My Trip To Poland Part I

So, as I sit on the bus headed to Lodz (pronounced Wooch but not really a ch although it sounds like this it’s actually a “duh” and a “juh” combined so like djuh. Yay Slavic languages.), I cannot help but reflect over what I wrote last night in regards to my experiences yesterday. I have decided I will post my harsh, yet honest, immediate reflection of a day filled with horrors of a past that as a human being I must somehow reconcile. There is so much I wanted to write last night and really in general just scream to the world and to people around me, but I think what I said will suffice for understanding the thoughts of my heart.

On a more general, detailed discussion of my experiences, I will give a brief overview of the exhibits, locations, and knowledge that has been imparted to us over the past few days. We began our trip in Krakow with a night tour of the town. My initial which have now become my concluding reactions to the city very much leave me with a longing for Prague. The city is located in what feels like the middle of nowhere – I guess furthering the idea that in the US we know all to well the concept of suburban communities where as here you travel down small bumpy back roads to appear in this heavily populated, bustling city. Krakow’s Old Town Quarter is surrounded by a lovely park and the center square has a really neat amber market as well as a gorgeous Catholic Church. I know big surprise – a Catholic Church in Poland? (My joke for the day…thanks folks I’ll be here all night.) The only full day we had in Krakow, sadly, it was raining, which made for unpleasant shopping and wandering and also translated that Dreama didn’t really get to take pictures outside. Although, I have some gorgeous pictures of the inside of the church that contained also an incredible wooden ark that on the outside depicted the sufferings of Mary and then on the inside the largest wooden carving of Mary in all of Eastern Europe. Throughout the entire interior of the church, the decor was so intricately designed, but it also reminded me of even though how beautiful places like this are, I can’t help but wonder how much good the funds that went toward building this establishment would do if used to help those in need. Krakow’s Jewish Quarter and former Jewish Ghetto were surprisingly small and seemed to only exist because of the Jewish tourists who come to the area. We toured the Jewish Quarter where we saw several different synagogues, only one of which was in active use. Here I also recognized how much Orthodox life is such an intense part of the Jewish community here in Eastern Europe. As a Jewish Studies major it is interesting to really note this aspect because it affects so much of my learning here as well in some instances contradicts/challenges the American perspective I have from my studies at Virginia. After visiting several synagogues, we walked across the bridge from the quarter to the former Jewish Ghetto and saw a portion of the remains of the former wall surrounding the ghetto as well as the original site of Schindler’s Factory. (If you have not seen it go watch the movie Schindler’s List.) Along the way, we also saw sites of where Spielberg shot his footage for the film Schindler’s List, which surprising was not accurately depicted in terms of real locations. We also visited the memorial square in the former ghetto where thousands of Jews were killed. This ghetto in Krakow held over 16,000 – those left of the 64,000 that were there before the war began. They lived here before they were deported to extermination camps.

Friday we also attended Shabbat services and had a four hour Shabbat dinner with part of the Jewish Community in Krakow. The actual community has been diminished from the original 64,000 to around 170. That’s definitely something to think about. Saturday was the free day filled with rainy weather, but in the afternoon and evening we visited an excellent photography exhibit on the Holocaust that I really enjoyed and then listened to a woman from the Righteous Among Nations – those who are honored by Israel for their help in saving Jewish lives during the Holocaust. After we listened to this incredible woman tell her story of how her family saved 9 Jews, we heard a lecture from a professor who was born in Poland but raised in the US and later returned in order to continue her academic career here. To say the least, she was very passionate about her studies, although her methodology was extremely outdated as was her concept as a sociologist of presenting her material, in particularly her descriptions of her interviewees. I guess some background on her talk is necessary to understand. She was originally supposed to give a lecture on Anti-Semitism, instead she decided to talk about her research of which she performed in a village in Poland in the 1980s. Her goal was to discover the relations of Jews and non-Jews, particularly Catholics before the war to try and break down stereotypes about Jewish – Catholic relations. Without going into detail about my difficulties with her choice of lecture topic and research, I can say that her lecture was not well received by those in the room, although to her credit her overall desire to bring about an understanding of tolerance within society in general was to be applauded. We also had dinner with those who were also there to hear the lecture. It was nice to get to know other Polish college students and share a meal, although we were all very exhausted.

Sunday – Auschwitz-Birkenau. The camp of Auschwitz is actually a three part camp that is located on the outskirts of the town of Oswiecim (Auschwitz in German). The town itself and its inhabitants were actually forced out when the Nazis took over the area. Auschwitz I was actually barracks before the war and when the Germans moved into the area, they used it as a prison for political prisoners from throughout Eastern and Central Europe – mostly Poles and Soviets though. Auschwitz-Birkenau is the place everyone learns about in school. This is where over 1.5 million people including mostly Jews were killed in gas chambers or starved and worked to death in labor camps. The third camp – Auschwitz III – Monowitz we did not visit. I have already described much of what I saw yesterday in the first blog, but just to recap, in Auschwitz I we saw the barracks of political prisoners as well as an intact gas chamber. We also saw the prison’s starvation and standing cells where prisoners were held as well as the wall where many were lined up and shot. Then we went to Birkenau where we saw the tracks that still are there that the Germans built off of the main route of tracks in Poland to bring people directly into the camp as well as the remains of barracks or barns used for living quarters, the remains of bombed gas chambers, and the gravesite where the ashes of many were buried after the war was over. It really is something unbelievable to see and experience. I remember going to the museum in DC when I was in middle school and feeling so helpless, but here you can’t really even begin to understand – your entire being is completely paralyzed and at the same time in shock and constant thought as you try so hard to comprehend what you are seeing. To say the least, it was an extremely difficult day.

After we visited the last camp, we went back to our hostel we were staying in Oswiecim. Here we had dinner and met with several high school aged Polish students who are working on a project documenting the lives of Jewish people during the Holocaust. It is similar to a Youth Task Force, with the mission to actively seek out ways to encourage tolerance and end stereotypes about Jewish people. Their goal is accomplished through peer education – seeing that most peers are more willing to listen and accept information from their own generations over their teachers. It was really an uplifting way to end our day and get to speak with students who are really trying to make a difference in this area for their generation and generations to come. Their work is definitely to be admired.