Auschwitz

After leaving Warsaw we went to our final destination, Krakow.  Today, we visited what everyone assumed was going to be the hardest moment of the trip – Auschwitz.

We spent six hours total visiting Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau.  There truly are no words to describe the camps.  Disgusting, demoralizing, terrible, rough, heartbreaking – these describe parts of the camps, but nothing can define it as a whole. I’m really not going to say much because I am still trying to figure out how I feel about the whole thing.

Some of the camp was demolished, including one of the crematoriums, as the Nazis had tried to get rid of the evidence of everything that had occurred there.  This was clearly impossible considering how much was there – bodies, belongings, clear evidence of the herding and slaughter of humans.  Some of it still exists today and was terrible to see.

Many of the bunkers have been turned into different museums about different aspects of life at Auschwitz.  One thing I will mention is the Book of the Dead is located in the Jewish museum bunker – over 4,000 pages of every known person who perished in the Holocaust.  It was especially difficult here for many of the students on the dialogue, who found relatives listed there.

Midway through the tour, I simply felt numb.  It was incredible to imagine that this much horror was willfully thought out and planned.  I remember visiting Villa Wannsee, where the Final Solution was planned out, and thinking how beautiful the place was.  It’s hard to believe that a complete destruction of humanity occurred and originated there, but it’s incredibly obvious when walking into Auschwitz.

It also really makes me angry thinking about walking around Venice Beach and similar places and seeing people preach about how Auschwitz isn’t real.   It’s disgusting to deny one of the worst crimes in modern human history.

I don’t think it is right to just post pictures of Auschwitz – a photo will never do that place justice.  If anyone wants to see the photos, I will show them and talk about the camp.  But other than that, I have no plans of publishing my photos.

On a lighter note, we were instructed to watch this video of an Auschwitz survivor returning to the camp with his family, and how he deals with his memories.  He was sent to the camp with his mother, who died there.  He eventually was part of the Death March, where he met his wife.  They married a few weeks later and are still happily married.  This man is absolutely amazing.  The video sparked a lot of controversy, but I personally believe that the only people who have a right to judge him are the people who are as intimately affected by the Holocaust as he is- anyone else really doesn’t have a say.

Shabbat!!!!

Today we had a Shabbat dinner with the Jewish youth group ZOOM in Warsaw.  It was right next to a park in a woodsy area with a rundown house on the plot – sounds a little creepy, but it was definitely an interesting night.

 

It was really cool to meet with these people, as they all are very proactive about spreading the word of Jewish heroes and Jewish culture in Poland.  The Jewish population constitutes less than one percent of Poland’s overall population, a far cry from what it was pre-WWII.

 

The dinner was delicious, here are some photo gems from the night!

 

A Little Polish History Lesson

Today was probably one of the most interesting days along the lines of discussion.  We started out at the Forum for Dialogues Among Nations to discuss how Poland is combating anti-Semitism. The Forum does days-long youth programs in schools that are interactive and help the kids learn about the Jewish history of the town.  A lot of Jewish history has been obliterated and many people don’t realize that they live where Jews once lived.

The conversation got really interesting when stumbling stones were brought up as a form of remembrance.  Stumbling stones are prominent in Germany and many countries in Europe – they are small bronze squares in front of homes and former workplaces of victims of the Holocaust.  They say the name, date of birth, date of deportation, and date and location of death of a certain person.  It is meant for people to literally stumble over the stone and think about the victims that lived in their area.

One of the students on the dialogue asked the woman leading the discussion why Poland does not wish to have stumbling stones – they rejected the idea a couple of years ago. The lady quickly got almost defensive about it and said that no victim should receive special treatment over another – that if Poland was going to have one stumbling stone, they needed to have at least 3.5 million, for every Jew that was killed in Poland, not to mention the other 3 million Poles of non-Jewish descent who also perished.  She also said that no one wanted to know that they lived in a house where someone was made a victim; no one wanted to know that Jews had lived in their house.  I found this mildly contradictory to what she was speaking about, but I think it was more of a moment of passion than anything else.

She also noted that Poland isn’t really fighting against anti-Semitism, but rather it is an anti-anti-Semitic culture.

One of the biggest things I took away from this conversation was that while Germany lives with the Holocaust today through narratives of guilt, Poland has a culture of victimhood – Hitler was very adamant about completely wiping out the country in order for the Aryans to have more living space.  While this is completely justified, Poles are almost sensitive about how their past is represented: even though many death camps, including Auschwitz, was in Poland, all the massacres had been performed by Nazi Germany, not by the Poles.

Another interesting note from this discussion was the realization that Poland never had a chance to deal with remembrance of the Holocaust until the end of Soviet occupation.  Communism had led to a culture of silence in the country.

After this discussion we went to the U.S. Embassy to have a discussion with J.P. Schutte, one of the employees there.  We talked a lot about Jewish-Polish relations, WWII heroes, and anti-Semitism in Poland today.  It isn’t commonly blatant because anti-Semitism is seriously looked down upon, but there are two significant cases to study.  Firstly, very few Jews were able to get there land back after WWII.  They had to go to court to reclaim the land, and fees, length, and other issues led to very little land ever being returned.  Court hearing still occur today to hash out whether or not the descendants of these people can rightfully get the land back.

The second case is one involving PETA – they are fighting for a ban on kosher meat in Poland because of how the animals are slaughtered.  It isn’t outwardly anti-Semitic, but its cases like these that highlight how Jews are still discriminated against in the country.

All in all, an incredibly interesting day.

Welcome to Warsaw

I love Poland.  I’ve only been here for a minute and it’s amazing.  I love the food, I love the air conditioning (first world problems).  And I’m really excited to start studying the Holocaust from a different perspective.

We took a tour of Jewish Warsaw today and what struck me was how new everything in Warsaw is.  The city was almost completely destroyed when the city was raided and overrun by the Nazis, and very few buildings actually remain from the pre-WWII era.  I had heard before just how exactly this city was completely devastated, but it was always hard to comprehend until now. Even the buildings that did actually survive are in such terrible condition that the city is trying to reconstruct all of them. This is one of those such buildings that actually survived:

 

In lighter news, our hotel lies across from The Palace of Culture – a large and beautiful building, supposed to be the tallest building in Poland and given to Warsaw during Soviet-occupied Poland by Stalin, is now lovingly called by the locals Stalin’s Middle Finger.  It’s just like the Pru back in Boston – if I’m ever lost, I just need to follow it home!

 

We went to the zoo!!!

I never thought that I would want to go to a zoo in a foreign country – I’m absolutely spoiled with all the zoos and aquariums we have in beautiful sunny SoCal.

IT. WAS. AWESOME.

There was an unfair amount of baby animals. I love the zoo.

Reichstag at Sunset

A couple days ago we toured the Reichstag – the building in which German’s Parliament meets.  It’s a beautiful building, and our tour guide walked us through the history of the building (with a lot of fantastic dry humor and jabs at other tourists).  We went to the top for the sunset – it was absolutely beautiful!!

 

We also ran through the Brandenburg Gate – Germany’s symbol of freedom and arc of triumph.  

 

Enjoy the photo gems!

 

Just a quick shout out

I would like to thank my parents for making me learn how to read a Thomas guide when I was little, because map reading is essential when you’re in a foreign country with no wifi 🙂

Berlin Wall Art

Cuz I’m loving everything about Berlin, here’s some art on the Berlin wall (plus me in it!)

Some Berlin street art I saw today

Just as MacDonald points out in Difficult Heritage that one way people deal with their past is to obliterate or mutilation.  This mutilation was incredibly prevalent when we toured the Nazi Rally Grounds in Nuremberg, and it truly struck a chord with me when we were standing in Zeppelin Field.

These grounds built just outside the city have since deteriorated into an odd state of mutilation – they cannot be destroyed without harming the city, because of its 25 meter foundation of pure granite, and the people of Nuremberg have difficulty getting past the psychological scarring of knowing was a place as a hub of Nazi Socialism.

 

I was expecting what I saw in Munich – a lot of preservation of memorial sites, and an easy link to the past.  The desecration of the Field was genuinely shocking.  The city throws 3-5 million Euro in taxes every year, yet the place still deteriorates.  It’s now used annually as a racetrack, where all the premier car companies come and advertise their models.

Although I’m sure Hitler didn’t want to see his grounds used in such a way and no one wants what Hitler wants, I still think it’s a weird and almost abusive way to treat these grounds of history.  The place is literally falling apart, and I saw plenty of empty beer bottles and refuse all over the place.  Where the swastika used to hang, there now hangs a Nestle’ sign.  And in front of us, taped off, was the podium where Hitler used to speak.  It wasn’t taped off in memoriam; it was simply to get it ready for the commentator of the race that was going to occur.  As we were standing there, some tourist slipped under the Do Not Cross tapes and stood there, checking out the audio equipment.  It was almost as if the tourists and construction workers had no idea of the significance of the place where they were working.  I personally feel that although this site didn’t have any significant traumatic events like Dachau did, it is still a place of traumatic memory for some Germans, especially the people who still live in Nuremberg today.  It still deserves respect, and it clearly does not get that.