Thursday, July 9, 2009

A Blink Back at Auschwitz/Birkenau

We're so busy living this trip that I'm having difficulty blogging it. Which is more than OK. I don't want to fall into the trap of thinking I don't have an experience unless I do it online!

Still, it feels peculiar on late Thursday evening in Jerusalem not to have written about last week's visit to Auschwitz/Birkenau. I have pages and pages of notes taken from lectures and experiences that may result in further reactions.

As noted, this was not my first visit to these horrific places.

My first observation is something that wasn't new: I have learned in recent years to make sure that, in considering the enormity of the Holocaust, we don't lose sight of the individuality of every murder. When I see the photos of people being forced from their homes, selected for extermination at the Camps, or lying as dead skeletons, I try to look at individuals in the photos -- not at the totality of the photo. This affected my picture-taking this time as well. I would look at a picture and then select one or two or three people from the picture and take a close-up of them -- and try to imagine who they were.

Later, it occurred to me that the vast majority of victims were never in any pictures. So it's a little more difficult to imagine their lives. But it's good for us to try to do.

My thinking in this area was probably most influenced by Judith Miller's book One by One by One -- an examination of the holocaust country by country that I highly recommend.

One experience that was new was having a Shacharit service at Auschwitz the Monday morning that we were there. Everyone, I think, was inspired by the fact that hundreds of Israeli soldiers were also at Auschwitz/Birkenau that day -- and we couldn't help but think about how different things would have been had their been an Israel and an Israeli army 65 years ago.

In some ways, it was a creepy place to pray. But much more than that, it was an act of defiance, an act of victory, to be able to stand freely and wear Tallit and Tefillin and read from the Torah on the very site of such crimes against humanity.

One member of our group had done some research and provided the names of 150 cantors who died at Auschwitz/Birkenau -- each on and individual slip of paper. The slips were passed out to membes of the delegation to keep handy -- and think about these individuals over the course of the day. (Takes us back to the "one by one" motif above.)

In one sense, there isn't much to see at Auschwitz/Birkenau. I would say that it is likely that you have seen almost everything that you will see there -- in one or another Holocaust documentary or book. Still, the unreality (or, more accurately of course, the horrible reality) of standing there in person is something you can't get from a work of art or literature. The vastness of Birkenau is difficult to comprehend even when there -- but much more powerful in person than in print or on film.

One other observation about Auschwitz is that it was a little unsettling to be here in the middle of summer. I had previously been here in November and March -- times where it is mostly grey and cold and colorless. At this time of year, everything is lush and green. The famous sign Arbeit Macht Frei was almost obscured by the leaves of a nearby tree. Nature's life in such a place of death was a bit jarring.

Well, there. . . now I've said something about that part of the visit.

May the lives of the many people who passed through Auschwitz and Birkenau (and all the other terrible places) be somehow redeemed. It would be great if there were a heaven where they could have gone. But it is most likely that they just went (as Professor Berk used to say -- I didn't hear him use the phrase this time. . .. maybe he has decided it's too graphic) up the chimney.

Oy.

1 comment:

  1. I like your one by one reference Jack. I have only read about these places or seen them depicted in museums, art, literature or film on them. And while they affect me deeply, I am sure it's not as much as if I were there in person. One of my old teachers, Anna Berkowitz, survived Auschwitz. She always wore long sleeved clothes. One time I was in her lab helping her and she spilled some chemical on her and she has to take her soaked jacket off, she was bare armed and that was when I saw her tattoo, her number. It was the first time I had ever seen such a thing.

    I started crying, because I remembered my grandmother telling me about the Holocaust and how supposedly some of my relatives had died in the camps.

    Mrs B made it real for me. She was calm and comforting. She set me down and told me her families story. Mrs. B, her parents and her older brother, who was crippled, were forced from their homes in the middle of the night. They had tried to escape their little town but the roads were closed and they had little money. So they were stuck.

    When they arrived at Auschwitz in 1944, her father and brother were marched directly to the gas chambers. She and her mother went to the camps. Her mother died days before the liberation. She showed me a picture of her family taken a few weeks before they were taken. It burned into my brain. She told me to remember and I have never forgot. That was 1982.

    In 2006 I took Katherine to the Museum of Natural History in Chicago and we stopped at this little exhibit on the holocaust as revealed through a Nazi soldiers diary and snapshots. I wanted to show Katherine some of the truth about what happened. There on one of the pictures was Mrs. B's father and brother staring out at me. I told Katherine their story. It was a transforming experience for us both.

    When I went to the US Holocaust Museum, I tried to spend a lot of time LOOKING at the people, trying to tell them.... Even though I don't know your names or your stories, at this moment, I remember you and we Jews are still around. We survived and we remember.

    Thanks Jack for letting me kind of "experience" the trip. It sounds like it was an amazing journey. -Matthew
    I can only imagine

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