The other night I saw something on television which I can't get out of my mind. A woman, dressed in black, stood among the remains of the part of Auschwitz where the Gypsies were confined. She sang a song whilst accompanying herself on the fiddle. The song was, I think but I'm not sure, in Polish. I don't speak Polish but have Polish colleagues so know the sound of it - or thought I did. In this case there were subtitles to the woman's song - which was about a Gypsy man in Auschwitz. These words were so bleak and terrible that the identity of the language was irrelevant and just didn't register.
Does anyone know who the woman was? Whoever she was, she was an absolutely superb singer and musician but I was so numbed by the contrast between the beauty of her performance and the horror of the words that it is only now, a few days later, that I can bring myself to write about it.