6/27/2003

Well, I have pretty much completed my holocaust website. At some point in the near future, each picture will have an explanation, quote, poem, etc. associated with it. Hopefully others will give me their reflections on this experience and I can add them to this page. It took a long time to complete this website. I wanted it to be perfect. Portions of it were hard to make- going through all the pictures brings you right back to the concentration camp. The hardest part was actually creating my reflections page. I hadn't read any of my journal entries until I was actually typing them up for this page. They made me very jittery and emotional. It was also very hard to post online because it is very very personal. It was a conflict between my own comfort level and how much I felt others would benefit by reading the entries.

Much of the site uses the colors black and white. I felt this to be appropriate since when I think about the Holocaust, I think of it in black and white. All the pictures were black and white, films were black and white, and it just feels black and white. The main page has the symbol of a political prisoner (the red upside-down triangles) associated with each link, and yet they create a right-side up triangle. Hopefully, this site helps balance the past out in a similar manner. I feel like the pictures and reflections will have the most impact on visitors to this site and I concentrated my efforts there. I hope people will take something away with them from this site. I will have done a good job if it changes them even one-thirtieth as much as this experience has changed me.

6/23/2003

I couldn't write anything more after Majdanek and I have never been very good at keeping a diary, but to fill in from Majdanek.

I thought Auschwitz-Birkenau was going to be the worst. It is the one I knew the most about. i had read survivor accounts and Primo Levi's Survival in Auchswitz. And it was horrible. It was so wrong- birds singing, a beautiful day, grass and flowers, while sixty years ago, there wa only death and probably a lot of mud.

The personal items of the victims hit me the hardest there. I have an active enough imagination, but it took looking at hair, shoes, glasses, and suitcases for it all to really affect me. After that was over, after the ceremony when the survivors came up and said how their families were here with us, their ashes here in this camp, I thought, "that was it- the worst was over."

But Majdanek was worse. Perhaps it was a combination of the two camps. Maybe I let my guard down after Auschswitz. Majdanek- I hadn't even heard of it, and yet now I will never forget it. We walked through the showers, the gas chambers- simple cement rooms- so normal yet so much death within. Of course, this was outside the barbed wire fence- dead people don't run away, so no need. The Nazis were nothing if not efficient.

What hit me was the fourth (I believe) building we entered. It was filled with shoes. I thought, "Are you kidding me?" I had been to the Holocaust Museum in DC and seen the shoe exhibit there. At Auschwitz-Birkenau there was a room full of them, and now here they line the building, with two almost floor to ceiling crates in between. How could there be soo many shoes? They were all different. Many of them leather and you could smell it. A few were colored. Many were just brown.

We walked through the barbed wire area into the camp itself. Stopped to see where they slept. And then we went to the crematorium. It remains today. I still can't truly take in that bodies were placed in those incinerators or that bodies were disposed of their teeth for gold fillings, etc. on the cold metal examination table. Its unreal. My mind just won't do it.

The same with the ashes at the memorial. I've never seen an urn, but I would imagine they aren't particularly large. The amount of ashes under the dome, however, was huge. So many dead, their remains all mingled together. Still no chance at being an individual.

By the time I saw Treblinka, I don't think I had much left in me. It was out in the middle of nowhere. I think what affected me the most was that after the war, it was just left as it wa for years. Finally, when people came back to it, they discovered dead bodies laying around and I think that was a crime in itself- to be forgotten even longer than so many others. For being such an efficient place with the product being death, it reminds me of going on hike in the forest with its location, and yet it was definitely not a place you would have wanted to go to voluntarily because it equated with death. Each stone is estimated to represent about 50 people who perished there. So hard to fathom and then look at all the stones.

Not everything on the trip was horrible scenes like that. Our bus really came together. There were a few people who didn't join in as much. Went to a Polish dance club the night before we left Warsaw. It wa a lot of fun and I am glad I went. We were the only bus that got to visit old Warsaw- not only were we the crazy bus, but we were the lucky bus too! The first flight got cancelled and they froze everyone from leaving until it wa straightened out, but we left early as we had thanks to Haim nearly every day, and we got out before that was known. Mel also met her relative in Old Warsaw and that was pretty cool since she found out she was related by seeing the name in a phonebook. Gets one thinking about just how connected we all are.

5/27/2003

I walked through all of Majdanek and it wasn't until the end that I began crying and felt very angry- an emotion I didn't expect. We walked into the crematorium. I got past the examination room where people were relieved of their teeth w/ gold fillings, etc. I walked into the crematorium area itself and to the room with machinery to carry the bodies. Then walked back into the crematorium room and noticed a side room- the guard in charge of the crematorium's bathroom. And his tub was just sitting there. I can just picture him soaking in his tub while thousands of bodies are being burned, dumped unceremoniously, to never be identified again. And it made me angry. Normalcy and something so human, so close in proximity to a horror against humanity. How?

5/27/2003

Today we visited the Ghetto. So different from what it was and so hard to picture what went on. Good for the resistance fighters. It is a source of pride, as much as it is eternally saddening that it had to come to any of what they did. We visited the last synagogue in Warsaw and learned about Orthodox services a little. We saw a portion of the Ghetto and the last remaining street with buildings from the Ghetto. The worst thing was the mass graves found as they were digging for a building. Also over 100 in the ghetto probably from mind numbing starvation. We visited the Janusz Korczak Orphanage, from where two hundred and forty children and Janusz Korczak were taken on the trains to be gassed. We visited the Umstagplatz- now just a memorial, but still a major part of how people got to the death camps. The grave of the unknown soldiers is very sad, but it is nice to see. it is a way of remembering those unknown and giving them an identity.

5/26/2003

So much death- the first exhibit I walked into was the evidence they have collected in the form of 50,000 pairs of shoes, enough hair to fill up half a room, luggage- tons of luggage, baby clothes, shoe shine, pots and pans. not only is it evidence of the horrible treatment they had at camp, but also of lies. Lies that told them they were being taken away for their protection. How much worse could you be deceived? There are so many photographs of those murdered. They are loved ones gone forever, as evidenced by the flowers some held. There is such sadness over this place. I am glad it was kept as it was. This is something that needs to be seen, that I need to see.

It was also strange that as we walked in, there were birds chirping all over. It is not something expected. Didn't the birds know the horrors that had happened here. It isn't a haven. Yet, perhaps it is good that it has turned into one for something. I still feel very disconnected from what happened. I felt weird walking through the place like it was some art museum and not a place where so many died. The crematorium in Auschwitz felt odd to walk through after so many had not left walking.

As amazing as Auschswitz was, after passing through the Arbeit Macht Frei sign and not in a positive manner, Birkenau was even worse. Huge buildings with hundreds of latrines in each one. No privacy anywhere. Cabins that held 200 plus people at once with 2-3 to a bed and people wedged from wall to wall on the floor. If you had to turn, everyone had to turn the same direction. Then came the gas chamber and crematoriums- or what was left of them. Now its rubble, but its still an indication of what went on. But in the midst of all these atrocities was beautiful green grass, flowers growing, and beautiful weather. The railroad was for me the most emotional part of the camp. it was due to the railroad that so many got to the camp. It was a symbol of the hell they endured while at Birkenau.

The entire experience didn't truly strike me until the survivors got up before the Mourner's Kaddish was said, and spoke the names of those they mourned: Brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, and friends. One man had 23 and 34 people die on each side of his family. Many of these peoples final resting place is where I was standing- Auschwitz-Birkenau. It made me cry to think about the death and especially the pain it must be to know that relatives are somewhere in Auschwitz-Birkenau. That a Nazi death camp is their final resting place. Also knowing some of these survivors were from Auschwitz started it all over.

Another interesting thing about the ceremony was when the Native American "Indian" came to talk. Essentially, we committed genocide as well, yet nothing has been done about it in the United States. It is hardly ever mentioned, and certainly not with the title genocide attached to it. Maybe we should start looking at our homeland and what we as a country have done before placing blame and saying "I would never do that".

5/24/2003

Today we visited Plaszow, the place associated with Schindler's List. It looked beautiful - you couldn't conceive what it must have been like as a labor camp. At the top of the hill was a large monument honoring those Polish citizens who were killed at the camp. Behind this monument was a second specifically commemorating the Jews who perished. I feel like there has been a lot of strain between the Jews and Polish. Six million people from Poland were murdered, three million of those Jews, three million Polish and it is a shame that there has to be a constant reminder on either side. We then went to the Apothecary which had been converted into a museum. There were pictures of the site we visited and it was very hard to identify where everything would have been. While at Plaszow, a survivor spoke of his time there. He talked of the head of the camp who would use Jews for target practice and how he had many good friends who perished there. He talked of escaping through the woods and hitching a ride back to Krakow from another labor camp, and how later he was transferred to Auschwitz. We drove past Schindler's Factory although it doesn't seem particularly special now. I think the film captured something that is now missing. We then visited Kazimierz, which was the center of the Jewish community before the war, Remuh & Temple Shul Synagogues. The buildings were beautiful- new interspersed with old. It is a shame there are fewer Jews in all of Poland than Allentown, PA.

We then traveled to central Krakow and walked around shops and the second oldest school in Poland. The place was tons of fun, with an energy surrounding it. There were tourists and Polish people walking around and it was a great mix. Then we visited the Wawel Castle and Cathedral, which I had done a paper on. It was much larger than I expected and was the first real live castle I have ever seen. It was beautiful and I wish we could have gone through the castle and seen the exhibits. The Cathedral was beautiful as well, and as we walked in, a wedding was taking place. They must have been some important people, but I wonder if I would really want to get married with tourists taking pictures around me. There was a lot jam-packed into a small amount of time. I wish I could have spent more time in old Krakow.

Later that night, Maud, our Holocaust survivor, told her story. She lived in the Netherlands. Her parents brought her and her sister to the underground system, giving up their four and six year olds to try to save them. Maud lived on a farm in an evangelistic, conservative area. They lived in fear of being discovered daily. They had to move or risk being discovered at one point, and the underground placed them with a fishing family. Food was in short supply and all they had to eat was eel. They were finally freed and then met up with their parents, who had been hidden at great risk. No one else in their family survived. I can't really conceive how damaging it must have been to be separated from your parents at six and told you were never to discuss your past, you could not go to school, and to know that at any time you might be found out and killed. What an strange, horrid childhood.

We then had a closing Shabbat service which was really fun to be a part of. There is a protestant service tomorrow morning which I am looking forward to, then we go to Auschwitz.

5/23/2003

So after a great deal of traveling- over 1 hour to get to JFK from the Sheraton, an 8 hour plane flight and a 6 hour bus drive from Warsaw to Krakow, I am here. We got to go to the Brooklyn Museum of Art and view a Holocaust art exhibit, which was an amazing prelude to the journey. Today has just been full of travel. We are on a bus with De Sales, Muhlenberg College, Columbia University, and University of Puget Sound students. We all seem to get along together really well. The food has been interesting so far. The hot meal at the hotel was good but the boxed lunch left a lot to be desired. We are all exhausted from the time difference and how much we have done in the last three days. Tomorrow we begin exploring Krakow. I get to do a presentation on the Wawel Castle and Cathedral. A lot of this trip seems surreal and it will be interesting to see what happens as we visit the sites.