too far away.

We just needed the direction of the sea and thought the top of a sand dune might give us a clue. It was a hard climb, gaining only a couple of inches at a time as we slid back down a few feet with every step. But it took care of the shivering and kept us focused on our goal.

Within a few hours, we were back at the car and relieved that we didn’t make headline news. We were in Australia for a further six months that year, but we never left the car again on a trip without a prepared rucksack. The two people who walked into the Pinnacles Desert that afternoon were not the same two who came out.

Camilla Macpherson 

There is no sign on the main highway to the Hutterite colony at Pincher Creek in southern Alberta, Canada. You won’t notice it if you are driving by, like most people, on the way to somewhere else. You need to be told exactly how to get there. Hutterites like to keep to themselves.

If you get lost, all you can do is call up and hope that someone is near the phone. There is no website or email address and the colony is not marked on GPS. Hutterites don’t hold with technology.

If you want to visit, you call up and ask politely. If you are lucky, they will invite you to lunch and show you around. They eat together, sitting at long tables, three times a day 365 times a year. Men sit on one side of the room and women on the other.

They eat whatever is put in front of them, no complaints. Then they get back to work, farming their 10,000 acres. At the age of 15, a girl will be given an apron for the slaughterhouse. A boy gets a set of keys to the tractor. 

"The clothing is handmade, but they get their coats from Walmart now. It’s cheaper"

The Hutterites speak accented English to visitors. Otherwise, they use a form of German, because this is where they came from, long ago, making their way from there and Austria to Moravia and Transylvania, then on into Ukraine.

They reached North America in the late 1800s, bringing their form of Christianity with them, and they still dress exactly as they did then – shirts and black trousers for the men, long, patterned dresses and headscarves for the women. The clothing is handmade, but they get their coats from Walmart now. It’s cheaper that way.

When they speak, the words come slow and steady. There is no rush to finish a conversation. There are no televisions to watch, no screens to swipe, or statuses to update. Make no mistake, they know what’s going on. They are not confined to the colony by any means. But they still talk a lot about Princess Diana when the rest of the world has moved on.

An hour after leaving, I am eating a sugar-laden doughnut in a roadside chain. A woman at the next table is flipping through a self-help book. One of her children is glued to an iPhone. The other is demanding lollies. A television blares out a loop of adverts. It makes you think.

It’s not an easy life, being a Hutterite. You need to have faith and obey the rules. But in return you are given everything you need. They can leave if they want to, but they mostly don’t.

People on the outside say that’s because they can’t cope in the real world (could you cope in theirs?). I think it’s simpler than that. They’re happy there, and they know it.

“Babushka’s Revenge” by Ivan Ruraev 

A Russian grandmother takes revenge when her grandson is bullied. 

Click the image below to go to the website with the audio recording.

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