The first truly remarkable event that took place this past week was my time spent listening to the great Jurgen Habermas. Professor Habermas is currently one of the world’s most renowned philosophers. I have learned about him in at least three of my courses taken back in Madison, and so when one of my professors here at Hebrew U let me know that Professor Habermas would be in Jerusalem to give a lecture on Tuesday night, I jumped at the opportunity to see in person the man that I have learned so much about. Mr. Habermas has highly influenced the world of philosophy (one of my great passions, as I am a proud philosophy major), especially in the realms of linguistic and social philosophy.
His speech lent itself as a symbol of an incredibly meaningful week. Habermas’ youth was highly influenced by Nazi culture, but at an early age, he broke free from the diabolical party and began one of the most highly acclaimed careers that any modern philosopher can boast. The reason that this talk was so symbolic of my week was because his lecture was an ode to the late Martin Buber, one of the greatest philosophers that Judaism (and modern philosophy) has known. A man who had grown up in Nazi Germany came to Jerusalem to praise and pay homage to a Jew. On that night, light brightly filled the lecture hall. In every sense of the word, we were all enlightened by Professor Habermas.
On Wednesday night, I embarked on a journey that would forever change the way I view the world. Months ago, I had signed up for an organized trip to Poland to see the concentration and extermination camps. I had long awaited this weekend, and here it was. Our flight arrived in Warsaw at 9:00 AM on Thursday morning. We walked the streets of town, stopping frequently to see monuments marking the calamities that occurred there. Our guide, Hazy chaperoned us about the city and shared detailed stories with us so that we could visualize the pains felt of the thousands of people oppressed and abducted on the roads we were on. We toured the ghetto. It was very hard to picture the sheer destitution, the depression that overwhelmed this area only a short time ago. The city of Warsaw is now very modern; it is a pretty city. I was not expecting it. I wish it wasn’t, for if it had been more decrepit, I would have more easily managed to comprehend the appalling life that people led there. But only monuments marked these events, and life went on there as it would anywhere else.
Our next stop was Treblinka, one of the most productive death camps the Nazis ever constructed. As we drove down the narrow, winding road enclosed by thick forest and brush on either side, I began to feel a certain claustrophobia. I could not escape the feeling that some monumental peril loomed in the near future. Unlike the Jews that were shipped there seventy years ago, I held a general idea of what would lie ahead. If I were one of them, I cannot decide whether or not having this prior conception would have eased my apprehension and inner turmoil or elevated it ten-fold, nor can I know for sure what exactly these people felt years ago. All I know is that whether one had perfect insight into these matters or complete ignorance, the most eerie of moods overtook me, and it grew difficult to speak.
Stepping down from our bus, I observed that I was surrounded by greenery. How strange, I thought, that this terrible, terrible factory of destruction and death should be marked by such lively forestry. I noticed a family of Non-Jewish Poles exiting the location, and a sudden urge came over me to know what they were thinking, what they were feeling. As a group we sat down along a line of oversized bricks that stood in place of the tracks where cattle cars transported those awaiting their impending doom. We learned of the lies told to the Jews upon their arrival, that they were at a labor camp, that their valuables would be held while they went to take a shower, and that they would be given personal receipts marking each person’s items. Then they stripped and headed to the showers. No one emerged alive. Upwards of 870,000 innocent lives were terminated at Treblinka.
I saw a family riding bicycles along a path. One girl was wearing a pink tank top and short shorts. I couldn’t believe my eyes. This was one of the most efficient, most infamous extermination camps in all of human history, and people took leisurely strolls and rides around the woods. It was then explained to me that people do indeed utilize the grounds for recreational purposes. For many, it was but a park. It was but a park.
There are some 17,000 stones that commemorate the lives destroyed there. Some have names engraved on them, but most are anonymous. Each stone itself was precious, but the one that will always remain particularly impressed upon my memory was that belonging to Janusz Korczak, a famed pediatrician, children’s author, and keeper of an orphanage, a man who was offered asylum several times throughout the war because of his talents, but instead voluntarily marched to his death along with the 192 orphans that he had housed, fed, and had given a loving home. This was a man who literally devoted his entire life to making others feel important, loved, safe, and secure. It is not known exactly where Mr. Korczak perished, but it was an honor and a privilege to walk along the ground where his memory is given special recognition.
Before leaving Treblinka, we recited Hatikvah as a group. I cannot begin to describe how sweet it felt. At that moment, the camp grounds, which once held one of the greatest of all engines for murder, was then a mode of inspiration. We then bused to Lublin where we would spend the night.
In the morning, we arose early and marched to Maidanek, a death camp that resided within the city limits. There, the sun shined brightly on a green field. But it was merely an illusion, for in hell there is neither green nor sun. There is only death. We walked along the path where the departed were once led to meet their fate. When we passed through a gas chamber, I tried to picture what it was like for a child there to be torn from his or her parents, lost amid a sea of dying bodies, tirelessly dodging corpses to find a familiar face. This was as close as I could get to these horrors.
One of the most traumatic experiences here took place when we came to the crematorium. When visitors came to inspect the camp, the Nazis somehow deceived them, telling them it was a bakery. But no bread was ever baked there. Only bodies were incinerated, reduced to nothing but ash. Near the furnaces stood a bathtub where the commandant of the camp would bathe. The same fire that mercilessly destroyed innocent human lives was used to heat his bath water. That sadistic house of fire was one of the most disparaging places I had ever been to. Outside of the crematorium lay a seven-ton mountain constructed with human ash.
As we exited Maidanek, I pulled a granola bar from my pocket, and I ate. I was hungry, not starving, but hungry. And I ate. As I took my first bite, my thoughts were this. It is now 2012. Goebbels is long gone. Eichmann is long gone. Himmler is long gone. Hitler is long gone. Elie Wiesel is here. And Elena Kagan is here. And Michael Bloomberg is here. And Rohm Emmanuel is here. And Steven Spielberg is here. And Mark Zuckerberg is here. And Benyamin Netanyahu is here. And all of my campus rabbis who welcome hundreds of Jewish students into their homes each week are here. The 1000-year Reich lasted only twelve years. The S.S. is only a nightmare now. But a young Jew filling his hungry belly on the grounds of Maidanek is a reality.
After Maidanek, we headed over to Krakow, where we would spend a lovely Shabbat. After getting ready for services, we walked over to a synagogue where we would usher in the Sabbath. One of the leaders on our trip, Ezra, led services. He sang Kabbalat Shabbat to the tunes of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach. For those unfamiliar with Rav Carlebach, he was a visionary and a musical genius who generated hundreds upon hundreds of tunes for Jewish songs and prayers. His hymns are infused with soulfulness and joy, and every time I sing Kabbalat Shabbat to the melodies that he authored, I find myself elated.
On Saturday we toured much of Krakow. To my astonishment, it was a beautiful city. My preconceived notions of the city led me to believe it to be a downtrodden and decrepit municipality, but it was burgeoning with color, character, and life. The architecture and color scheme of the city reminded me very much of Prague. Even the ghetto had been refurbished. This led to further inner tension. On the one hand, I was walking through a place where utter destitution and gloom were once inherent; and on the other hand, this place was no different from any other European city that I would have been overjoyed to see only weeks ago. It was difficult to juggle these two feelings. I desperately wanted to break into the mind of a person living there during those fateful days, but I have been afforded such a sheltered, such a fortunate life that I was not able to do so. During every other moment of my life, I would consider this a blessing. But at that moment I thought it to be a curse.
One real highlight of the trip was our time spent listening to an elderly Polish woman named Paulina. Paulina, who was awarded a medal by Yad VaShem for being one of the “Righteous among the Nations (non-Jewish people)”, risked her life by harboring seventeen Jews and providing a secret safe haven for them during the Nazi invasion. Her story left me breathless. Everyone in the room was left to face the question, “Would I have been as brave as she if I had been in her shoes?”. There is a concept within Judaism that the Jewish people are supposed to provide a light to the nations. But it had been Paulina, and many others like her, who had provided a brightly shining light to the Jews for so many years. I thought it very comforting to know that during an era marred by pure evil, there was still a great number of people that exemplified goodness, that exemplified light. It was an honor to meet her.
After making Havdalah, we took a ride to a site (well, really a ditch), where the Nazis shot people, whole families, right in the back of the head and left them to rot under the Earth’s surface. I pictured myself as a four-year-old. Beside me stood my mother and father. They slaughtered each of them, pausing a minute in between shots so that I could best grasp what was taking place. They teased me. They instilled horror in me. Then they shot me.
Sunday marked the culmination of our trip. After a long few days of shock and horror, we hit the climax of our experience: Auschwitz-Birkenau. Being the most effective, and maybe the most famous, murder factory in human history, we all held a fierce anxiety about our upcoming visit there. First we came to Auschwitz II-Birkenau, where over one million Jewish people met their brutal demise. The most traumatic exhibition there was the menacing gate that greets you upon your arrival. Train tracks pass through the entrance, and once inside, a chill runs through your spine. “This is Auschwitz”, I was thinking. “This is Auschwitz.”
We toured the latrines, a line of holes on a long cement bench, none separated from one another. Some of the most private actions one does during the day were made public as men, women, and children were embarrassed and completely dehumanized. We then walked through the sleeping quarters and the gas chamber. But after walking out, we continued to inch closer to the light at the end of the tunnel. Many of us were sporting Israeli flags as capes, and we were joined by several other tour groups who raised King David’s star high above the ground.
Next, we approached Auschwitz I, which today functions as a museum. The myriad barracks, which are quite disorienting as they are similar in appearance to school halls one would find on an East coast college campus, house authentic pictures and documents that ran through the S.S. administrative body. We came across rooms filled from floor to ceiling with the shoes that the inmates wore, with suitcases, with leg braces, and with pots and pans brought there in a naïve attempt to uphold the laws of Kashrut. But the most shocking display there, and one of the most relentless displays of affliction that I have yet to see, was a room, twenty five yards long or so, where behind a window human hair encompassed almost every square inch of open space. The mountain of hair was completely demoralizing.
But after we spied the direct evidence of these indescribable horrors, the light began to grow thicker once more, because just after exiting our final barrack, we stood together, united, and sang Hatikvah and Am Yisrael Chai with all of the ruach we could muster. After enjoying a moment of bliss there, a security guard came over to us to report our guide, Hazy. He scolded us, yelling, “You cannot sing here. This is not McDonald’s”. The comparison made very little sense, and we began to crack up. Well Hazy and the rest of us argued her way out of any consequences she would have to suffer, and she got off with a warning. My friend Brandon remarked that they had just kicked the Jews OUT of Auschwitz, and we began to laugh hysterically once more.
We ventured back to our hotel, and on the way, we witnessed a rainbow shining brightly outside the window. I thought it to be the greatest of coincidences, if there are such things. On our way back from Terezin, the death camp we visited on my trip to the Czech Republic, a rainbow also smiled at us from a near distance. When we arrived back at our hotel, we held a wrap-up ceremony, each of us sharing our feeling and personal struggles from the last few days. The light was brightening more and more.
The flight back to Israel broke the threshold between night and day, darkness and light. There was a group of young Israelis, perhaps a year or two younger than us, who cheerfully led Israeli anthems for about twenty minutes, the entire duration that we were landing. We happily joined in. There is no other ethnicity, community, or nation that I know of that sings so blithely for such a long time while returning to their beloved motherland. Then we landed back in Israel. We had overcome the darkest of darknesses, and everything was illuminated once more.
Shavua Tov!
Zac
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