Government bureaucracy

Dad got the idea a few months ago to erect a monument at the cemetery site in memory of his mother, aunt and cousin; he contacted Jan in Toruń a while back to see what kinds of red tape we'd have to go through to make that happen. Today Jan took us to the local government in Chelmza to talk directly to someone there about getting the right approvals; at first we thought it would be difficult, as she said we'd need to submit proof of the story of the deaths (there is no official proof, the Nazis were not in the habit of issuing death certificates, and the daily cartfuls of bodies taken from the small makeshift camps where they died were not identified as far as we know) ... when Jan explained what kind of scant proof we had, the woman seemed very understanding, gave us further suggestions about what to submit and who to submit to. She shared that for many years after the war ended, bodies continued to emerge from the lake where so many had drowned ... those recovered now rest in the cemetery we visited yesterday. She told us that the original cemetery was set up so that the mass graves of Jewish women were outside the cemetery walls, but after the war, the local priest and townspeople had the configuration changed so that the mass graves were within the cemetery walls. We learned that there had been another monument years ago to the Jewish women, which was replaced by the one we saw yesterday.

She also mentioned a local high school history teacher who is involved in a Holocaust remembrance group, and suggested we go by the school to see if we could meet her.

We went to the school, about 7 km from the government office. Unfortunately the teacher was on a field trip with her students, but the school principal welcomed us warmly, and told us of this teacher's work - she's been active with a Polish organization concerned with Holocaust history - erecting and maintaining monuments, education projects - and she teaches a special history class on the Holocaust. We saw the history classroom and the kinds of Holocaust education projects this teacher has undertaken with her students. It was very moving to see this; as we left, the principal told us that our visit reinforced to her the importance of this education effort, that it made the whole story more real, that it wasn't simply an academic exercise. She was as grateful for our visit as we were for her warmth and hospitality.

From there we went to a higher-level regional government about 50 km away to try to get further information about the approval process. The building is a cold, unwelcoming bureaucratic labyrinth, a remnant from communist times - I now understand Kafka a bit better - and we were expecting a welcome as warm as the building ... but once again, once Jan explained who we were, why we were there, we were greeted with warmth and compassion, and were given as much information as we needed to get the process rolling. So far, government bureaucracy in Poland has turned out to be humane, accommodating and compassionate. I wasn't expecting it, and have felt really moved by the whole experience.

Today, more than ever, it has become clear that this trip is more than a personal journey to find the traces of our ancestors. Our responsibility to tell this greater story to the rest of the world has become clearer as we go along, and our role as representatives in this country of the human faces of this story has also become clearer. There are few Jews left in Poland, particularly in this part of the country, and besides, the crimes committed here were committed by foreigners against foreigners, so there is little personal connection for the local communities. The priest, the historian, and I suspect the school principal, had never before met descendants of the victims that lie in the local fields.

Tomorrow we take the train to Krakow; we'll visit Auschwitz the next day.