- The thousands of bullet holes and hundreds of bombed out homes and businesses from the 1990s in war-torn Vukovar, Croatia.
- The absence of old men in Odessa, Ukraine a legacy of the millions of deaths the Red Army suffered during World War II.
- Faceless, Stalinist-era, high-rise housing blocks in Bulgaria.
- Hovels backing onto modern units in Odessa.
- Abandoned factories in nearly every Eastern European country.
- Empty windows in villages, devoid of population as the young people flee to towns and cities.
- Ancient babushkas in traditional dress, just trying to scrape by.
- The absence of the once thriving Jewish population of Eastern Europe, a continued reminder of the grim reality of the Nazi death machine.
- A woman in the Odessa marketplace attempting to sell a handful of toothbrushes.
- Fertile land, lying untilled, in rural Bulgaria.
- The grossly oversized monument to King Victory Emmanuel, overshadowing the heart of ancient Rome, a monument to Mussolini’s ego.
- Tiny shops in Bulgaria, nearly absent of any merchandise to sell.
- The Palace of the Parliament building and surrounding area in Bucharest Romania, an attempt by Romania’s communist dictator to Nicolae Ceausescu to honor himself while nearly bankrupting the country.
- Men plowing the fields with horses in Romania, right next to a modern highway.
- The Palace of Culture in Warsaw. Erected by Stalin to be the second tallest building in Europe, this 231 meter tall structure was seen as a phallic symbol of the power of Soviet rule. It still dominates a free Warsaw’s skyline.
- Stories of the days of glory of each country, often as many as 1000 years in the past.
- The Arch of Titus in the Roman Forum. Erected by the Roman emperor to commemorate his conquest of the land and people of Judea in the year 70 and the destruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. Its relief images symbolize total destruction to this day.
bullet-ridden abandoned synagogue in Vidin, Bulgaria
No comments:
Post a Comment