Flowers in the Foreground

I have been watching a documentary series about World War II.  The series is comprised almost entirely of actual film clips from the war.

It’s ugly.

I am most bothered when the films capture children caught up in the horrors of the war.  Amazingly, though, some of the children still manage to maintain a certain level of innocence and an eye for beauty.

In the late 1990s, children were caught up in a war in Kosovo.  I recall reading an article about the children and how they dealt with the war.  The article included a few drawings produced by the children.  The children were asked to depict the trauma of war they had witnessed.  Some of the children, using crayons, drew images of stick people being shot.  They drew warplanes, tanks, and houses bombed and on fire.  But sometimes, in the drawings, the children made sure to place a bright sun in the sky or flowers in the foreground.

—Mitchell Hegman