Poland

Mass Graves

I don’t think that one can begin to understand the Holocaust until they have been to a place where murder has occurred. Looking at the spot where thousands of Jews from neighboring Tekochin were shot to death brings the beginning of my comprehension. I’ve learned all about what, where, when, and who happened during the Holocaust, but I’ve never felt the magnitude of what occurred until today. This place doesn’t fit on this earth. It doesn’t feel human. I came into this week with no clue about how I would feel. I knew I might cry, and that was fine. I can live with crying. It’s the numbness that stings. I finally think I’ beginning to truly understand. I saw with my own two eyes the truth. Three 10’ x 10’ squares that once held the decaying bodies of the Jewish community of Tikochin Poland. I saw the truth. I understood the truth. I felt my lungs collapse and my knees buckle. It was so much more than a textbook and a classroom. I felt the enormity of death that surrounded me. I felt numb. Numb and hollow. A hole that can never be filled poked its way to my heart. And I don’t want to fill it. Because it helps me understand. You can never understand fully, but something clicked today. And today was only the beginning.

 Maidonek

Gas Chambers

You pass through the various rooms in a matter of fact fashion. You can see exactly what happened and how. There is no room for imagination. Except for the people. I could see the terrified faces of the people herded into the chambers to be murdered. I know exactly what happened and now I’ve seen it too. The more I see, the more I understand. I feel nauseous and the least. This is a feeling I cannot describe. Pure disgust and loathing and understanding and pain. The more I understand, the worse I feel. Everywhere I stand feels like it is poisoned. Filled with evil. I can’t look in any direction without feeling the pain and suffering that took place here. The air is toxic. Everything around me feels in the most powerful way, wrong. Nothing here makes sense, yet everything does. Understanding hurts me.

Shoes 

So many shoes. More than I’ve ever seen in my life. Shoes that people once wore. The smell crushed me. The lack of humanity I felt as I forced myself to walk through the 50 yards of rotten shoes was unbelievable. I’ve never before seen or felt such a hole in the heart of the people on this earth. I’m sickened by the sadness and inhumanity I feel.

Crematorium

 I can’t breathe. Everything feels fundamentally wrong. This is no way to describe the feeling I have. Seeing the devise that erased the physical existence of people makes my body quiver and my lungs stop. Everything feels fundamentally wrong.

Pile of Ash

Never have I seen so much death. The mound was so big it scared me. I knew that much death and more existed but never have I seen it before. My whole body shakes and my breathing nearly stops. The indescribable feeling is bigger and stronger than ever.

Tekes

The climax of the day was the final ceremony. I had to suppress my emotions to perform. On one of the hardest days of my life, shutting my feelings off was impossible. Thank God I had support. As I looked to the rest of EIE while singing haTikvah, I could see the faces of people going through the same thing as me. That’s the only small comfort I had today.

Reflection 

Today was one of, if not the hardest day of my life. In group discussion at the end of the night, many/most of my classmates said they were confused or angry. I had a very different reaction today. I 

was terrified. All day long I was picturing myself 75 years ago at Midonek, a prisoner. Not the most unlikely fate. I was myself in the thousands of rotten shoes, and in the cramped barracks. I say myself starving and dying. I saw myself perish by gas and be erased by fire. I was myself as a victim. But I am not a victim. I am one of the lucky ones. Yet I have a feeling of immense pain and moral wrongdoings. This feeling sucks, but it has shown me a mission. A mission to spread what I’ve seen. A mission to make sure that my children and grandchildren will also get to make their masa to Poland and have the feelings that go along with that. My feelings cannot stop with me. If they do, then there was no point in even coming to this dark, death stained country. It needs to be recognized that Jews never let go for their humanity even though Nazis tried to strip it from them, and at the end of the day is was the Nazis who lost their humanity. But never the less, 6 million is an astronomical number. An unimaginable number. It needs to be remembered sot that “never again” can truly mean Never Again. I never through I could be so solid on any aspect of the Holocaust, but I am. I know, with my whole being, that I must spread what I saw today.

Auschwitz - Birkenau

Walking on the train tracks through this infamous city makes me sick. The air is toxic and my legs are locked. I force myself to walk the earth where millions were murdered and thousands were dehumanized. It’s painful for me. I feel physically sick because in every direction I can only see death and barbed wire.

Gas Chamber/Crematorium 

They knew what they were doing was wrong. They bombed their own death machine because they knew it was evil and they didn’t want to get caught. Even in its ruined state I could see my people being herded down the steps, stripped of their clothes and squished into the gas chamber. I could see it. I feel sick, angry, sad, and guilty. How can I stand here today, looking at the atrocity. I can’t live with myself. I can see what happened and now I need to do something about it. I need to never forget this moment.

"The Sauna" (Reception Center)

It feels as if a dark heavy weight has been dropped on me. Everything is black and shite. There is no life, no color here. It’s all matter of act. I try to look for a shred of humanity, and all I feed are the futile acts of resistance on behalf of the victims. This place is evil. It makes me sick. I walk through the showers and haircut rooms and tattoo rooms and I feel disgusting. To the tip of my toes I feel nasty. And all I want to do is run out of here. But I don’t. I stand with a Magen David around my back as a comfort blanket to me and a fuck you to the Nazis.

Auschwitz I

It looks like a college or small town. How can this possibly be a place of evil. Yet walking through the museum-ified barracks I can see a horde of glasses and hair. How. All I can say is how. Today I am mad at humanity. I’ve never been able to say with full intention that I despise the human race as a whole until today. That thought scares me to no end. I naturally want to love people and see the good in them, but today I couldn’t. How can people let this happen? How can the human race as a whole let a people suffer? And how can the human race let it happen time after time in Cambodia, Rwanda, and Armenia? How? Is there really so little hope for humanity? Just thinking about this makes my chest hurts. If there's one thing I learned from this week, it’s that my life goal is to do the right thing for no other reason than that it is the right thing. Nor for glory, not for remembrance. No matter what I do with my life, that will be my guiding principal. If everyone in the world held that value, genocide would not exist. Evil would end and the world would be so much better. And then, only then will there be hope for humanity.