Prague

Wednesday, 9 July - I've been in Prague for two days now. It is a beautiful city. The architecture is stunning; the beer is good and cheaper than water (really); and like Poland, graffiti is rampant. And best of all, Kellee arrived safely.

We spent our first day getting used to getting around and figuring out the transportation system. After a short rest, we hit the road and began exploring the old town a little (we will be doing an in-depth tour today).

Yesterday we spent our time in the Jewish quarter (or as the map says, Jewish Town). It too is a relic of a time long gone. Though there are still two or three synagogues in operation today in Prague. There are six sites operated by the Jewish Museum, including four synagogues, the old Jewish cemetery (no one has been buried there since the late 1600s), and the beit chaim (where the dead are prepared for burial).

Truly the most spectacular of the structures was the Spanish Synagogue. It is built on the site of Prague's first synagogue from the 11th century. The current structure was constructed in the 1840s and is in a Spanish Moorish style. In a sense, it bears a resemblance to Rodef Shalom in Pittsburgh, although way more ornate and spectacular.

We ended the day in the castle quarter with dinner at the monastery/brewery. Their home brew was called St. Norbert. It comes in three flavors: dark, pilsner, and for the summer heffweisser. So far their dark is my beer of choice in Czech.

Poland, the Final Day

7 July - The last full day in Poland for us. Some will be leaving a bit earlier in the evening. Others tomorrow morning. Me, I'm off to Prague.

This day was split in two. The morning was spent at the salt mines. An awesome sight and achievement in mining and engineering. And as we traveled down the 185 meters there were a lot of salt sculptures in the various chambers (think ice sculptures that don't melt and without the kissing swans). Many were about the origins of the salt mines or the people and animals that worked it. And, it being Poland, religious sculptures too. The coolest part was the salt church. A massive church with salt icons, en-bas relief, and salt crystal chandeliers.

But the true highlight of the day was listening to Ms. Homarata Rosa. She told an amazing story of how her family, led by her fathers sense of right, hid nine people, and helped four others find safe shelter, throughout the war. It demonstrated the true meaning of courage and righteousness. It made me want to know about the other 400 families in the hamlet.

I asked Ms. Rosa about that. What was it that made her father act differently from the others in the community? Weren't there other 'good people,' as she had described her father, in this group of 400 people? It was probably an unfair question. Who knows what that spark is inside of one that makes you act so selflessly in times of duress and in the face of absolute wrong.

The best part was that her father met her future father-in-law after the war in a shop. As the two men talked it became clear that they had followed similar paths. As such Ms. Rosa's father gave her permission to date the man's son, his rationale being that he must be okay coming from a family such as that.

And with a final group dinner, the trip came to a conclusion.

Auschwitz

6 July – Auschwitz. The name brings up images that many of us are familiar with from movies like Sophie’s Choice and Schindler’s List to name a few. But what does it meant to visit Auschwitz? After all there are no more victims living there; no guards perpetrating evil; very few barracks to bear witness.

We begin at Auschwitz II-Birkenau. We drive past the now famous platform, which was built for the Hungarian Jews, and enter the facility. Victims would not have entered through these gates upon arrival. That was left for the privileged few who left for their labor assignment.

What struck me was its size. Birkenau is immense. Sixteen square kilometers. This is what we think of when we hear the word Auschwitz. The death center Birkenau with four integrated gas chambers and crematoria. A small city with 100,000 inmates. I will not inundate you with facts. Facts do not express the emotion that one feels when walking through this place.

We were accompanied by Manny Kolski and his memories on our trip. Manny had the pleasure of spending three weeks at Auschwitz II and I before being shipped out to another concentration camp.

We begin our formal walk through the camp from the platform. Most of the prisoners that were brought to the camp were sent to the gas chambers. Manny described the process that he remembered. It was dark. There was a lot of yelling. This was done to disorient the prisoners. They quickly lined up; men to one side, women and children to the other. Manny was separated from his mother, who was ill. That was the last he saw of her. I will return to Manny’s story in a bit. For now we follow the path of the condemned.

Most of the Jewish prisoners were then marched to one of the four gas chambers. Again, it is the scale of these structures that overwhelm. These are not small buildings. I remember in a class that the professor discussed the prisoners blowing up Crematoria 4. I did not understand at the time why or how that might prevent the killing of innocents. Standing in front of the wreckage, I understand that this was not an act of desperation but an act of rebellion. That it was not just the crematorium that was destroyed rather the entire complex of Crematoria 4, including the death chambers. This was a vertically integrated complex of death. As the Soviet army came near, the Nazis completed what the Jewish prisoners did not get to do; destroy the remaining gas chamber/crematoria complexes.

Manny was fortunate. He was relatively healthy and deemed well enough for forced labor. He was sent to the real showers. That complex was in a different area of the Birkenau. It is a non-descript brick building with a lot of windows. As we stood in the room where prisoners were told to undress Manny related another story of kindness and a minor miracle. Before Manny and the others arrived at the showers, an inmate who knew Manny told him to destroy the upper part of his shoes. If he did so the Germans would not take them away. This was very important because the alternative were rough wooden shoes, Manny said they called them “Dutch shoes,” which were ill fitting and caused blisters. He followed his friend’s advice and was reprimanded by a German for ruining his shoes but they were not taken away. The small miracle was that when he emerged from the shower and was given his striped uniform, his friend managed to return to Manny the ruined shoes. Manny had those shoes for the remainder of the war and they may have been partly responsible for his surviving the ordeal.

Finally, the last impression of Birkenau was a room of family photographs. Photographs from when time was normal and people lived everyday lives. It is very difficult to look at these photos of people whose lives were ended in this place.

The second part of our visit to Auschwitz was at the first camp. The one with the familiar iron gate that says “Arbeit Macht Frie.” This facility is set up more as a museum but it still has that creepy feeling of being a small village of evil, even though its original purpose was a military barracks. And it is small, particularly when compared to the more monstrously efficient Birkenau.

I was struck by the close proximity of all the buildings, particularly what it would take to be free from this nightmare. The distance from the inside of the camp to the outside of the camp was only two or three meters. There was grass on the free side; only grey inside.

Krakow

Saturday, 5 July. A “free” day. Why free? Because it is Shabbat. I took the time to wander around the old town of Krakow. It is a charming city with a lot of character.

This being a very Catholic city, there are a ton of churches. I took the time to take a look at a few of them. One of the churches I stopped in was the late pope John Paul II’s old parish from his days as archbishop of Krakow. It is simply stunning. Here is a picture of the nave. And there was one special pew that John Paul liked to pray in. At this spot there is a silver plaque. It is touching.

Another highlight of the walk was an old café called Michael’s Cave. According to the literature, it began in 1895 but respectable folks wouldn’t visit because there was a brothel on the top floors. So Michael invited art students. As we know, art students do not have a lot of money. As a result they were allowed to pay with artwork, including these fabulous puppets.

Finally, the evening ended with the grand finale concert of klezmer music in the Kazamiercz, the old Jewish quarter, to commemorate the 18th annual Jewish Festival in Krakow. Now I have to admit here that I find the whole celebration of culture that has been basically eliminated from the general population two generations ago a bit strange. However, the music was good and the square was packed.

Lublin & Majdanek

Note: Due to the uncertain nature of internet access at our current hotel, postings will most likely be sporadic and behind.

If ever the day was a study in contrast, it was today, Friday, 4 July. We had an unexpected hour or so to explore Lublin this morning. Several of us took the time to walk through the old town down to the site of the old Jewish Quarter and the castle built by King Kazimierz in the 14th century.

The streets of the Lublin I walked had an old European feel to it with three- to four-story buildings. There are a number of alleys running off the main road like an old medieval town. What made Lublin a bit more curious in its layout was that the Jewish Quarter was actually in the shadow of the castle. It was Kazimierz who invited the Jews of Europe to settle in the Kingdom of Poland, which helps to explain why close to half of European Jewry was located in the East.

We then went to Majdanek, one of the most notorious labor and concentration camps. As opposed to Sobibor, which was hidden from view, Majdanek was off of the main road in plain view for all to see. Many of the structures were burned by the Russians after liberation due to the unhygienic conditions of the camp. However, representative structures were rebuilt and according to our guide Majdanek was operating as a museum of sorts by late 1944 to show the world what the Nazis had done.

I will not go into what the Nazis did at Majdanek. There are more and better informed sources than me. It is a sobering and spread out place. As a transit station Majdanek was a collection site for the belongings of Jews from other places. One of the storage sheds had piles of shoes — thousands of shoes. Shoes. Why keep so many shoes? And who owned those shoes? And these shoes went on for the whole length of the building. According to Jonty (our guide) this is but a small fraction of the shoes discovered at the camp by the Russians. And imagine that something, some personal article of clothing, jewelry, and personal goods filled the dozens of storage sheds on the grounds.

Michael Kaftori Visits His Childhood Home

This post was written by Jennifer Olbum and Jackie Goldblum: 

Michael Kaftori has been with us for two days. We walked with him through his journey, in Wlodowa and on to Sobibor. Besides the synagogue, Yeshiva and the camp, Jackie and I (Jennifer) were lucky enough to experience his return to his childhood home. 

 

The Mayor of Wlodowa was kind enough to offer a car and driver to help Michael with his search.  Michael directed us to his original address but the street names and numbers had been changed.  When we arrived at the address that Michael had given, he immediately told us that this was not the house. 

 

The owners were kind and invited us into their garden.  Our interpreter was not with us, and it was difficult to communicate.  Fortunately Michael was doing well with his Polish, and was having a conversation with the grandmother of the house.  She knew many of the names that Michael was mentioning, and she felt that she knew where his original house was located.  She joined us, directing us to his home which was difficult to recognize due to the renovations that had taken place since the war. 

 As we approached the address, Michael recognized it.  We were nervous and ecstatic with the anticipation of this meeting.  Would the owners of the home be unwelcoming, or would there be no one home?  Tzippy entered the yard with brave enthusiasm and walked around to the back door.  The front entrance was blocked due to current renovations. 

 

As we stood in the back an elderly woman came out to greet us, excited with a puzzled look on her face.  After greetings and explanations, she welcomed Michael and his entourage into her home. 

 

Michael immediately recognized his kitchen and the stove that his mother used to cook on.  The living room had changed but the original wood-burning heater remained. 

 

As Michael conversed with the owner, we discovered that she was the sister of the former mayor of Wlodowa.  She was not the original post-war owner of the house, but she informed us that Jews had inherited the home after the war they then sold it to another owner. 

 

Michael has always felt that the Polish citizens were not welcoming and that Jews were not wanted.  Perhaps this experience has helped him to answer some questions.  The experience has left Jackie and me with pleasant feelings towards these women who have helped us, but with sadness and a sense of loss for Michael.  It reminded us of the loss of his home, childhood and his family.  

Michael Kaftori's story and Lublin

Yesterday was more than visiting Sobibor. There were two other "events" before and after. 

Beginning with the before, Michael Kaftori told his story about being hidden for a couple of years as a teen and then having to make his way in occupied Poland. As mentioned earlier, his amazing journey of struggle and resistance leads him to the partisans. 

We went to his hometown of Wladowa, a small town (big village) of 14,000 people today. We began our trip down Michael's memories by stopping at the Jewish museum and restored synagogue in Wladowa. It is a grand structure for this town. The artwork on the ark is stunning. And this was the place that Michael and his family used to come and pray. He attended yeshiva in a building that was directly behind the synagogue. There are no Jews left in Wladowa today. That part of the town is gone. However, the town has decided to rehabilitate these structures to commemorate and remember this past. 

From there, Tzippy had arranged for Michael to meet the mayor of this town. And we all walked the four or five blocks to the city building to meet with him. The mayor was very gracious and met with our entire group to tell us a little about the town today and to answer our questions. And he talked "privately" with Michael (none in our group, except for our Polish tour guide Viktor and Michael speak Polish). Like in much of Poland, there is very high unemployment (~17% in this town) and not a lot for the youth. There is no university or college in this mostly agricultural section of Poland. For that you have to travel to Lublin, about an 1 hour, 45 minute drive. Which is in fact what we did after our trip to Sobibor. 

Lublin is an absolutely adorable place. It still has a lot of the old architecture in place and for a Thursday night it was hopping. (I decided to head out without camera, fool that I am.) The old town section has been converted (mostly) into a pedestrian walkway with many restaurants, pubs, and shops. The old castle is lit up at night as were the ruins of church built in the 14th century and destroyed in the 19th. Unfortunately, we will not get much more time to explore this town. 

Sobibor

There were lots of flies. And mosquitoes. Discomfort to be sure. And it is hot standing in the sun listening to Michael Kaftori.

According to our guide, Jonty, we have spent more time in the camp than those brought here for their eventual death. Nothing exists at Sobibar. At least not from the death center. Just flies and mosquitoes. Yet the memorial to this place and what was done is powerful nonetheless.

The Poles do not refer to the Nazis. Rather they call them the Hitlerowskieggo, or Hitlerites. This seems appropriate since the Germans needed the help of locals to make the extermination happen.

Sobibor. More than 260,000 people. . . Jews. . . were murdered here in 11 months. Imagine the entire city of Pittsburgh extinguished in less than a year. It helps put a perspective on the scale of the event. And Sobibor is in the middle of NOWHERE. A hamlet approximately 5 km from the "big" town of Wladowa (current population 14,000) along the Ukrainian border.

And we are standing in the sun on a beautiful day in the middle of nowhere being bitten by flies and mosquitoes listening to Michael tell us about his escape from the Sobibor transport and how he ended up eventually joining the partisans. So maybe the flies aren’t so bad. Maybe we should be bothered.

Our path is short from the train drop off. And it is marked by memorials to those known and unknown who were murdered here. Our path takes us to the first of two memorials. The first is a tribute to the six gas chambers that would ultimately fill the place with a representational statue of those who were murdered.

However this does not compare to the tribute to the tens of thousands murdered. And you walk towards the mound from the monument. And it keeps getting bigger and bigger. And the size is overwhelming. And the mound just gets bigger as you approach. And it is constructed from the ashes of the victims.

   

I am silent. 

The Jewish Cemetery in Lodz

Yesterday, in addition to the places visited that were already mentioned, we also went to the Jewish cemetery in Lodz. This place was huge. Just to give a sense of scale, according to the records more than 250,000 people are buried there. Or there are more people buried in the Jewish cemetery than live in the city limits of Pittsburgh.

This cemetery has a scary fairy tale feel about it. While efforts are underway to renovate and restore the graves, if you contemplate the scale of restoring and renovating more than 250,000 gravesites, it is overwhelming.

Aside from the unkempt nature of the cemetery there is an interesting memorial left just inside the gates. There are several ditches. These ditches were dug by the remaining survivors of the Lodz Ghetto. However the Russians were advancing and the brave German soldiers ran away without murdering the final survivors of the Ghetto. These ditches are a memorial to this small miracle.

Manny Kolski's (and our) Visit to Lodz

Day Two: What an emotional day. We spent the day in Lodz, an old industrial town southwest of Warsaw. There are not a lot of nice things to say about Lodz. It is grey, poor, in many areas poorly maintained. And we were there to hear Manny Kolski’s memories of growing up in pre-war Lodz and life in the ghetto. Hearing a first-person account of these experiences is powerful; hearing them in the shadow of the event is overwhelming.

Our day began with us getting on the bus to head to Lodz. Manny told us about his young life in Lodz and through a period of service in the Polish army, including being a POW after the collapse of the Polish army. I could not do justice to any of Manny’s stories though. All I can do is provide a sample of the stories context. What was fascinating was the range of emotion that these stories took us through from sadness to tears to laughter. And this could be in one story! And as Manny spoke, all I could think of was the inner-strength he must have had to survive the experiences in a POW camp and the Lodz Ghetto.

And in the midst of this history of loss we meet with Rabbi Simcha Keller, the only Rabbi in Lodz, at the Jewish Center. Rabbi Keller talked about the growing Jewish community in Lodz — that people are discovering that they have a Jewish heritage and want to discover it. The Rabbi sees his role as providing people an opportunity to discover their Jewish roots through a variety of programs. There is a Jewish Day School in Lodz with 25 students. They hold services on Shabbat and all services, as well as other services. What I still am trying to understand is why would Jews want to live in this country after all that was done in the aftermath of the war? Some would say why should we ignore the more than 800 years of history? Aren’t Jews an integral part of the country? And I think, is there really a future for Jews, aside from the nostalgia?

As we walked through parts of the Lodz Ghetto, Manny told us specific stories related to the locations. In front of this building, a former parsonage that was converted into a prison by the Nazis, Manny related being called in to the office to divulge where people had hidden their valuables, which might have been a problem except that one of the officials recognized him and said that they had the wrong “last name” and that his family were worker and not rich (which was true). The church was converted into a storage barn. 

Here is the Church: 

 

We also made a trip to the Lodz cemetery, but those thoughts and photos will have to wait for another posting.

There is too much to tell on a trip like today as we followed Manny's memories. What was most moving to me was the trip to the Radegast train station that was used to deport Jews to the death camps. To say that it was moving would be to trivialize the event. To compare it to another moving event would be to belittle the experience. 

What I can say is that I approached today with several minds. First is with the mind of a teacher. How can I turn these personal and intimate experiences into teachable moments for my students who in all likelihood will not experience a trip like this? What can I say to them that will not trivialize my experience and not make the moment appear as if it should be in a Hollywood film?

In addition, I looked at this through the eyes of an American Jew whose immediate family did not experience the horrors of the Holocaust, but who did have extended family that did survive the Shoah. And listening to Manny tell us his memories at the places as we stood at those locations made me think of the stories that I never heard. The stories that survivors did NOT tell because that was not what people did in the late 1960s and 1970s. 

Images of the train station monument:

         

And with all of this, I have not even begun to express the sites, sounds, and emotions. 

Bon Nuit.