Looking Through A Lens

This post is going to be different than the others. Instead of writing about my time in Israel, I'm going to try to explain my trip to Poland. Since I was 14 I wanted to travel to Poland to learn more about the Holocaust due to a presentation I had to give in Hebrew School. I learned more than I thought I would. Not only about the Holocaust but about Jewish life in Poland and how it relates to me and to the rest of the Jewish community. This post is going to be more on the serious side and hard topics will be discussed. ***Also note, I may have a few facts wrong.***

Key Terms:

Concentration Camps/Labor Camps - Prisoners of War (POW) were collected in large camps to work. They would die due to starvation and disease.

Death Camps - Usually smaller than labor camps. Used for only killing. Large death numbers. Killings by shootings, mass executions, gas chambers.

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Why did you come to Poland?

"My grandmother was from Germany and she moved to Israel before Hitler came into power and I wanted to see the history and try to live in the past to get a better understanding of what happened." -Geva Ozeri

"My family is from here originally and I think it's important to come and learn about the stories. This was a trip I knew I was going to make at some point I wanted to witness what happened so I can have these stories." -Yonah Davis

"I was extremely curious about the history here, the history of the Jewish people. Personally I don't know if I have family from here, but I definitely have family from Eastern Europe. There's a lot of things I still don't know so I wanted to come to Poland to experience it." -Ethan Cohen

In Judaism, cemeteries are seen as a celebration of someone's life. We have time to mourn but the large statues and designs above each grave reminds us of a life. We visited the Jewish Warsaw Cemetery first. The graves had Hebrew, Polish, or a mix of both. 250,000 graves can be seen here including those from the Warsaw Ghetto. In all cemeteries we visited, the bodies lay with their feet toward the entrance so when the Messiah comes then can easily get up and exit.

Warsaw is now a modern city. Office buildings have replaced the lingering sense of Jewish life. Many people are not openly Jewish and in Krakow, we ate lunch at the JCC (Jewish Community Center) and heard the director speak about the daily walk-ins that have found out they were Jewish and want to know more.

The night before Majdanek and Bélzac we had small group meetings. We discussed our first day going to the cemetery and POLIN Museum (mainly focused on Jewish life during different time periods in Poland) and also touched on the next week. Personally I did not like the group meetings, but I know they helped people because it was a comfortable space for them to talk about their emotions. Usually, we would watch a movie as a whole after the meetings that also touched on what we would be doing the next day. For Majdanek and Bélzac we watched "Escape from Sobibor", which was a death camp we did

not get to visit.

Majdanek

It was surprising to see Majdanek in the middle of the city. There were apartments surrounding the camp. It was used as a labor camp, but when Belzéc, Sobibor, and Treblinka closed it was used as a death camp. It was obvious that this camp was not made to be a death camp because the crematorium was outside the camp all the way in the back and the small gas chambers were located in the front. This meant the Jews who worked in the gas chambers had to put bodies onto a wagon and haul it to the other side of the camp. We walked the length and it was a decent trip up the small hill, but I couldn't imagine what it would be like in the heat or freezing cold without water and a ton of extra weight.

Majdanek was a very windy camp and in the cold, the prisoners were not given the proper clothes. One prisoner wrote about the shoes and how "personal each shoe is to a person". The prisoners were given shoes made out of paper and wood that would easily fall apart in the snow, rain, and when they had to run to work (which was all the time). When Yossi (our Nativ director and tour guide for Poland) was reading the excerpt we were looking at a big room full of shoes. The giant metal crates full of shoes were filled to the brim. I started to tear up. I never thought shoes to be something so important, but they hold a deeper meaning when you're a prisoner.

There were five fields for working and it was divided into what prisoner they were (war, criminal, political, etc.) and every morning they would have to run to the field. The guard's dogs would nip and claw at them and whenever a prisoner was injured (with so much as a rash) they would be taken to the gas chamber. Over time, the gas chambers left a blue tint. This was because of the use of Zyklon B. The guards learned that if the prisoners had a warm shower first the warm water would open their pores and that would allow the gas to go into the body quicker

One bunker could hold up to 500 prisoners. The wooden frames were covered with hay and thin wool blankets. The bunkers were surrounded by two wire fences and were guarded with watchtowers. There was a kitchen that served soup and bread, but as more time passed the rations of food became smaller for each person. The workers built a small monument with three eagles at the top. The eagles represent freedom and a desire to escape however the guards see it as something the prisoners built for them to symbolize their power.

Other than the shoes, the crematorium was the hardest stop. Before bodies were burned, they were put on a table where other Jews would be forced to cut open their stomach to reveal any jewelry they might have swallowed. The jewelry would be melted down and be formed into rings or other jewelry for the guards. Before entering the crematorium, we passed through a somewhat small gas chamber. The crematorium in Majdanek (like all other camps) was built by professional engineers from Germany or Russia. It brings me to chills that engineers were paid to build something so evil. Each vault in the crematorium could fit three people and in Majdanek, the heat from crematorium would travel underground to heat water for the guard's baths whereas other camps had a chimney.

We also stopped at three large ditches that were dug for mass executions. We finished our tour at the mountain of ash. At first, I didn't register what it was, but when Yossi lit a candle and we said a prayer it hit me. A felt a few tears on my face.

Belzéc

I don't know if you can tell by the photos but Belzéc was a small death camp. The train tracks outside of the entrance marked the beginning of the camp and the line of trees marked the end. The camp was transformed into a memorial for the 500,000 people that were killed. No one at this camp survived except for the four prisoners who managed to escape and without the survivors, we would not have known that this place existed.

Before we walked the small path, we went into the museum. To me, the most exciting part of the museum was a world map that had every city in Poland and a line from each city that led to Bélzec. A blue light signaled a city whose people were deported to the camp every month. We also entered the largest gas chamber I would ever step foot in. Yossi was telling us Bélzec's largest gas chamber could fit 2,000 prisoners. I started to walk towards the end, but I got called back. It looked like a giant storage room. We could feel the cold room in the empty space.

We walked the straight line through the memorial. Thick wire stuck out of the grey stone and as we continue to walk, the higher the walls got, trapping us in. No one talked except for Yossi who was reading a short story from one of the survivors. At first, the prisoners were buried, but the head commander found this to be ineffective so a crematorium was built. This meant that all the bodies that were already buried had to be dug up and taken out of the mass graves.

When we reached the end, we held our own ceremony. I read a poem, others read another short story, and we all listened to songs that related well to Bélzec. As we were heading back to the bus, a list of cities were written in the stone to show which places were affected by Bélzec.

Shabbat

Shabbat in Poland was very meaningful for me. We stayed in Krakow and before we went to the hotel, we toured the three synagogues that were still active. One was simple and elegant with white designs on the ceilings, the second had grand details that I could have looked at for hours, and the third had a cemetery connected to it.

We had a short break before we needed to be ready for Shabbat and a few friends and I ate lunch near the river before exploring some of the city. We ended up at a cute cafe and ordered hot chocolate. It was different than what they have in Israel and the States, but it was still good.

We had Kabbalat Shabbat in a synagogue/museum/bookstore. The room was small and there were family photos hanging up on whiteboards and after our davening finished we had time to read about the families. Dinner was in a room that looked like a place for live music and there was a small restaurant next door where the food was from. We had salmon and it was great. Salmon is one of my favorite meals and the company was even better. I sat in the center of the table so I was able to participate in most of the conversations.

We returned to one of the synagogues we visited on Saturday morning for services. The shul was active and very busy because there was a Holocaust survivor who gave a quick speech at the end of the service. For lunch, we went to the JCC. Before lunch was served we listened to the director of the JCC who was originally from New York, made Aliyah (moved to Israel), then followed a girl to Krakow where he created the JCC 11 years ago. Unfortunately, his relationship with the girl did not work out, but the JCC flourished. Before the Holocaust, 75% of the Jewish population lived in Poland (that's 3.5 million jews!!) and now it's hard to get back that number but with the daily visits from people, the number is slowly rising.

Most families in Poland don't tell their children they are Jewish until they are on their death beds. However, children can recounter weird traditions like eating a type of cracker (matzah) in April or looking for three stars on Shabbat. Families keep their Jewish identity a secret in Poland and after the war, many Jews married a non-Jew so they can keep living there because two married Jews don't want to live in Poland with the amount of Anti-Semitism. In Krakow, most Jews don't openly keep Shabbat. The JCC is a safe place and a place to learn. When people come into the JCC they are not affiliated with reform, conservative, or orthodox Judaism, and that's okay. In fact, the director's future wife came into the JCC to learn more about her Jewish identity and she now works as the chef.

The rest of Shabbat was very relaxing. We had a few hours and a few of us went to the hot tub that was located in a room of just windows and overlooked all of Krakow. After Shabbat, we took the tram and went to Old Krakow. Many shops surrounded a huge open space with a monument, but the shop that caught my eye was the beautiful chocolate shop. My friends and I ordered truffles, hot chocolate, cakes, and so much more to sample and each food was fantastic.

Auschwitz

Auschwitz was an abandoned military base and soldiers took 300 Jews from the neighboring town to complete the final touches. The entrance is in German and it translates to "Work will set you free". The "B" in one of the words was upside town which represents a small sense of revenge.

1,100,000 people died. 200,000 being children. This labor camp was huge and because of that many different minorities were placed here. War criminals, POWs, Poles, Germans, Jews, and so much more. This was the only camp with uniforms and tattooed numbers. There also different symbols on the uniforms to clearly label each minority. A major challenge was the language barrier. People came from Norway, Romania, Finland, Denmark, France, and more.

People were told there were going on a trip and to pack what was necessary. Since they didn't know where they were going they packed their necessities. We went into multiple hallways in different blocks. Piles of glasses, shoes, pots, hairbrushes, and over 1,000 kg of women's hair were used to make supplies for the soldiers. It was a really hard tour, but what really hit people was block 27: the Jewish bunks.

It started with films of people before the Holocaust. They were happy. Kids were playing outside and couples were getting married. We read statistics about how people were killed and how many, but something that hit me the most was the children's drawings. A really talented artist was asked to copy some of the children's drawings that were found in bunks. It was beautiful what the artist was able to recover.

Statistics in Aushwitz - some clothes that were collected:

Men's clothes Children's clothes Ladies clothes

coats - 99,000 coats - 15,000 coats - 155,000

shirts - 132,000 shirts - 3,000 dresses - 119,000

pullovers - 9,000 girl's dresses - 9,000 shirts - 125,000

trousers - 62,000 girl's shirts - 5,000 skirts - 30,000

underwear - 38,000 shoes - 31,000 shoes - 111,000

Birkenau

Birkenau is bigger than Auschwitz. The train tracks go inside the camp and stopped at the end. At the end of the tour we walked on the tracks to the end of the camp and it kept going. I kept looking up and every time I was in shock with how much I still had to walk.

Four crematoriums are built in the camp and the fifth crematorium was blown up by the prisoners and when Birkenau was forced to close, the guards blew up the others. We were still able to see the outline of all the crematoriums. The gas chambers were connected to the crematoriums so the bodies could be moved easily.

There a lot of people at both of these camps and for me it was overwhelming. At all the other camps we toured there was no one. Yes, Auschwitz and Birkenau killed the most people, but people were killed at all the camps. Did other people not know the others existed? Did they not have time to visit the others? Understanding the Holocaust means trying to understand all of it, and it was hard to understand how everyone was at the two biggest camps, but no one else was at the others.

We spent the day in a cemetery then back to Warsaw. In the cemetery, Yossi spoke about the people from the Lodz Ghetto. About 42,000 people were killed. The IDF made small signs made from stone and labeled each stone with a name or "unknown". Some of the graves were grand (as seen above) and others were a slab of white marble, which was still elegant.

The cemetery is still active and there are four graves that were placed in the memory of four young adults who were victims of a stoning due to Anti-Semitism.

In Warsaw, we toured a few memorials we didn't get to visit in the beginning of our trip. We spent the most time at Mila 18, where the rubble and bunker of the Warsaw Ghetto Rebellion were placed. Residents of the ghetto rebelled for three weeks. It surprised everyone and it was the most successful rebellion during the time period. Mila Street is the place of rest for the hundred of fighters. Here is a short excerpt from the rebellion:

"These ruins of the bunker at 18 Mila Street are the place of the rest of the commanders and the fighters of the Jewish combat organization as well as some civilians...After three weeks of struggle many perished or took their own lives refusing to perish at the hands of their enemies. There were several hundred bunkers built in the ghetto, found and destroyed by the Nazis, they became graves."

Tykochin

Tykochin is a very small village outside of Treblinka. As WII was ending, the Nazis gathered the small Jewish community and drove them to the middle of the forest. There were three large pits dug into the ground. They divided the community and shot them. If it wasn't for a few kids that escaped just in time, no one would know about this. The area was turned into a memorial. Stones and dead flowers laid around the graves.

Treblinka

Treblinka was the last place we were going to visit and it was in the middle of nowhere. It was a death camp and most of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto were brought here. 800,000 people were killed. 17,000 people could be killed in one day and a few thousand could be killed in three hours. The camp was surrounded by trees because when the allies were closing the camp, the Nazis wanted to get rid of as much as possible. Before the camp was closed, methods like covering the wire borders with leaves, was a way to keep some of the camp hidden from its prisoners. Instead of a crematorium, large pits were used to bury the bodies and they were lit on fire and the old and sick were shot immediately.

The camp was memorialized. The train tracks were replaced with slabs of stone laid horizontally and the gas chamber was replaced with a big stone and a carving of something at the top. 17,000 stones of different sizes were placed in a large field. We were given time to light a candle near any stone. The wind was terrible and it began to rain, but after some help, I was finally able to light my candle. As I was walking through the stones I thought about who the people might be. Looking at 17,000 stones made it easier to imagine that the people who were killed had a life just like me, which made it more emotional.

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There are people who don't believe the Holocaust happened. I even had a hard time comprehending everything. There were people in my group who couldn't fathom something like this happening.

By the end of the trip, many people felt feelings of discomfort, terror, and pain. This was not an easy trip and we had many lessons before the trip to try and prepare us. However, no amount of classes or discussions can prepare anyone for what we saw and learned about it, and because of the trip, we are all united together. We have special memories that we can't have anywhere else. I feel changed. More knowledgable. I feel a sense of closure, which I would have never gotten if I didn't go.