Portobello Beach Edinburgh Day 338

If you look closely you will be able to see three dawn dookers enjoying a noisy frolic in the balmy waters of the Firth of Forth. Not sure what the man practising his dawn yoga on the sands made of their shrieks and splashes shattering an otherwise beautifully tranquil early August dawn.

As I admired this view my mind was distracted by the events that took place on this day in 1943 in Treblinka - a Nazi death camp built deep in the forests of eastern Poland. The Jewish inmates forced to erase the unspeakable atrocities at this camp that saw 800,000 innocent souls gassed, rose up against their captors on 2nd August 1943. The forty who eventually escaped, lived to tell the world the truth about the terrors of Treblinka.

It is very easy to forget about these events, still in living memory, on this day that sees the launch of all the fun of the 2013 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.