Anne Frank. The Landscape of Loss, and Altab Ali Park

The fact is, that it is people who make landscapes. Their names and life stories attach themselves to places and territories until the rest of us share a culture by which we define and know our environment. So the sickening murder of Anne Frank reminds us that places are poorer and impoverished by genocide and hate crime. Anne's children and grandchildren should have welded their lives to these places.


 Film from http://www.worldwrite.org.uk/londonbehindthescenes/bricklane/altabalipark.html walk

So too, the murder of Altab Ali, a young Sylheti-born factory worker in nearby Adler Street in the 1970s by racist skinheads motivated by the hate-propaganda of the "National Front", has now leant the name Altab Ali Park, to the former "St Mary's Park". Adler Street was itself named after a prominent German-born Rabbi. Altab Ali Park was formerly the site of St Mary Matfelon, once a stone-built whitewashed chapel - hence the local placename Whitechapel: click Excavations on the site of the "White Chapel" for more. But the murder of Altab Ali has robbed us of the pleasure of seeing his family grow in the area, their laughter gracing our park.

The above weblog was written on16th July 2011, before a "Christian-right" terrorist, motivated apparently by perverted Islamophobia murdered 90+ Norwegian Labour Youth at a summer camp. I grieve for my international comrades  families - the lost potential futures, the children and grand-children through generations. We can only oppose ignorance with knowledge, darkness with light. -David Sankey.