Tes Rogers
Concentrated Death and Destruction I
This story was somewhat tough to write, both because of the horrible details emerging in everything I read, and because in digging through this history, our family was resurrected in such a way that I could not help reliving their war-torn lives in my heart. The burning of homes, looting and destruction, humiliation, starvation and common wartime-brutalities that appear in all wars, were common themes in the Second Anglo Boer War too. So many letters from concentration camp survivors tell similar stories of suffering and sorrow, outrage, bitterness and unforgiveness. Many cannot tell the story beyond a certain point of trauma, and this was the case with our Aunt Emmie too. How did these events influence how we were brought up; how did surviving the concentration camps affect the children?
