Like man towards heaven

The following account comes from Vladimir Bobinac, who was imprisoned on the Yugoslavian gulag island Goli Otok from 1951 to 1953: >The forest, like everything else on this rock island, is man-made. The island has been barren, no trees, only very few small plants. Now, the forest, what happened is that prisoners dug holes between the stones. Then soil was collected, wherever a little of it could be found, and was put into the holes. Saplings were put into the soil, but the young sapling is exposed to the summer heat and the blazing sun. To grow and become a tree, every sapling had to be protected by a prisoner. He had to stand there, hands in the back, head low, and provide shade to the sapling. As the sun moved across the sky, the prisoner also had to walk around the sapling to protect it. Not every sapling survived to become a tree, but every winter new saplings were planted so that some might come through the following year. >We told ourselves, the tree grows straight up, like man towards heaven. So man also grows towards heaven with his inner power, to endure this suffering he finds himself in. --- **Source:** Grebanje duše (The itching of the soul). HTV1, 2014 --- **Further reading:** * [Goli Otok](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goli_otok) * [SFR Yugoslavia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Federal_Republic_of_Yugoslavia)