POTTER United Families

But that's not counting those who, like Jean de Potter, were stopped
at the border. For these young people full of ideals, then begins an
experiment to which they are not prepared, that of the prison.
It is not a matter of living in a military prison camp, but of being
assimilated to a common law prisoner for months or even years.
Sometimes living in isolation in a cell, often promiscuity in a cell, they
live always locked up and malnourished, in an extreme deprivation.
To fight against boredom, depression or terror, some manufacture
small objects, others write a diary or draw paintings. The drawings
that illustrate Jean's narrative cling to the reassuring banality of the
world - a village, a deer's head, a lying dog, a rather ridiculous jailer -
and sometimes to family attachment - coats of arms, faces.
But these drawings above all say the haunting and desperate
confinement - impassable walls, barbed wire, cramped cell, closed
doors, handcuffs.
Images of the desire to live in spite of everything. But also, images of
a youth stolen by the war. Aged prematurely, bruised in the soul or
sick to death, few have escaped without being heavily hurt...
Laurence van Ypersele de Strihou
Professor at the University of Louvain
Commissioner Bicentenary WW1
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