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Authors: Geordie Williamson
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help us begin to see where the next big questions about lifeâs origins lie, and how they might be investigated.
Notes
1. See Jon Cartwright, âQuantized Vibrations Are Essential to Photosynthesis, Say Physicistsâ, physicsworld.com , 22 January 2014.
2. See Nora Noffke, Daniel Christian, David Wacey and Robert M. Hazan, âA Microbial Ecosystem in an Ancient Sabkha of the 3.49 GA Pilbara, Western Australia, and Comparison with Mesoarchean, Neoproterozoic and Phanerozoic Examplesâ, GSA Annual Meeting, November 2012.
3. See âBillions of Years Ago, Microbes Were Key in Developing Modern Nitrogen Cycleâ, (e) Science News , 19 February 2009.
New York Review of Books
Belsen: Mapping the Memories
Nadia Wheatley
I vividly remember my reaction when I discovered that my father had worked at Belsen.
This revelation came in 1983, a few weeks after his death, when his widow sent me an old press clipping, together with a note saying sheâd found it among his papers and she supposed I had better have it. Feeling as if I should handle it with tongs (and not just because the paper was brittle with age), I picked it up. Dated 22 February 1947, it was from the newspaper in my fatherâs hometown in northern England, and was typical of a small-town newspaper piece.
Titled âHexham Manâs New Post in Germanyâ, the article explained that Colonel J.N. Wheatley had recently been appointed chief medical officer for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) in the British Zone, where he would have overall responsibility for some 280,000 Displaced Persons (DPs) living in makeshift camps. As I skimmed through the account of the work he had been doing in Germany for the two years prior to this appointment, I found myself coming to a dead halt at the information that âColonel Wheatley was medical superintendent of the Belsen camp hospitalâ.
Belsen! Although I was aware that this must have been after the time when it was a Nazi concentration camp, nevertheless the very name made my blood run cold. Simultaneously there came into my mindâs eye a photograph (or was it a moving image I had seen in some documentary film?) of naked corpses â already looking like skeletons â being bulldozed into the pit of a mass grave. A few moments later, still holding the page of newsprint, I was astonished to be feeling an unaccustomed benevolence towards my father, even a sense of dawning comprehension. Ah, so this was why the man was so difficult, so cold! Did it even explain his habit of whistling through his teeth â a single monotone note, more of a hiss really than a whistle â as he blocked out everyone and everything around him? And indeed, did whatever my father had experienced at Belsen explain, if not excuse, his treatment of me, and of my mother?
*
As reality set in, memories began to flow. While my fatherâs connection with Belsen was completely new to me, the fact that both my parents had worked for UNRRA in post-war Germany had been a part of my knowledge even before I could print the alphabet letters that made up the acronym of the worldâs first international aid agency. Indeed, one of my first picture books was an album containing the photos of the strange-looking people who were my parentsâ friends and colleagues from that period, as they gathered in June 1948 to celebrate the marriage that had taken place earlier that day at the British Consulate in Hamburg; a bare ten months later, my mother gave birth to me in Sydney. Although I never knew even the names of the wedding guests, the DPs with whom my mother and father had been working in Germany were to me real flesh and blood, because through the first six years of my life a steady stream of people whom my parents had known in various camps came to live in the flat that was attached to the side of our house. Forbidden to bother them, I paid my visits in secret, and as I lay
Notes
1. See Jon Cartwright, âQuantized Vibrations Are Essential to Photosynthesis, Say Physicistsâ, physicsworld.com , 22 January 2014.
2. See Nora Noffke, Daniel Christian, David Wacey and Robert M. Hazan, âA Microbial Ecosystem in an Ancient Sabkha of the 3.49 GA Pilbara, Western Australia, and Comparison with Mesoarchean, Neoproterozoic and Phanerozoic Examplesâ, GSA Annual Meeting, November 2012.
3. See âBillions of Years Ago, Microbes Were Key in Developing Modern Nitrogen Cycleâ, (e) Science News , 19 February 2009.
New York Review of Books
Belsen: Mapping the Memories
Nadia Wheatley
I vividly remember my reaction when I discovered that my father had worked at Belsen.
This revelation came in 1983, a few weeks after his death, when his widow sent me an old press clipping, together with a note saying sheâd found it among his papers and she supposed I had better have it. Feeling as if I should handle it with tongs (and not just because the paper was brittle with age), I picked it up. Dated 22 February 1947, it was from the newspaper in my fatherâs hometown in northern England, and was typical of a small-town newspaper piece.
Titled âHexham Manâs New Post in Germanyâ, the article explained that Colonel J.N. Wheatley had recently been appointed chief medical officer for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) in the British Zone, where he would have overall responsibility for some 280,000 Displaced Persons (DPs) living in makeshift camps. As I skimmed through the account of the work he had been doing in Germany for the two years prior to this appointment, I found myself coming to a dead halt at the information that âColonel Wheatley was medical superintendent of the Belsen camp hospitalâ.
Belsen! Although I was aware that this must have been after the time when it was a Nazi concentration camp, nevertheless the very name made my blood run cold. Simultaneously there came into my mindâs eye a photograph (or was it a moving image I had seen in some documentary film?) of naked corpses â already looking like skeletons â being bulldozed into the pit of a mass grave. A few moments later, still holding the page of newsprint, I was astonished to be feeling an unaccustomed benevolence towards my father, even a sense of dawning comprehension. Ah, so this was why the man was so difficult, so cold! Did it even explain his habit of whistling through his teeth â a single monotone note, more of a hiss really than a whistle â as he blocked out everyone and everything around him? And indeed, did whatever my father had experienced at Belsen explain, if not excuse, his treatment of me, and of my mother?
*
As reality set in, memories began to flow. While my fatherâs connection with Belsen was completely new to me, the fact that both my parents had worked for UNRRA in post-war Germany had been a part of my knowledge even before I could print the alphabet letters that made up the acronym of the worldâs first international aid agency. Indeed, one of my first picture books was an album containing the photos of the strange-looking people who were my parentsâ friends and colleagues from that period, as they gathered in June 1948 to celebrate the marriage that had taken place earlier that day at the British Consulate in Hamburg; a bare ten months later, my mother gave birth to me in Sydney. Although I never knew even the names of the wedding guests, the DPs with whom my mother and father had been working in Germany were to me real flesh and blood, because through the first six years of my life a steady stream of people whom my parents had known in various camps came to live in the flat that was attached to the side of our house. Forbidden to bother them, I paid my visits in secret, and as I lay
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