Visiting Auschwitz was one of the hardest things I've experienced - at one point walking through the camp I felt utterly dehumanized, after only one or two hours of being there. My mind simply could not process that such a crime could be committed on such an enormous scale. Psychopaths, mass murderers, serial killers took over the leadership of a nation and terrorized a continent. I simply could not (and still cannot) comprehend how that could happen ... how it is possible to turn such crimes into an assembly line of human suffering ... the standing cells I described earlier were a turning point for me: I was no longer just witnessing the massive evidence of human suffering, but rather, I realized that this place had designers who likely sat around thinking about even better ways to make people suffer. The tiny ground-level entry to the cells was more than I could bear - having sat through my share of design brainstorming sessions, I could visualize the discussions around that particular detail. Anyone with even an iota of a conscience would have said, this is too much, at least put a regular door on the thing ... but no, the design of the door was approved, perhaps with much laughter and delight ...
That evening was exhausting; I was grateful for this blog, which has helped me sort through the powerful emotions I've experienced throughout this trip, and I was grateful to have my father at my side through this. I came to support him in his quest, but he has supported me in mine at least as much.
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We had some time in Krakow to visit the city itself, and spent a morning in Kazimierz, the old Jewish district, across the Vistula river from the area that was set up as the Jewish ghetto (the residents of this area were forced to leave to make room for the Jews, who in turn were forced from their homes in Kazimierz). Before Kazimierz we visited Oskar Schindler's factory, where there are plans to set up a permanent museum - right now there is a small viewing room with a slide show documenting Schindler's context, his role in saving Jews from deportation, and some background on the film, and there is an office set up with Schindler's original desk. Not much yet, but it's heartening to know that something bigger is in the works.
From there we walked to the site of the ghetto. In the plaza where Jews were gathered for deportation is a beautiful, simple memorial - it is a large square paved with stones, and has a widely-spaced grid of bronze chairs. It was haunting in its simplicity; it subtly marked an absence and longing. We were told that the inspiration for this memorial was a series of photographs of children being evacuated to the ghetto, carrying their school chairs so they could continue to go to school.We crossed the bridge to Kazimierz. It is a lively neighbourhood, its Jewish
history is very evident. There is an annual international Klezmer festival; we visited two of the synagogues (I think there are six in the small neighbourhood), one of which has a cemetery where a "Wailing Wall" has been built with remnants from tombstones shattered during the war. Like the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, people put little pieces of paper in between the stones with their prayers, pleas, dreams ... we briefly visited a relatively new Jewish museum and education centre.We visited Wawel Castle on top of a hill (which was commandeered by the Nazis), which is a beautiful campus of buildings with an impressive cathedral, gardens, a large central plaza and interior courtyard; and we slowly made our way back to the old city of Krakow, a beautiful, magical place.
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Wednesday our tour through the two camps (Auschwitz & Birkenau) ended after the archives closed, and we weren't able to ask about records of our relatives. So yesterday (Friday) morning we returned. I wasn't looking forward to entering that horrible place again; but it was a surreal experience - the mystique of the place, the power of it, was gone. It was a beautiful, crisp, sunny fall morning, the sky was a brilliant blue, the massive crowds were gone (Wednesday we wondered why they couldn't do better at managing the masses of people as we were tightly herded from exhibit to exhibit, standing in line to gain access to many of them; yesterday there were perhaps 1/3 the number we had seen two days earlier, and they were very well managed), the fear of what we would see was gone. We were clear that we were there only to see the archives, we weren't going to visit the exhibits again. And this time, we walked into a compound with a number of brick buildings, nothing more.
We weren't sure what to expect at the archives - I'd emailed them a while back to inquire about our relatives but hadn't received a response ... we were warmly welcomed, as we have been everywhere this quest has taken us. We filled out an inquiry form for each of the five relatives we wanted to know about (the three whose lives ended in Bocien/Grodno, an aunt who survived Auschwitz, and an uncle whose fate is unknown, but was likely killed before being deported) - and we got a little bit more information about them. There were no records about the uncle, but we learned that the aunt who survived was transferred to Buchenwald; dad thinks from there she went to a work camp, though isn't sure - she died in 1999 and rarely talked about her experience in the camps - I only knew she'd been at Auschwitz. On Wednesday, as we walked through Birkenau, dad commented that she would be furious with us for going there. Why on earth do you want to see that God-forsaken place? she would say. Better to forget that horrible past and move on ... she lived to be 95.
The three women we've been tracking through this trip were not registered at Auschwitz; the only record that exists is the transport registry from Stutthof, which we obtained about a week ago, showing the date they arrived at Stutthof and indicating their transfer from Auschwitz. We asked why there would be no record of them at Auschwitz, and were told that by that point in the war there were so many new prisoners arriving that many were simply not processed, but held in transit before being transferred to other camps. So, our three women lived out an anonymous, undocumented several weeks or months (we don't know how long) in Birkenau. How many others died awaiting transfer, never to have their existence or their fate documented anywhere? The life expectancy for Jews in Birkenau was 2-3 weeks according to our guide on Wednesday (for non-Jews and non-Roma, it could be a bit longer - 2-3 months perhaps).
Leaving the camp one last time was a strange sensation - we were simply leaving a place. Horrible things happened there, but there is now a strong commitment to ensure the horrors that took place there are known and continue to be known. The droves of visitors are a testament to the interest around the world in bearing witness to these crimes; how anyone could claim the Shoah never happened is beyond me. Perhaps they need to come and take a tour.
I find myself thinking a lot about the memory of a place ... a few days ago in this blog I lamented how quickly the evidence of these crimes is being wiped out in some areas. At Auschwitz-Birkenau, the memory is preserved. Throughout Poland are buildings and structures commissioned and built by the SS, and even more buildings that were commandeered by the SS during their occupation of Poland. At one point I was looking at every ruined building we passed and imagining it was a victim of the war, and imagining every monumental building as a strategic stronghold of the Nazis. But after only a few days it seemed that to keep focusing only on this was to prolong the crime, and hold people hostage to this period of history. Life goes on. Our ancestors suffered terribly, as did 11 million who died horrible and senseless deaths at the hands of psychopaths and murderers. That can and should never be forgotten or diminished. But to make every building, every ruin, a monument is perhaps to hold a country frozen in a period in history that should never have happened in the first place ... it's such a complex issue, and I left Poland feeling grateful for the effort the country has made to honour the dead, acknowledge and preserve the important relics of the past, and at the same time move on and learn to celebrate life once more.
Still, I don't feel there is a tidy ending to this story, as much as part of me wants to come away with a big life lesson from this. I don't believe there is a lesson: to find a lesson is to suggest that all of this happened to teach us that lesson. To suggest that is to justify the Shoah on some level, and that is something I can never do.
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