As you were reading your World War II book about Colditz
and Aurelia altered it in Letters Home to:
As you were reading your World War II book about Auschwitz
Colditz Castle was an ultra-high-security Nazi prison holding escapees from other prisons, especially American and British officers. Fifty-six prisoners escaped Colditz. I gather the Colditz book was more heartening reading than a book about Auschwitz might be. [1]
Aurelia's edit I think hoped to belie Sylvia's now-famous October 25, 1962 rebuke, "[Y]ou've always been afraid of reading or seeing the world's hardest things--like Hiroshima, the Inquisition or Belsen," a sentence Aurelia left out of Letters Home. She guessed that we'd believe Sylvia when we read it. But if Sylvia was correct in saying Aurelia "always" feared reading about incarceration and mass murder, why was Aurelia reading any book about World War II?
Most of Aurelia's edits in Letters Home were benign, not worth remarking. But to use Auschwitz not for art's sake, as poet Sylvia tried to, but to clap back at her dead daughter: That's not benign.
[1] Books about Auschwitz available in 1959-60 included Elie Wiesel's Night; Dr. Miklos Nyiszli's Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account, and Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz. The two most popular books about Colditz, by Pat Reid, were published as one volume in 1953.
In 1972-74, BBC-TV aired a weekly series about daring escapes from Colditz, inspiring the creation of the Parker Bros. board game [pictured].
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| Colditz board game, 1970s |