Trip Reflections from Neil Berkson

22jun10

Dear Friends—older and newer:

Ilene and I have returned from immersion in the Holocaust. Twelve days (2 travel) in Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic. The Wannsee Conference and Topography of Terror museum in Berlin (on the site of former Gestapo HQ); what’s left of the Warsaw Ghetto; Treblinka; Majdanek; 8 hours at Auschwitz I & Auschwitz/Birkenau; the Krakow Ghetto; Plaszow; Theriesenstadt.

We travelled with a study group led by two remarkable professors from the Cohen Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Keene State College. Our group ranged from four students in their mid-twenties to a wonderful woman who is 79 years young. Eight of the 21 in our group are Jewish.

For much of our time in Krakow and at Auschwitz, we were guided by Bernard Offen, an 82-year-old survivor of Auschwitz/Birkenau who now lives in California 6 months a year, and Krakow the other 6 months. Bernard was 10 when the Nazis marched into Krakow in 1939.

In the next 5 years, this little boy lost his mother, his father, his sister, his grandparents—50 members of his extended Krakow family. Two brothers and a cousin survived. His 46-year old mother, Rochme Gitel, and 16-year-old sister, Miriam, disappeared in the Ghetto one day: “My father was never the same.” Both women were gassed at Belzec in October 1942.

On August 24, 1944, Bernard and his father, Jacob, got off a cattle car at Auschwitz—where his father was sent to the left, and he to the right. Bernard was 14; his father, 49. “We made eye contact. I didn’t know which one of us would die, but knew we would never see each other again.” When Bernard took us through Birkenau on a cold, grey afternoon, we paused at the remains of a gas chamber where up to 3000 Jews were killed in a 20-minute period. “This is where I think my father died. I’m not sure...but I think so.” He lit a candle. We said a Kaddish and wept.

Like most Holocaust survivors, Bernard lives with demons. It’s as if, once the war was over, and the incomprehensible killing machine was destroyed, the demons moved inside the witnesses. Before 1981, he says he was in denial about what he had been through. Then he returned to Poland for the first time...and Krakow...and Auschwitz. He has found healing from taking groups through the Ghetto, Plaszow and Auschwitz; giving talks in many places; writing; and making films. He suffers, but is richly full of life.

Our last evening in Krakow, a few of us wound up at his apartment late at night. “I will be gone soon. You are now the second generation of witnesses.”

Herein, a small part of our experience:

• At Wannsee, we sat around a table in the small conference room—overlooking a garden—where 15 high-ranking Nazis planned the strategy and logistics to exterminate the Jews of Europe and North Africa. Jews were already being killed by the thousands, but Wannsee established extermination camps and coordinated policy throughout the German government. Biographies of the 15 were surprising—some didn't finish high school and all had mediocre backgrounds. There is a chart at Wannsee—prepared by Adolf Eichmann—which projects the Jewish population of all the countries in Europe. Eichmann showed about 1 per cent of Germany to be Jewish.

• The Topography of Terror has been open a month—a new, comprehensive museum on the site of Gestapo HQ in Berlin which documents the rise of Hitler and the reign of terror that followed until 1945. Within months(!) of being appointed Chancellor in 1933, Hitler eviscerated the German political and legal systems by arresting, harassing into exile, or killing his political opposition and creating a set of laws giving the Nazis absolute power to do anything without legal process. Rather than a protection against lawlessness, the state became utterly an instrument of terror, opening the door to all that followed.

• 850,000 were killed at Treblinka—more than 800,000 of whom were Jews. Little remains of this desolate place today except a chilling memorial of thousands of ragged gravestones—most carved with the name of a Polish city or town where the entire Jewish population was destroyed—communities, in some cases, extending back 900 years.

• More than 40,000 Jews were killed on November 3 and 4, 1943 at Majdanek—near Lublin—in what the Nazis called a Harvest Festival. A huge open-air memorial contains ashes of the bodies.

• We spent 4 hours at Auschwitz I, which was a work camp where much death occurred. Many of the buildings are preserved as a museum and memorial. Floor to ceiling glass cases are filled with the human hair the Nazis didn't have time to turn into fabric; eyeglasses; shoes; and suitcases tied with string or rope, marked with names and addresses from all over Europe. I thought of the anticipation some of the victims must have felt when they bought those suitcases for travel--never imagining where they would end up.

• Another 4 hours at Auschwitz II/Birkenau, which had no pretense. The camp was constructed as a pure instrument of death, with 4 large gas chambers which could exterminate up to 3000 at a time. This is where Bernard's father was most likely gassed. 900,000+ Jews, and 200,000+ Poles, Gypsies, Russian POWs and others died at Auschwitz (I & II) from the gas chambers, starvation, disease, medical "experiments", and individual executions.

• Krakow, with a vibrant Jewish history extending back to around 1000AD, had 65,000 Jews in 1939. A few hundred—mostly older—remained after the war. The same was true in the little towns and larger cities throughout Nazi-occupied Europe. Poland had 3 million Jews in 1939; 300,000 as of 1945.

• We walked through the Krakow ghetto with Bernard, saw where he was born, where he played, where he went to school, where he took baths with his father, where he and his friends snuck chocolate from a factory, where his family of 6 lived before the war, where they were moved. Before the Nazis created the ghetto, he writes, "[ours] was just an ordinary neighborhood...where people live. The streets were full of life and activity. There were friends and neighbors everywhere...." Including some Catholics.

• Theriesenstadt was a Czech army barracks outside Prague which the Nazis turned into a ghetto and concentration camp. 33,000 died in the camp; another 88,000 were sent to Auschwitz and other death camps. Many accomplished Jewish musicians, writers and artists were interned at Theriesenstadt. They created paintings, poems, musical compositions which were discovered after the war. The children drew and wrote also. Here is a short poem from Franta Bass—14 when he/she was killed, presumably at Auschwitz, in 1944:

The Garden

A little garden,
Fragrant and full of roses.
The path is narrow
And a little boy walks along it.

A little boy, a sweet boy,
Like that growing blossom.
When the blossom comes to bloom,
The little boy will be no more.


The trip was solemn when called for, but not joyless. Many of us got to know each other well, and bonded around our experience. We laughed and joked, sang songs (including a funny one Bernard taught us), sought out good meals, good beer and good wine.

Ilene and I have known about the Holocaust in some detail since we were children. But to know it—even to know it through the Washington D.C. Holocaust museum or Yad Vashem—is very different from being on ground where it happened.

Ultimately, life triumphed over the Nazi culture of death. But, my God, at what a cost in human blood, human decency, human potential.

Not that genocide started or ended with the Holocaust. The beat does go on.

Much love from both of us. For a moment, at least, we are humbled by what we have seen, and grateful for what we have—including all of you.

Neil and Ilene