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
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Meeting Good People in Worfelden and Gross Gerau
Trips to my Dad, Karl’s, hometowns have always been very warm. The people we have met welcome us back as townspeople returning home, like an old home day in New England. This trip was similar. Worfleden, his birth place in 1915, is 5 kilometers from Gross Gerau, where the Kahn Department Store existed before November 1938 and where the family lived until they were forced to relocate to Frankfurt. Today, Worfelden has a few thousand residents and Gross Gerau has 25,000 residents.
Paul and I arrived at the Worfelden Evangelical Church where we were guests for five hours. The people at the church were not very bilingual, not like the big cities. The day began with a Sunday religious service in German, Hebrew and English. The Pfarrer, Richard Liu, welcomed my brother Gary and me. In fact, they prepared a program for the service that featured photographs of our family that Gary had provided. Another part of the service was a baptism for a congregant’s new born, that had a nice tradition of an apple tree about to be planted on the church grounds in honor of the event. Members of the congregation and the child’s family placed index cards with their thoughts to the child on the tree like additional leaves. About 80 people gathered and when services ended then they existed to a World War I monument on the grounds that includes Albert Kahn. Now, many more people arrived including photographers and the Buergermeister of the town, Tomas, who spoke for a few minutes, though I understood little. I placed a stone at the monument.
From here we went to my Dad’s birthplace at 2 Darmstrater Strasse. It is currently owned by a congregation member who was very comfortable taking us through the grounds and home. He has a backyard aviary, a small pond and turtles in a rock garden. The house has 3 rooms on the first floor and an upstairs which we didn’t see. Most interesting was the cellar that has a semicircular basement ceiling made of brick that had been many times painted and ran from floor to floor. This was used because of the high water table. Shelves were on either end. The basement served as a bomb shelter for the neighbors during WW2. The neighbo’s house, known as Engel’s house, looks more like from an older period. My dad’s birthplace had a deep wood frame and stucco finish when he lived there. Roland and his wife have 2 boys in their teens.
We then returned to the church’s community hall for a discussion, led by a local professor and attended by the people we saw at the service plus a much larger number of school aged kids. The kids had been asked to prepare questions which they asked Gary and me. Gary spoke in German mostly, I spoke in English mostly, and was assisted by the English teacher from the Gymnasium who translated to German.
The last point I made was how important it was to connect to the generation of the children asking the questions to ensure that we all commit to making sure the Holocaust Never Happens Again. My parents generation that lived through the war suffered losses to great –family, businesses, a way of life--so they buried their past in the back of their minds. My generation wants to reconnect family ties with the culture, people and places from which their families came. This is why the event in Worfelden was so important to both Gary and me but also to the congregation members. The next step is to have intergenerational connections with the children who have the greatest opportunity to ensure that newer again will a minority experience the prejudice, hate and killing that occurred under German Nazi leadership.
At the end of the discussion, townspeople presented some family artifacts found in cellars. From Roland’s house came a Kaufhaus Kahn hanger and from another came a shoehorn manufactured by Max Kahn, one of my grandfather’s great uncles, he had stamped his name and profession upon this metal shoehorn.
Another gift was a guide the Evangelical Church of Gross Gerau had produced documenting the Jewish community of Gross Gerau prior to 1939. It shows the homes and stores and the names of their Jewish occupants from that period. Two people active in producing the Guide are a church leader and a property owner of where the Kaufhaus Kahn once stood. Gary and I had a private conversation with them.
They would like to have the City of Gross Gerau authorize the placement of Stumplesteins, sidewalk markers, designating who lived at these places at the beginning of the 20th centrury. They prefer the sidewalk markers to building plaques because the sidewalk markers only need City authorization, and not having to approach each property owner. Many people, Jews and non-Jews oppose Stumpelsteins because of the difficulty maintaining them and the symbolism of people always walking across your name or doing something to desecrate your name. Gary and I discussed this later and agreed, these are the strongest advocates for preserving the presence of our family in Gross Gerau. If this is where they feel is the next step to support their efforts, we need to support them. They have requested a letter from each of us that they can add to strengthen their request to the City.
The Congregation’s Sunday lunch was superb. They served sausages (knockwurst) and salami sandwiches and from a room off the social hall there was a keg from which steins of beer were served. Most participants stayed to eat and consume a couple beers, so the conversation became very animated. I talked with a couple hosts who were retired at 60 years old, the retirement age in Germany, who had retired to Worfelden. What a loss of experienced talent!
I need to add that this Worfelden Evangelical Church community had so many nice people who greeted us and stayed to talk us until we left. Vielen Dank zu unser neue freuden.
Attending the whole event was our friend from Gross Gerau, Peter Schneider. Peter led us to dinner on the shore of the Rhine River, some 8 kilometers from Gross Gerau. The site is where US troops crossed the Rhine in April 1945 and where Gen. Patton said, “I always wanted to piss in the Rhine,” which he did from a pontoon bridge. We drank only bottled water and wine.
Gary and I also wandered the streets of Gross Gerau on Sunday afternoon, while Paul and Nancy rested. Shops closed at 3 pm and the only place we found open was a bar owned by a German immigrant from Montenegro. So there is little I can relate to you from street life, though Gary said on Saturday there was a street festival including music.
Paul and I arrived at the Worfelden Evangelical Church where we were guests for five hours. The people at the church were not very bilingual, not like the big cities. The day began with a Sunday religious service in German, Hebrew and English. The Pfarrer, Richard Liu, welcomed my brother Gary and me. In fact, they prepared a program for the service that featured photographs of our family that Gary had provided. Another part of the service was a baptism for a congregant’s new born, that had a nice tradition of an apple tree about to be planted on the church grounds in honor of the event. Members of the congregation and the child’s family placed index cards with their thoughts to the child on the tree like additional leaves. About 80 people gathered and when services ended then they existed to a World War I monument on the grounds that includes Albert Kahn. Now, many more people arrived including photographers and the Buergermeister of the town, Tomas, who spoke for a few minutes, though I understood little. I placed a stone at the monument.
From here we went to my Dad’s birthplace at 2 Darmstrater Strasse. It is currently owned by a congregation member who was very comfortable taking us through the grounds and home. He has a backyard aviary, a small pond and turtles in a rock garden. The house has 3 rooms on the first floor and an upstairs which we didn’t see. Most interesting was the cellar that has a semicircular basement ceiling made of brick that had been many times painted and ran from floor to floor. This was used because of the high water table. Shelves were on either end. The basement served as a bomb shelter for the neighbors during WW2. The neighbo’s house, known as Engel’s house, looks more like from an older period. My dad’s birthplace had a deep wood frame and stucco finish when he lived there. Roland and his wife have 2 boys in their teens.
We then returned to the church’s community hall for a discussion, led by a local professor and attended by the people we saw at the service plus a much larger number of school aged kids. The kids had been asked to prepare questions which they asked Gary and me. Gary spoke in German mostly, I spoke in English mostly, and was assisted by the English teacher from the Gymnasium who translated to German.
The last point I made was how important it was to connect to the generation of the children asking the questions to ensure that we all commit to making sure the Holocaust Never Happens Again. My parents generation that lived through the war suffered losses to great –family, businesses, a way of life--so they buried their past in the back of their minds. My generation wants to reconnect family ties with the culture, people and places from which their families came. This is why the event in Worfelden was so important to both Gary and me but also to the congregation members. The next step is to have intergenerational connections with the children who have the greatest opportunity to ensure that newer again will a minority experience the prejudice, hate and killing that occurred under German Nazi leadership.
At the end of the discussion, townspeople presented some family artifacts found in cellars. From Roland’s house came a Kaufhaus Kahn hanger and from another came a shoehorn manufactured by Max Kahn, one of my grandfather’s great uncles, he had stamped his name and profession upon this metal shoehorn.
Another gift was a guide the Evangelical Church of Gross Gerau had produced documenting the Jewish community of Gross Gerau prior to 1939. It shows the homes and stores and the names of their Jewish occupants from that period. Two people active in producing the Guide are a church leader and a property owner of where the Kaufhaus Kahn once stood. Gary and I had a private conversation with them.
They would like to have the City of Gross Gerau authorize the placement of Stumplesteins, sidewalk markers, designating who lived at these places at the beginning of the 20th centrury. They prefer the sidewalk markers to building plaques because the sidewalk markers only need City authorization, and not having to approach each property owner. Many people, Jews and non-Jews oppose Stumpelsteins because of the difficulty maintaining them and the symbolism of people always walking across your name or doing something to desecrate your name. Gary and I discussed this later and agreed, these are the strongest advocates for preserving the presence of our family in Gross Gerau. If this is where they feel is the next step to support their efforts, we need to support them. They have requested a letter from each of us that they can add to strengthen their request to the City.
The Congregation’s Sunday lunch was superb. They served sausages (knockwurst) and salami sandwiches and from a room off the social hall there was a keg from which steins of beer were served. Most participants stayed to eat and consume a couple beers, so the conversation became very animated. I talked with a couple hosts who were retired at 60 years old, the retirement age in Germany, who had retired to Worfelden. What a loss of experienced talent!
I need to add that this Worfelden Evangelical Church community had so many nice people who greeted us and stayed to talk us until we left. Vielen Dank zu unser neue freuden.
Attending the whole event was our friend from Gross Gerau, Peter Schneider. Peter led us to dinner on the shore of the Rhine River, some 8 kilometers from Gross Gerau. The site is where US troops crossed the Rhine in April 1945 and where Gen. Patton said, “I always wanted to piss in the Rhine,” which he did from a pontoon bridge. We drank only bottled water and wine.
Gary and I also wandered the streets of Gross Gerau on Sunday afternoon, while Paul and Nancy rested. Shops closed at 3 pm and the only place we found open was a bar owned by a German immigrant from Montenegro. So there is little I can relate to you from street life, though Gary said on Saturday there was a street festival including music.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
On to Gross Gerau
Actually we are heading to Buttleborn, which has annexed my dad's hometown of Worfelden. The gathering begins at an evangelical church and moves to an open house at my dad's birthplace. It is Fathers Day in the US. After a lunch discussion we go to Gross Gerau and see the Schneiders who have welcomed my family before.
Today was a day in Heidelberg. The streets were as busy as Prague, just not as many streets. Paul and I attended a chorale concert this evening after beer, dinner and ice cream.
Today was a day in Heidelberg. The streets were as busy as Prague, just not as many streets. Paul and I attended a chorale concert this evening after beer, dinner and ice cream.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Oswiecim-Auschwitz June 14
Confronted horrors that have haunted me for years was powerful. We visited the city of Oswiecim, named Aushwitz by Germans. The Stammlager, main camp, was built in 1940, and first housed Pols, including Anna Tilton’s father, not a Jew, who was one the first prisoners sent here. He worked at the camp until he escaped from a transport several years later. Auschwitz is the only camp that tatooed its prisoners. Auschwitz – Birkenau, built 3 miles away, was created in order to accommodate a larger population of Jews. In total, the two camps had over 1.3 million prisoners enter of whom 1.1 million died. Workers from the first camp helped construct Birkenau, which was ready in 1942. Russian troops liberated both camps in January 1945.
Auschwitz Stammlager is very intact. Originally it housed the Polish army. Our guide led us through the dehumanization experienced in the camp. Barracks were mades of brick. Trains stopped outside the camp, prisoners entered with their families and their belongings carried from the ghettos from which they were deported. They were then separated from both, men to one side and women and children to the other side, while belongings were left behind. They were stripped, showered, deloused, shaved of all body hair and placed in barracks, slepping on straw or wooden bunks. Dehumaization included beatings. Surprisingly, until 1943, prisoners were photographed. Many are exhibited in the barracks with dates under the photos reveal ing that most people lived 3 to 8 months before succumbing or being murdered. Three times a day they assembled outside. The camps is very flat and becomes muddy quickly as we discovered. Exhibits in barracks show huge quantities of hair not used in fabric material by the Germans, confiscated shoes, and suitc ases with names and hometowns to which they never returned. Canada is the name for the centers where confiscated goods were sorted and returned to Gemany. Barbed wire fencing double rowed prohibited escape. The first prisoners relocatd to the Stammlager were from Mauthausen concentratino camp in Austria. The were criminals that were given jobs of herding other prisoners and they treated other prisoners brutally without concern. Only a couple of uprisings resulted in suscessful escape. Uprisings and escapes led to more beatings and murders of the prisoners.
Auschwitz – Birkenau was created in order to accommodate a larger population of Jews deported from Ghettos and other concentration camps. It is by far a larger territory; ultimately it accomodated around 90,000 people at a time. It is immense. Much of the camp was destroyed by Germans to disgusie the true purposeof the camp. Together there were 5 gas chambers, one at the Stammlager, two of that size at Birkenau and then two more at Birkenau into which nearly 2000 could be crammed. After they were gassed and dead, the bodies were moved within the same building to ovens and creamated.
This is where many Kahn family members were sent from German Ghettos and concentration campus and killed. This includes my Dad, Karl’s, aunt and uncle, Johanna and Leopold Kahn, with whom he and his parents lived above their department store in Gross Gerau, Germany.
Our guide is a Polish Jew, whom I will call Dovid, from Krakow, and a survivor of Auschwitz Birkenau. His grandmother, mother and sister were murdered whille in the Krakow Ghetto. Dovid was 13 when he, his two older brothers and father were was sent to the Plaistoff concentration camp from the Krakow ghetto. This is the place where Schindlers List describes life in the Plaistoff camp. After being sent to Mauthausen in 1943, Dovid and his father were sent to Auschwitz – Birkenau, in August 1944. He was imprisoned for three months in an infirmary barrack before being sent to a work camp in October 1944.
The first view of Birkenau is the train tracks that enter a couple hundred yards into the camp. Here the barbed wired is double wide and electrified. Guard houses are everywhere.
Our CCHS group enters Auschwitz – Birkenau with Dovid who begins by saying here we come to grips with our emotions about the Holocaust. Chocking back tears, Dovid describes entering the camp on a cramped cattle car of a train with his father and 100 others. A cattle car stand before us, 100 people occupied a space of approximately 120 square feet for three days with no food or water. People stood, deficated and died during on this cattle car. There were thousands of people disembarking from the train. The sorting process was led by Germans, Dad goes left and Dovid goes right. It was the last time he saw his father. I am picturing my Leopold and Johanna entering entering the camp.
Leaving the track we walk to gas chamber number 2. It was blown up by Germans before Russians entered the camp, but the collapsed structures remain. We walk past the Holocaust memorial, turn left and stare into the facility that killed 2000 at one gassing and immediately cremated them to ashes. Dovid lights a memorial candle and asks if we can say Kaddish, the prayer that thanks God for life and is said in honor of the dead. He leads the prayer while we all stand over the death chamber. He turns back and sheds more tears. My brother Gary says he is holding the deportatino papers signed by Leopold and Johanna. I utter their names as is common during a memorial prayer. We begin crying. I try to compose myself long enough to say that saying their names is symbolic of the many relatives Mom and Dad lost in this and other camps. Their loss is our loss, L’dor V’dor, from generation to generation. It is no use to try to stop.
Many embrances follow. First with my brother, then with Hank, then a longer one with Dovid. While holding each other we share names. I ask his father’s name, Jakob, then I ask his Hebrew name, Yisrael, the name the Bible describes Jacob takes after seeing God. It is the same as my Hebrew name and that of my grandfather.
The walk around the camp continues for 4 hours learning of the how different groups were brought to this death camp and suffered worse than death experiences. We return to Krakow.
Auschwitz Stammlager is very intact. Originally it housed the Polish army. Our guide led us through the dehumanization experienced in the camp. Barracks were mades of brick. Trains stopped outside the camp, prisoners entered with their families and their belongings carried from the ghettos from which they were deported. They were then separated from both, men to one side and women and children to the other side, while belongings were left behind. They were stripped, showered, deloused, shaved of all body hair and placed in barracks, slepping on straw or wooden bunks. Dehumaization included beatings. Surprisingly, until 1943, prisoners were photographed. Many are exhibited in the barracks with dates under the photos reveal ing that most people lived 3 to 8 months before succumbing or being murdered. Three times a day they assembled outside. The camps is very flat and becomes muddy quickly as we discovered. Exhibits in barracks show huge quantities of hair not used in fabric material by the Germans, confiscated shoes, and suitc ases with names and hometowns to which they never returned. Canada is the name for the centers where confiscated goods were sorted and returned to Gemany. Barbed wire fencing double rowed prohibited escape. The first prisoners relocatd to the Stammlager were from Mauthausen concentratino camp in Austria. The were criminals that were given jobs of herding other prisoners and they treated other prisoners brutally without concern. Only a couple of uprisings resulted in suscessful escape. Uprisings and escapes led to more beatings and murders of the prisoners.
Auschwitz – Birkenau was created in order to accommodate a larger population of Jews deported from Ghettos and other concentration camps. It is by far a larger territory; ultimately it accomodated around 90,000 people at a time. It is immense. Much of the camp was destroyed by Germans to disgusie the true purposeof the camp. Together there were 5 gas chambers, one at the Stammlager, two of that size at Birkenau and then two more at Birkenau into which nearly 2000 could be crammed. After they were gassed and dead, the bodies were moved within the same building to ovens and creamated.
This is where many Kahn family members were sent from German Ghettos and concentration campus and killed. This includes my Dad, Karl’s, aunt and uncle, Johanna and Leopold Kahn, with whom he and his parents lived above their department store in Gross Gerau, Germany.
Our guide is a Polish Jew, whom I will call Dovid, from Krakow, and a survivor of Auschwitz Birkenau. His grandmother, mother and sister were murdered whille in the Krakow Ghetto. Dovid was 13 when he, his two older brothers and father were was sent to the Plaistoff concentration camp from the Krakow ghetto. This is the place where Schindlers List describes life in the Plaistoff camp. After being sent to Mauthausen in 1943, Dovid and his father were sent to Auschwitz – Birkenau, in August 1944. He was imprisoned for three months in an infirmary barrack before being sent to a work camp in October 1944.
The first view of Birkenau is the train tracks that enter a couple hundred yards into the camp. Here the barbed wired is double wide and electrified. Guard houses are everywhere.
Our CCHS group enters Auschwitz – Birkenau with Dovid who begins by saying here we come to grips with our emotions about the Holocaust. Chocking back tears, Dovid describes entering the camp on a cramped cattle car of a train with his father and 100 others. A cattle car stand before us, 100 people occupied a space of approximately 120 square feet for three days with no food or water. People stood, deficated and died during on this cattle car. There were thousands of people disembarking from the train. The sorting process was led by Germans, Dad goes left and Dovid goes right. It was the last time he saw his father. I am picturing my Leopold and Johanna entering entering the camp.
Leaving the track we walk to gas chamber number 2. It was blown up by Germans before Russians entered the camp, but the collapsed structures remain. We walk past the Holocaust memorial, turn left and stare into the facility that killed 2000 at one gassing and immediately cremated them to ashes. Dovid lights a memorial candle and asks if we can say Kaddish, the prayer that thanks God for life and is said in honor of the dead. He leads the prayer while we all stand over the death chamber. He turns back and sheds more tears. My brother Gary says he is holding the deportatino papers signed by Leopold and Johanna. I utter their names as is common during a memorial prayer. We begin crying. I try to compose myself long enough to say that saying their names is symbolic of the many relatives Mom and Dad lost in this and other camps. Their loss is our loss, L’dor V’dor, from generation to generation. It is no use to try to stop.
Many embrances follow. First with my brother, then with Hank, then a longer one with Dovid. While holding each other we share names. I ask his father’s name, Jakob, then I ask his Hebrew name, Yisrael, the name the Bible describes Jacob takes after seeing God. It is the same as my Hebrew name and that of my grandfather.
The walk around the camp continues for 4 hours learning of the how different groups were brought to this death camp and suffered worse than death experiences. We return to Krakow.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Leaving Poland June 15
I want to write about the trip to Auschwitz, but it will take time that I haven't got. Tomorrow's bus trip to Prague will give a chance. It will take 8 hours. Krakow, which is near Auschwitz, is a large city. It was good to be here for a couple days. Visited the KILL, concentration camp, of Plaisoff, which is the camp of Schindler's Jews. Not much left there for us to see.
Jay
Jay
Monday, June 14, 2010
post before Auschwitz
The trek is running to an apex. You could say it began at childhood, even before that. Tempting the imagination of confronting autrocities I saw in documentaries, read in storyb ooks. There were bodies and it led to questions and then to family stories. And then it was that it happened to them and it happened to me.
There were trips back to the homeland and the search. Places took on meaning, survivors told stories. And then there were the camps ,the places between the big cities of large Jewish populations: Dachau, Malthausen, and Terizienstadt. An exposure but not the horror.
So this is the trip where the feelings mount. From the cities where vast populations of Jews collected and dwelled for centuries, to the regime that sought to destroy European Jewery and to the death camps dehumaized and disregarded human life.
Treblinka is a place leveled by Nazi;s to disguise the murder of nearly a million people. Majdenek is a place of reproductiion, something the Polish want to presere from the remains left by their German occupiers.
At Majdanek we met Thomas Tovia Blatt the little boy in the movie Escape from Sobibor. Now an older man, he visits the memorial often, though lives in the US.
There were trips back to the homeland and the search. Places took on meaning, survivors told stories. And then there were the camps ,the places between the big cities of large Jewish populations: Dachau, Malthausen, and Terizienstadt. An exposure but not the horror.
So this is the trip where the feelings mount. From the cities where vast populations of Jews collected and dwelled for centuries, to the regime that sought to destroy European Jewery and to the death camps dehumaized and disregarded human life.
Treblinka is a place leveled by Nazi;s to disguise the murder of nearly a million people. Majdenek is a place of reproductiion, something the Polish want to presere from the remains left by their German occupiers.
At Majdanek we met Thomas Tovia Blatt the little boy in the movie Escape from Sobibor. Now an older man, he visits the memorial often, though lives in the US.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Reflections from a bus trip June 11
At each gravestone in Hebrew they read: Here lies.... May she live among the eternal.
Adolf Eichmann was tasked with detailing the number of Jews in Europe in 1939. He determined there were 11 million. In January 1942 the Wannsee conference, led by Reinhard Heydrich, ensured full high level administrative support for the Reich Sicherheits Hauptamt’s planned execution of the Final Solution. By the of June 1942, the first transport to Treblinka was underway. Treblinka was the thrd Reinhard Operation Camp. By the termination of Operation Reinhard in November 1943, 925,000 people had been murdered at Treblinka, 434,000 at Belcek, and 167,000 at Sobidor.
The trip from Berlin to the deportation point, then to Warsaw and Treblinka, demonstrate the calculated isolation and destruction of Jews and other targets of the Nazi State. Treblinka had a staff of 30-40 Germans and 130 Ukrainians. During its optimal operation, 4,000 prisoners came in each day; all but approximately 60, used as workers, were murdered upon arrival . Our relative Norbert Homberg, brother of my great grandfather died in Treblinka after having been moved from Riga in Latvia.
The Warsaw Ghetto held nearly 500,000 Jews, most of whom either died there or were transported to Treblinka. After the Ghetto uprising in April 1943, the Ghetto was destroyed and all but a few of its resident’s left in hiding killed or sent to death camps. Prior to that up to 4,000 Ghetto residents worked dalily outside the Ghetto. Seeing the mass grave site in the Ghetto and at the Jewish cemetary reminded us of the brutality of the murders. Ben MacPherson read a passage at one mass murder site that told of Jews being burried alive. The mass grave in the Ghetto is located at Mila St., the source of the name used by Leon Uris for his book Mila 18.
The 2 graveyards outside the city posed far different qualities. The Gesia cemetary has been restored since 1980. All he gravestone had been removed and burried during the war and dug up since then. The Praga Cemetary had a vast pre-WW2 gravesites in tact of Jewish gravesites in addition to the mass buriall site.
German occupation of Warsaw took its toll on the entire City and country. Most of the destruction of Warsaw during the war came at the hands of the Germans who systematically bombed every building. At dinner we saw the before and after of the sole remaining building in an area near our hotel. Attachd is a photo of the building at the end of German occupation.
From Michelle Sigiel: The willow tree is a symbol of mourning in many cultures. In Treblinka, I saw two willow trees amongst the stones. A little smash of green against so much grey. I will forever carry the memory of those two willow trees in Treblinka with me.
Loren Fienberg noticed the road underlayment was from Jewish gravestones.
The monument is at the site of the gas chambers and the burnt stones at the site of the body burning pit. Treblinka itself was destroyed byt he Nazis to destroy any evidence.
Adolf Eichmann was tasked with detailing the number of Jews in Europe in 1939. He determined there were 11 million. In January 1942 the Wannsee conference, led by Reinhard Heydrich, ensured full high level administrative support for the Reich Sicherheits Hauptamt’s planned execution of the Final Solution. By the of June 1942, the first transport to Treblinka was underway. Treblinka was the thrd Reinhard Operation Camp. By the termination of Operation Reinhard in November 1943, 925,000 people had been murdered at Treblinka, 434,000 at Belcek, and 167,000 at Sobidor.
The trip from Berlin to the deportation point, then to Warsaw and Treblinka, demonstrate the calculated isolation and destruction of Jews and other targets of the Nazi State. Treblinka had a staff of 30-40 Germans and 130 Ukrainians. During its optimal operation, 4,000 prisoners came in each day; all but approximately 60, used as workers, were murdered upon arrival . Our relative Norbert Homberg, brother of my great grandfather died in Treblinka after having been moved from Riga in Latvia.
The Warsaw Ghetto held nearly 500,000 Jews, most of whom either died there or were transported to Treblinka. After the Ghetto uprising in April 1943, the Ghetto was destroyed and all but a few of its resident’s left in hiding killed or sent to death camps. Prior to that up to 4,000 Ghetto residents worked dalily outside the Ghetto. Seeing the mass grave site in the Ghetto and at the Jewish cemetary reminded us of the brutality of the murders. Ben MacPherson read a passage at one mass murder site that told of Jews being burried alive. The mass grave in the Ghetto is located at Mila St., the source of the name used by Leon Uris for his book Mila 18.
The 2 graveyards outside the city posed far different qualities. The Gesia cemetary has been restored since 1980. All he gravestone had been removed and burried during the war and dug up since then. The Praga Cemetary had a vast pre-WW2 gravesites in tact of Jewish gravesites in addition to the mass buriall site.
German occupation of Warsaw took its toll on the entire City and country. Most of the destruction of Warsaw during the war came at the hands of the Germans who systematically bombed every building. At dinner we saw the before and after of the sole remaining building in an area near our hotel. Attachd is a photo of the building at the end of German occupation.
From Michelle Sigiel: The willow tree is a symbol of mourning in many cultures. In Treblinka, I saw two willow trees amongst the stones. A little smash of green against so much grey. I will forever carry the memory of those two willow trees in Treblinka with me.
Loren Fienberg noticed the road underlayment was from Jewish gravestones.
The monument is at the site of the gas chambers and the burnt stones at the site of the body burning pit. Treblinka itself was destroyed byt he Nazis to destroy any evidence.
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