Day 3: Auschwitz and Krakow

Day 3:  Auschwitz/Birkenau and Krakow

Beautiful green fields of death.  The cognitive dissonance between the beautiful, green rolling fields of southern Poland and the nightmare that happened there during the Shoah is simply impossible to put in words.

For the better part of 4 hours we walked in silence around the smaller Auschwitz camp and the massive Birkenau death camp (Auschwitz II).  We started our tour in the first Auschwitz camp.  This camp originally served the Polish military.  We were surprised both by the relatively small size of the camp as well as the brick barracks.  To be sure life in Auschwitz was horrific and brutal.  Pictures lined the wall of men and women who had been brought into the camp. Under each picture was the date of entry and their date of death.  Most died within months of their entry.  At most someone might live for a year.

As horrific as Auschwitz was ... And as unbelievable as it sounds existence at Auschwitz II (Birkenau) was significantly worse.  We moved down the road from Auschwitz to Birkenau with it's nightmarish brick entry under which cattle cars filled Jews from all over Europe would enter.  Within hours 75 percent were dead.  For those "lucky enough" to be selected to live, they faced existence so cruel and so inhumane that it is beyond comprehension and would seem to be beyond the human imagination.  For most, selection to live was only a delayed death sentence as harsh work, lack of food and disease killed most within weeks of their arrival at Birkenau.

Silently we walked the wooden, ramshackle barracks, (whose original purpose was as horse stables)  viewed the wood plank 'beds' layered with a sparse amount of straw on which 5 men slept on each level, 400 men to a barrack.

With tear filled eyes we walked around the ruined death factories, destroyed by the SS in the final days of the camp in a vain attempt to hide the evidence of the camp.  Fortunately the Soviet Army arrived sooner than expected and they had to abandon their attempt to hide their evil.  Several other camps, their task complete, were completely dismantled and trees planted to cover up these killing fields. 

We stood and stared down incredulously at the 'undressing chamber' where a thousand at a time were instructed to undress before moving into the 'shower room' from which, of course, they would not leave alive.

And finally, at the far end of the camp, standing in front of the memorial to all who had died we cried as we joined together in a memorial service and laid a wreath in remembrance of the 1.3 million Jewish men, women and children who lost their lives in this terrible place.

It is ironic that on the morning of our visit I received an e-letter from the Middle East Media Research Institute containing a translation of a Saudi News article quoting a 'professor' from that country who claimed that the number of victims of the Holocaust was an gross exaggeration; and a second article by the president of Iran (one who shall not be named) claiming again that the entire thing is a hoax and Jewish conspiracy.

It was a reminder to me of just how important this journey is, just how important it is that we stand strong as witnesses and against all who would seek to deny, or even worse to reenact the horrors that we inflicted on our people.

We were blessed to be led on our tour by a young Polish man whose father, unbelievably survived Auschwitz from it's beginning to end.  Arrested as a Part of the Polish resistance he 'served' as a translator and recorder in the camp, surviving death many times by strokes of good fortune.  Destined to be murdered at the end of the war as a 'piece of evidence' that had to be eliminated, he was saved when the orders for his death were interrupted by the invading Soviet Army.  Since that time this man and now his son have made it their task to teach about the horrific inhumanity of this place.

Our guide mentioned at the end of our stay that he would be coming to Los Angeles in November on vacation.  It is our hope that we can prevail upon him to spend an evening with our community.  In return we promised to give him a great tour of Los Angeles!

After this emotionally exhausting visit we returned to Krakow for a brief visit to the old Jewish quarter of the city.  Here is where Spielberg filmed Schindler's list.  Actually the old Jewish quarter was not the Jewish ghetto of Krakow during WW II, but it was much closer to the reality than what now exists in what was the real ghetto.

We visited the small, cramped Orthodox synagogue of Rabbi Moses Isserles who wrote the Ashkenazic gloss to Joseph Caro's shulchan aruch, the 'how to' guide to Jewish life that is an essential resource in every Jewish home.

We also visited the much larger and most beautiful 'progressive' synagogue  where we listened to a great klezmer band rehearse for their evening concert as part of the Krakow Jewish Festival.  Started in 1988 by a non-Jew, this festival has grown in numbers and popularity every year.  It is amazing to think that now, in a city with a Jewish population of about 200 (the pre-war  population was about 65,000),that the is this great celebration of Jewish life and culture.

We finished the evening with dinner at the hotel and a brief meeting with Aga, a young, Polish, non-Jewish PhD candidate in Holocaust studies at the local University (the oldest University in Poland).  It was fascinating and gratifying to hear from a young Polish, Christian, woman who felt so passionately about remembering, preserving and promoting the teaching of the Holocaust in Poland. 

Perhaps, as she said, the Jewish people will someday return to Poland, and see it as something other than a cemetery.