Never Shall I Forget

Reflections from: August 9, 2008

Reflections in Birkenau

Never shall I forget this day, the day that I saw Auschwitz. I could not have been prepared to see what I saw today, even if I had read every book available on the subject and watched every documentary and movie possibly conceived in a director’s mind. We left the hotel at 8:30 am and arrived by 9:30 am. My first impression was one of ordered chaos. There were people everywhere, book kiosks around each corner, a fast food place in the parking lot, and a small food store near the entrance. Before I came, I wasn’t sure that I thought of having these types of establishments near a site like Auschwitz, but I can now see the reason for everything they had there, especially since I had to use the restroom, buy a drink, and bought books as well. Everything was low-key, though, and not advertised in an inappropriate way. So, we collected our audio headsets so we could hear our guide when he talked, and set out into the spitting rain into Auschwitz I.

The gate of Auschwitz I

Never shall I forget the moment I passed under the gate reading

“Work Brings Freedom.”

I had seen this famous gate in numerous photographs in countless exhibits around the world, but walking under the gate emblazoned with that lie was nothing like I thought it would be. This was mainly because I walked through this gate and under this deception as a free person, knowing that I would walk back out of that gate in a few hours’ time, again as a free person. Those prisoners who passed through that gate during the Holocaust did not have that life-saving luxury. I have no way of coming close to comprehending how that must have felt, the uncertainty, the terror, and the desperate desire to believe that lie. I walked through the gate and into the first and smallest part of Auschwitz, called Auschwitz I, not knowing how or if this experience would change me.

Suitcases of prisoners

Never shall I forget what it was like to stand in a former barracks, facing the evidence of humanity stolen from countless victims.

It was piled in a mountain behind glass running the length of the room. Matted and snarled, faded in color, evidence of the innocent human beings who passed through this camp, I swallowed hard as I stared at human hair, a mountain of it. I was frozen, unable to move throughout more of the room where blankets and other products made from the hair were displayed. Unexpected emotion welled up and I felt the first stain of tears stain my cheeks. I am not someone who cries easily and so I was floored by how I was affected by what I was seeing. My eyes slowly panned the pile of hair in front of me and focused in on a lock of red hair. It stood out from the rest of what seemed to be light brown or blond hair. I wondered about the woman who had worn that hair, caring for it daily, brushing it, styling it, perhaps preparing it carefully for a date, never knowing what awaited her in the future. This moment, more than anything else I have already experienced on this trip, helped me to see the victims as individuals who had a life, a future, who perhaps brushed their hair the same way I did, and who lost their future because of the brutality of one group of people. For my students and for myself, it has always been difficult to comprehend the enormity of the Holocaust and the number of people who perished. Now, however, I know how powerful it can be to individualize what happened so that if you can comprehend what was lost with the death of just one person, how much was lost with the 11 million who were murdered. After viewing the hair, we saw more evidence for the crimes of the Nazis and what they took from the victims as we walked through rooms with piles of glasses, prayer shawls, children’s clothes, shoes, brushes, dishes, pots, pans, and piles of artificial limbs and crutches, all balanced against the pile of empty Zyklon B gas cans used to take the lives of these individuals. In each place, I focused on one person…young two-year-old Petr’s suitcase, the red sandal nearly hidden by the others, the baby’s sweater, or a brush that the girl with the red hair just might have used one last time before she got off of that transport. When I exited the barracks where all of these were stored, I could better understand the enormity of the Holocaust by realizing that there were millions of people just like Petr who would never return to their homes or live to see a future where we remember and learn from the horrors of the Holocaust.

Prison bars on the windows of Block 11

Never shall I forget the horrors of Block 11.

After seeing the evidence of what was stolen from the victims, I did not know if I could be touched more deeply, but Block 11 had just such an experience in store for me. We walked into a courtyard between Blocks 10 and 11, which had been an execution yard for those convicted of crimes in the camp. As unbelievable as it sounds, even the concentration camp had a prison and prisoners could be tortured and kills in ways even more heinous than the everyday life in the camps, designed to break the strongest of human beings. In this courtyard, prisoners were shot as a penalty for their “crimes.” We also learned that there were torture cells in the basement of Block 11 that many prisoners experienced either before execution or as a common punishment for an infraction. Some of the cells were designed so that prisoners could only stand in the dark and with little air. In the courtyard, we observed the minimal air holes on the outside of the building for these cells. Other cells were designed so that one could only lie down and provided such a small amount of air that prisoners often suffocated. It was, however, the descriptions of the starvation cells that arrested my attention. In these cells, prisoners who were given the death sentence by starvation were put without food and water until they died. I know that starvation and disease were a part of life in the camps and claimed many lives, but the prisoners living in the barracks at least had a chance, slight though it may be, to survive since they did receive small rations every day. The idea of putting someone in a cell to starve them to death horrified me on a level that I might not have felt a few months ago. When I was listening to our guide describe this, all I could think about was my Aunt Marilyn, who died four months ago. Suffering from ALS and not able to eat or drink near the end of her life, I watched my Aunt Marilyn starve and saw the physical changes as a result. My Aunt Marilyn bore this with a dignity that communicated her courage and a peace in the unwavering knowledge that she would soon be home with God. She was surrounded by family and friends to the end, and I know she could feel our love as we could feel hers towards us, since her concern was not for herself, but for us. I remembered all of this at this place, a place I would not be standing if not for Aunt Marilyn and her sister, my Aunt Laurel, who both mailed my application for this trip, paying the postage, last December as they were taking me to the airport for another Holocaust-related conference. As all of these memories worked through my mind, I could only think of the parallel of these victims who were forced to endure the last week of their life in a small, cold, dark cell without food and water or family to comfort them. They perished on an unforgivingly cold concrete floor and no family mourned their absence or celebrated their life when they died. They simply disappeared. Later on, I came back to Block 11 specifically to see these starvation cells. When I left the block, I stood in the avenue in the middle of Auschwitz I and I cried, not for my Aunt Marilyn, though I dearly miss her and still feel the pain of her absence, but for the victims of starvation in Auschwitz who had no one to mourn for them.

The back wall of the gas chamber at Auschwitz I

Never shall I forget leaning against a cold concrete wall in a gas chamber.

The room was small and rectangular in shape. The concrete was scarred, more from numerous tourists standing where I had than anything that the victims did to the walls. The lighting only came from the single bulbs overhead and a few holes in the ceiling. This was the only gas chamber still standing at Auschwitz. Housed in Auschwitz I, it was not used for long, only until the four gas chambers at Birkenau were functioning, and then it was turned into a bomb shelter for the guards at the camp. Knowing all of that did not diminish the significance of where I was standing, though. After the war, when the museum was being built at Auschwitz, this room was converted back to a gas chamber by knocking out the walls that had formed the bomb shelter and re-installing the crematory ovens in the next room. Possibly the most important thing I will remember from standing in this place was when our guide mentioned the Holocaust Deniers. This is something that I teach my students about, and one of their arguments is that there were no working gas chambers in any of the camps. For me, being a witness means being able to say that I stood in this place at this time and could say that, yes, the gas chambers existed. In a few short years, Holocaust survivors will all be gone and I am afraid that will be a critical time for Holocaust education and the Holocaust Denier movement. I cannot attest to having seen a working gas chamber, but I can say that I was there and saw for myself that they existed and saw how it was possible for it to work in the way described by the survivors. One of the problems with this gas chamber, according to the Deniers, is that it was renovated after the war to get rid of traces of the bomb shelter and take it back to its original state, which of course the Deniers would argue did not involve a gas chamber. And so, I knew that this was a critical part of my pilgrimage to become a witness to the atrocities inflicted upon humanity during this time period.

The entrance to Auschwitz II--Birkenau

Never shall I forget my first sight of Birkenau

The mouth of the station at Birkenau, or Auschwitz II, yawned ominously at us as our bus drove beside the railroad tracks leading into Birkenau. This famous image from Birkenau was just as frightening as it had always seemed to me in photographs and documentaries. Beyond the brick station, I could see a vast camp, miles wide and long. This was quite different than Auschwitz I, which is compact and quite small compared to the sprawling nature of this reception center for well over a million victims of the Holocaust. Barbed wire stretched as far as the eye could see, both around the outskirts of the camp and throughout the camp, subdividing it into compounds. The railroad tracks continued through the mouth of the station to the large unloading platform in the camp. In my head, I could hear the words of Elie Wiesel as he described his arrival at this very place in the summer of 1944 at night after a long trip from Hungary, “In front of us flames. In the air that smell of burning flesh. It must have been about midnight. We had arrived – at Birkenau, reception center for Auschwitz” (Wiesel, Chapter II). I had always somehow pictured Birkenau at night, but now in the light of day, I could clearly see the reality of the place juxtaposed with all that I had read, and I knew that I would see everything here much differently than I had experienced it at Treblinka, Warsaw, Krakow, or Plaszow concentration camp. It was as if the vastness of the camp around me echoed the enormity of the Holocaust and provided a concrete way for my mind to grasp both the past and the present and their implications for the future, the future that would be sitting in my classroom in three weeks.

Bunks in barracks at Birkenau

Never shall I forget the smell of the barracks.

It wasn’t just old wood. The smell of old wood can be comforting, giving the air of dignity, history, and revered time. It was the smell of terror and death trapped in the wood all around me that will dominate my memory of this place forever. That may sound like an extreme description of what I smelled when I walked into the wooden barracks on the men’s side of Birkenau, but those were my first thoughts and impressions. My senses never stopped registering the smell even as I listed to our guide tell us that the barracks were actually pre-fabricated in Germany and were intended to be a structure for stabling horses, not men and women. However, the Germans adapted the use for the building, their ideology of seeing the Jews and other prisoners in the camp as sub-human allowing them to make adjustments without a twinge to their conscience. Here, men slept five or six to a bunk, froze in the winter and burned in the summer, suffering from diseases and infections of lice. Sanitary conditions were fit for only the lice to thrive. Inmates were only allowed to use the bathroom, such as it was, twice a day. In the early days of the camp, there were no bathroom facilities and Typhus swept through the camp, claiming 30,000 people, even some guards. We visited the bathrooms, housed in another wooden structure, and then went to the women’s side of the camp to brick barracks where even more women could be put, sometimes up to 1,000 women per barrack. Here, I encountered the smell of terror and death again, but faded somewhat since only the bunks were made out of wood. Life beyond three or four months was an extraordinary occurrence, so the death rate was very high and disease raged through the camps. I realized that I needed to spend more time in my class on those who lived through the selection and worked in the camps. Students need to learn about more than just the gas chambers and killing squads, but about the life of the prisoners and the extraordinary courage it took just to survive a few weeks in the camp.

Destroyed gas chamber #3 at Birkenau

Never shall I forget the ruins of the gas chambers.

Half a mile from the entrance to the camp, the railway lines crossed and the path walked by the doomed to the gas chambers ended. There, on either side of the rail lines, two of the largest gas chambers stood as ragged ruins against the stormy sky. Four days before liberation in January of 1945, the SS had blown up these two gas chambers to hide the evidence of their crimes. On the gas chamber to the right, you could still see the steps where those selected to die walked down to the underground chamber where they undressed and were killed in the chambers. These chambers could hold up to 1,500 people each, though it would take 24 hours to process those bodies through the crematoria ovens above the chambers. I was surprised by how close these chambers were to the main camp as I thought that they were separated more. It would have been very easy to see the chimneys against the sky, pouring forth smoke and flame, as many survivors describe. There were two more chambers further back in the woods to the right of the camp, but they had been destroyed by the Sonderkommando, those prisoners who were forced to work in the chambers, testifying to the resistance movement in the camp, even though all of those involved in the rebellion were killed. Their actions did make a difference and did save lives, the lives of people they had never met, for whom they were willing to give up their own. This concept is an alien one to many of my students, who many times have the mentality that they wouldn’t help anyone if they didn’t know them or if they themselves would be hurt from helping them. They do not understand the concept of helping fellow human beings, whether you know or have anything invested in them or not. This is a story that I must remember to teach to my students so that they will perhaps begin to understand the true meaning of selflessness and that such a character trait is to be desired and not scorned.

Jewish woman with her dog

Never shall I forget the inhumanity of man to his fellow man.

I could never describe everything my eyes have seen today adequately enough to truly do justice to what happened at Auschwitz I and II. What I can describe is the lesson that can be learned from this dark time in history through what I saw. It can perhaps be encapsulated in one moment in Birkenau. We walked through the reception center for those chosen from the transports to live and work in the camps. We began in the room where they undressed, on to where they were tattooed, checked by medical doctors, disinfected with a real shower, and were given the official striped uniform of the camp. It was in the last room that I came face to face with an individual victim once again. Before we entered the last room, we learned that the inmates who worked in the warehouses sorting all of the belongings of those deported to the camps (called Canada because they believed that Canada represented wealth and prosperity) had buried a suitcase full of thousands of pictures they had collected from the belongings of prisoners. In the next room, the photographs were displayed. When we walked in, we saw a wall of pictures. When I walked over, I immediately focused on the picture of a young woman in the upper left-hand corner of the wall. She was holding and petting what looked like a Chihuahua, though it might have been just a small dog. It was the dog that made me connect with her, since I have my own Chihuahua at home with the ironic name of Big Jake. I know how much I love having him to just sit in my lap and let me pet him and I saw in this picture someone else who perhaps had experienced the same thing. I do not know if she lived or died, but I wondered about her fate, and, crazily enough, about what happened to that little dog in the picture. Did he wander around looking for his human, crying at her door when he couldn’t find her? Did someone take him in, or did he, too, lose a home? It was lives like this woman’s and I am sure her family and even her pet that the Nazis destroyed and we must never lose sight of how and why and when and where this happened. We must fight to make sure that we do not ignore the inhumanity present in our world today, either, or we will have failed that lovely, smiling woman with the dog.

Never shall I forget to teach these things, even if I am privileged enough to live forever.  Never.

Re-posted from Laurie Shaefer’s Blog

Apple Tree at Birkenau

Apple Tree Remembers

Standing as a silent witness, Apple Tree Remembers…

Planted by the peasant’s cottage, now a ruin of the final solution…long before the days of darkness.

Tree of knowledge in the garden of life and death.  Offered by Eve – to eat is to die little by little with no understanding.  Symbol of decision – to eat or no?  To the right or To the left?

Knowledge of what happens when neighbors become the enemy.  When hatred becomes the norm.  When chimneys breathe a strange smoke and trains run, heavy-laden, into hidden forests.  Returning empty.  Where tears and crys fall on empty ears.  Where the clock always stands at six o’clock and luggage is left in piles at the railway station.

Apple tree is hollow and stunted by selections.  No rings left inside from the summer days before.  Eaten from the inside out with dispair – blighted from fear.  Concentric circles of health are now replaced with a dark void.  Standing only a high now as a broken man.  Broken bones, broken spirit, broken soul.

Dark, empty center surrounded by bark – gray as ashes.  Ashes of six million. Your bark is poor insulation against the pain.  Bark only a thick as the braid of a gypsy child who crys for her papa.  Bark rough as women’s hands who carry brick for the ovens.

Apple tree survived on the fumes of the gas chambers and smoke from the crematorium.  Inhaling terror, exhaling dispair.  Planted so close that perhaps your branches scratched the bricked-up windows as you scratch our memory today.  Standing symbol of nature’s protest.

Fed by rainwater filtered through ashes – ashes scattered in the meadow only a stones throw away.  Fertilizer for the fields, once human.  Circle of life into life.  Tree of knowledge, nothing is wasted or forgotten. 

Clinging to life with nothing left inside.  Mimicing those who survived, empty inside, altered permanently- yet alive.  Mourning for those who secumbed.  How did any survive?  Stunted and gnarled, yet still reaching for the light.  Refusing to surrender.  Each spring speaks of hope for Israel calls in a dream.

How can you, from the void, yet bear fruit?  This fruit- apples of remembrance.  Fruit bitter and green, small and hard.  Seedless with nothing left to give and no future.  Hangs numb.  Fruit of the tree of knowledge, once accepted and bitten, brings living death.

The fruit falls on fallow ground.  Earth tained with hate and regret.  Regret for the losses, the longing, the lives wasted here.  Small sacrifices for the glory of a fair-haired race.  Ground where sickness was spread out in row upon row of hurt.  Wooden barracks weighted down with human suffering.  Echoing down through the years.  Deceit fed the sickness with promises broken, heads shorn, bathhouses with no water.  Work makes you free…makes you sick…makes you die.

Fruit fall on ground yet too salty to be useful.  Only good for memory.  Salty tears still linger in the soil rendering it toxic.  Too salty, too fearful to start again.  Bitter is the soil of loss.

Apple tree remembers well and bows in pain.  Tree of knowledge of good and evil, standing in the garden next to the crematorium.  Still refusing to leave it’s post.  Guardian of remembrance.

Ctroublefield

Updates on Current Activities

An open letter to the participants in this program:

It has been a few months since our sojourn together through places of great horror.  I’ve been able to keep up with a few of you, and I know that you are already using the tools and information you gained on our journey in your classrooms.

Here are projects that I know about:

Susan Parker began a wiki that would allow our group to stay in touch, to share photos and information, and to encourage each other in our work.

Nancy Macmillan is working with NCCAT staff to coordinate meeting spaces and some events and speakers for the March 2009 Gathering of Holocaust Educators in Charlotte.

On October 25, the majority of the group will be meeting at Winston Salem at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts to debrief our August seminar, to contemplate next steps, to learn about the efforts of our fellow teachers, and to work on getting organized for our part in the 2009 Gathering, which will be held in Charlotte on March 4-6, 2009.

Larry Moore, Chrissy Horgan, Lynda Moss, Susan Bachmeier and Mary Cummens are coming to the Cullowhee Campus in late October to work on several different independent projects.

We have great hopes that our next major meetings will be productive for all of us and that we can look forward to having a program that is useful for our community of teacher-scholars and for the community at large.  In the meantime, please let me know if you have any major events that are going on at your schools, or let us know how you’ve incorporated the themes and ideas we learned about in your classroom.

Keep up the good work that you do.  In a world as divided and crowded as this one, reminding people of the evils of which we are all capable and of the ethical decisions that we are all called upon to make, Holocaust education is a neccessary and vital component.

Jonathan Wade

Stacie Dotson’s Auschwitz and Birkenau con’t

Here it is, a week after our trip and I’m still processing what we saw and what we did.  Inside the former gas chamber at Auschwitz, a memorial now stands where so many people stood and died.

Auschwitz- Memorial in gas chamber

 

 

Birkenau, means ‘birch trees’ German.  There were green spaces all throughout the camp.  When I teach my Holocaust unit based on Elie Wiesel’s “Night,” I ask my students what colors they think about when they think of the Holocaust- black, gray, yellow, red is what they reply.  But the colors did not stop inside the camp- the sky was still blue, the clouds white, flowers and trees would bloom.  I said in a previous post how beautiful this area was, but what I neglected to mention that maybe the area was so lush now, was the site of mass murders.  The site of enormous truckloads of ashes being spread around the grounds and village.  The site of open pits burning the bodies that could not be handled due to the overload in the crematory. 

The inscription on the grave marker reads “To the memory of the men, women, and children who fell victim to the Nazi genocide. Here lie their ashes. May their souls rest in peace.”  Each grave marker reads the same in Hebrew, Polish, and English.  Markers such as these are scattered throughout the camp. 

From There to Here…

I cannot believe that today I am sitting on my couch and yet one week ago I was in Poland and having the trip of my lifetime.  NCCAT’s Becoming Witnesses seminar has changed me in a fundamental way.   I have spent the last couple of hours reading the posts from others and remembering the moments we shared; although others are able to eloquently express their feelings, I feel incredibly inadequate to do so. 

• There is no word that can encompass my gratitude at having been invited to share this trip with such phenomenal educators from around our state. 
• There is no word that can help one understand the hours I’ve spent wrestling with Thorsten’s question: “When did neighbors become Jews?”. 
• There is no word that can scream my indignation that sweet handicapped children like my own would be guinea pigs for the Nazi’s death methods during the T4 program. 
• There is no word that can whisper the reverence I felt as I sat near the Triblinka memorial and thought of the thousands who perished there. 
• There is no word that can sum up my unease as I noticed the juxtaposition between a young girl’s modern pink bicycle and the railcars of the Radegast transport station where Jews were forced into wooden boxes that would transport them to a factory of death. 
• There is no word to illustrate the beauty of the green hills keeping watch over the memorial to the victims of the Plazsow camp or to describe my horror at seeing the homes of the villians who terrorized its residents still standing and being used as private residences.  How does one live in a home with that history? 
• There is no word that can summarize my respect for Janusz Korczak’s devotion to his children as he walked with them to his death rather than have them face that fear alone. 
• There is no word that can translate my emotional connection to a child’s white summer sandal haphazardly piled amidst thousands of shoes the Nazi’s planned to “recycle” after the systematic murder of its owner in Auschwitz. 
• There is no word that shows the massive scale of the Birkenau complex or can capture the smell of the bunks where exhausted bodies stacked like wood for the nights between horrific days.

I don’t have the words to hold onto these memories but my heart holds them all.  They are a part of me now.  And I am forever changed…

Chris Cutshall    8th ELA     North Buncombe Middle School – Weaverville, NC

Juanita’s thoughts on Becoming Witnesses

As I sit here tonight in my comfortable home and look back on the 10 days we spent on this pilgrimage, I find it hard to believe that we saw all that we did. Everyone who has posted so far has done an excellent job describing what we have seen so I think I’ll try to describe what I felt.

I have taught the Holocaust as an English teacher, a theatre teacher, and now as a history teacher. I seriously began this journey in the fall of 2001 as I traveled with NCCAT to DC to visit the US Holocaust Museum. I had no idea that the journey would forever change my life. Since that time I have attended every workshop or conference I could get to to continue to learn more. It seems the more I learn the less I know. When I was given the honor of attending this very important journey, I viewed it as a mission. I felt as if the hand of God was leading me to the places I had studied for so long. Seeing them for real impacted me more than I can tell you. There is a certain pain one feels in the core of one’s being when witnessing the evidence of such evil.

This journey was also very painful and personal for me because I have a son with Down syndrome who I am sure would not have survived the Nazi genocide. I also have hosted two exchange students from Germany in my home who are wonderful young women. I could not wrap my brain around the fact that the same country that had produced my dear Eve and Kira was also the home of such evil perpetrators.

Arriving in Berlin, I had mixed feelings. I wanted to love the city because it is Eve’s home. I also wanted to hate it because of the vile things that were so casually planned there. What I found was a beautiful city that seems to be trying to deal with this terrible history. I saw memorials in places one would not usually think of–like stones under our feet. Our tour guide, Thorsten, called these “stumbling blocks.” He spoke with us about Germany’s struggle to decide who gets to create memorials and how and where they should be. We saw all of the sights that others have written about. The site of the T-4 Program was especially hard for me.

The most bizarre feeling in Berlin for me was the visit to the memorial to the dead Jews of Europe. The gray stones of all sizes were more daunting when inside than I had thought. As I was walking through and talking to my roommate and dear friend, Lynda, I heard my name called. I turned to find my sweet Kira who had come there to meet me. I had not seen her in 4 years–not since the day she left our family to return home. She had followed us all day trying to catch up with us–from the Munich airport, to the Berlin airport, to our hotel, and finally here at the memorial. Seeing her in the midst of these  imposing walls was like finding a way out–a way home. I was elated to see her–but also felt a stab of pain for the Jews of Europe who had no way out. It is so hard to describe my feelings. I was sleep deprived, exhausted, elated, and sorrowful all at once.

The next day was a very busy day for us. We visited the Wannsee House and the other sights that others have described so well.  The train tracks were haunting to me. They were right in the middle of a beautiful, affluent neighborhood. I realized that the deported Jews had walked right by these homes and no one had done anything to stop it. Both the tracks and the Wannsee House made it clear that these sites were in the open–in plain sight. How could people say they did not know? As we returned to the hotel for dinner, I felt so physically and emotionally exhausted and wondered how I would make it through dinner. Walking through the lobby I noticed a pretty blonde head and realized that my other German daughter, Eve, had come to meet us. Suddenly I was happy and excited to see her. I had not seen Eve for 5 years. She had dinner with us and even walked through the Jewish Quarter with us. She has lived in Berlin all of her life but she told me she did not even know these places existed. She even ended up asking out tour guide questions–just like she was one of us. I was struck by how she ,as a German, also wanted to understand more about this history. It seemed that everywhere Thorsten took us, people would stop and join in with our group to listen to his explanations. I am not sure if the people were locals or visitors, but they appeared at most every place we visited.

Berlin was a great experience for me both as a teacher and as a human being. My only regret was that we did not have more time there. I have pieces of both sides of the Berlin Wall given to me by German students in 1991 and 1992, but seeing the remnants of it and the rebirth of a reunited city/country gave me hope. If Germany can work to overcome the history of the World Wars and the Cold War, then we can all work to make this world better.

I will write about Poland on a future post.

Stacie Dotson: Auschwitz and Birkenau

There are no words that can describe the feeling one gets walking around the camps.  It is eerily beautiful, but it shouldn’t be.  It should not have the right to be this beautiful.  Just as each step taken is walking in the footsteps of the doomed.  Maybe God intended for the beauty to lead to peace and hope; to give us hope for mankind in the future.  To remember that even at the darkest moment, there can be light and beauty.   I don’t know how else to describe this place.  It stands as an example of man’s inhumanity toward his fellow man.  It stands for unspeakable horrors.  It stands to honor those that died, those that survived, to remind us “Never Again.”

Auschwitz

Work will make you free

                                                                                     

From Elie Wiesel's "Night"- "And I thanked God for mud."

Stacie Dotson- Friday, Aug. 8

Today we began our day with a tour of Krakow.  We visited the Jewish Quarter of Kazimierz.  There we visited the Synagogue Remu and its Jewish cemetery.  The cemetery had a wall made out of broken headstones.

Wall made of broken tombstones in Krakow

 

We then made our way to the location of the Jewish ghetto in Krakow.  There we were greeted by a small square filled with chairs.  These chairs symbolize the moving into the ghetto by the Jews.  Schoolchildren carried their school chairs across the bridge from Kazimierz into what was now their living quarters.

Krakow ghetto memorial symbolizing the move into the ghetto.

On the corner across from this memorial, stands a tribute to those who did try to help the Jews.  The Pod Orlem Pharmacy (Under the Eagle), owned and operated by Tadeusz Pankiewicz, was a place of refuge for those trapped in the horrors of the ghetto.  Pankiewicz, the only non-Jew with permission to work in the ghetto, gave needed medicine to the Jews in need.  He often helped resistance workers and those trying to escape the ghetto.  Tadeusz Pankiewicz was recognized by Yad Vashem as a Righteous Gentile.

Another recognized as a Righteous Gentile, and more famous than the oft-overlooked Pankiewicz, is Oskar Schlinder.  The actual factory still stands and is currently undergoing renovations.  We were able to look over the construction barrier to get a glimpse of the courtyard.

Entryway and courtyard to Schindler

Many of Schlinder’s Jews were origionally housed at the Plaszow Concentration Camp.  It was establised in 1942 as a work camp, then became a concentration camp in 1944.  The largest number of people confined in Plaszow at one time was over 20,000.  Thousands were killed here, mostly by shooting.

Close-up of Plaszow Memorial

We also visited the Umschlagplatz used to ship the Jews of Krakow to Auschwitz/Birkenau.

Jagiellonian University (if you can say it, you get a prize!)

Our second day in Krakow started at the site of the Plaszow Concentration Camp, on a hill in the city. There were over 10,000 prisoners in this camp, and 8,000 of them lost their lives. It was a former labor camp. There are several memorials there, including one to the Hungarian women who were sent there until there would be room for them to be gassed at Birkenau. There is also a memorial to Polish Christians there, a tall cross overlooking the camp. Hiking down the hill into a small valley we came to Amon Goeth’s house, who was the commandant of Plaszow.

That evening we listened to Aleksander B. Skotnicki, a speaker from Jagiellonian University (pronounced Yagwollonian). He gave a talk on the background of Jewish life in Krakow, which started in the 13th century. Krakow was one of the most important Jewish communities in Europe. In 1939, there were 60,000 Jews in Krakow, or about 25 % of the population. The Germans occupied Krakow on Septmember 6, 1939, and the occupation lasted 5 1/2 years. Hans Frank ruled Krakow from Wawel Castle, a medieval fortress overlooking the city from the Vistula River. Our speaker also gave us some background on Oskar Schindler, who owned the Emalie Factory, or enamal factory. It employed 1,300 Jews during the war, and they owe their lives to him. Schindler has a tree planted in his honor, and was one the first 10 to receive the Righteous Among the Gentiles Honor in 1963.

On Saturday we toured Auschwitz, named for the village of Ocswiecim, which it was built near. Many of the original buildings are still there, and we spend over 7 hours touring the sight. You can read about it, and look at a map of the camp, but you have to see it to grasp the sheer enormity of the size of this place. It is hugh!

Tomorrow will be our last day, and we will visit the salt mine and the Tarvow Gypsy Museum. More later!

Angela

Guard tower at Auschwitz

if its Sunday it must be Wieliczka!

I went through my photographs and journal tonight and counted up 57 different Holocaust related sites, museums, and memorials we have visited in nine days. It is absolutely amazing we have been able to cover so much territory in such a short time. I am not adding in the areas of German and Polish contemporary and historical cultural interest we saw nor am I including sites solely related to the Second World War. We are 24 teachers from different areas of North Carolina teaching various subjects to students from different backgrounds and of various ages.  Each of us will leave Poland tomorrow morning with different perspectives on how to bring to our classrooms and communities the insights and knowledge we have collectively and individually gained from this trip. At a minimum, if you multiply 24 teachers by the 57 sites we visited you will come up with an astonishing 1368 combinations of ways we will enrich the lives of the students we find coming into our classrooms over the next couple of weeks (yes, some teachers will be arriving in Charlotte on Monday and having to teach class on Tuesday).

One of the sites we visited today was the Tarnow Gypsy Museum. This was an incredible museum dedicated to the life and culture of the Roma (Gypsy). It dealt with the positive and negative stereotypes of the Roma people. There are many parallels to Europe’s treatment of the Roma to the way minorities have been treated in America. I plan to reshape many of my lessons based on what I learned today at the Museum. There was also a terrific poster set on the Holocaust and the Roma. I plan to contact the sponsor of the exhibit and possibly get a copy of the entire exhibit to make it available for schools in our state. Please see the street sign below which was erected in Poland to stop gypsies from continuing their nomadic ways of life. The year jumped out at me. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was being signed into law in the United States in order to permanently rid our nation of such signs.

Polish Roadway Sign from 1964

We also visited a memorial at the site of the first transport to Auschwitz. We then walked a little way down the road to a memorial to the Tarnow Synagogue destroyed by the Nazis during the Second World War. We also took a tour over 450 feet below the surface into the Wieliczka Salt Mines. The Nazis used Jewish slave laborers in an airplane parts factory in a large section of the mine to avoid Allied bombers.

I wish to thank NCCAT for making this trip possible. I know that NCCAT has supporters throughout the state and I wish to thank all you also. In less than 24 hours, 24 educators will begin returning to their classrooms and sharing with their students the valuable lessons this trip has provided. We have come up with some great ideas on how we can come together as a community of educators in the future. Even though this has been a demanding schedule, I believe I speak for everyone by saying we will be refreshed and reinvigorated when we reenter our classrooms. As all teachers know, NCCAT tends to have that effect on us.

Thanks again from the bottom of my heart.

 

Lee Holder