A Christmas Like No Other-Majdanek

Well Christmas just ended in Poland and I am sad to see it go.  The most I felt of my typical holiday spirit was last night at midnight pass as we walked down the street singing and this afternoon at a gas station where Christmas songs played in English in the convenience store.  I have missed my normal Christmas and constantly wonder what my family is doing: Caroline and Alex celebrating their very first Christmas together, Austin opening gifts and finding Santa's stack all by himself, my parents perhaps relieved that Granny is hosting the meal this year.  I miss it a lot, but I am honored to have left it for just one year for this experience.

Stains of Zyklon B

Today we went to a camp called Majdanek and we all experienced a Christmas and Hanukkah like we have never experience before.  This camp is enormous and we spent about three hours in the ice, wind and precipitation wandering about the grounds and seeing places where thousands of people were brutally murdered.  When we first pulled up in the bus the camp was empty and for the first time we heard bird.  It sounded like crows and they made an eerie feel as we entered.  The first thing we did was the same walk the victims would do as they entered the camp.  We walked through the gate and walked into the bathhouse.  Here there was an opening room and then a bath room.  Here the prisoners were asked to remove their clothes and bathe, meanwhile the Nazis next door disinfected their clothes with Zyklon B and stored them in a room.  Today we peered into this room and saw, floor to ceiling, cans and cans of leftover Zyklon B, still full.  If we were the prisoners we would still think we were being sent to work.  It was the next part, however, that sent chills through me and is one of the most incomprehensible things I have seen.  We walked into the next room and saw two door and a little room.  Through each of these big metal doors was a room with a little hole at the top and blue and green stains all over the walls.  This is a stain that can never wash off and bears the history of too many people.   In the small room in between the two larger (but still surprisingly small) rooms is a small window where the SS would look through and witness every single persons death.  There is no denying that they saw every moment of what was happening because it was the only place to look in the room.  We then continued on outside and saw where bodies were stacked and inmates would have to run in their wooded clogs from the gas chamber to the crematorium way off in the distance.  Starving, cold and terrified, doing such a job seems impossible.  I felt like I would most certainly freeze and need to go to a hospital if I were to stand outside all day.  It is amazing what the body can withstand.  It is also impossible to understand the magnitude of the pain.

Gas Chamber

We continued walking through the barracks of the SS men.  They were on the outskirts of the camp, right before the barb wire entrance to where the prisoners lived.  There are guard towers as far as the eye can see.  We entered the camp and found ourselves on what seemed to be the set of a movie.  It looked exactly like pictures and films and it was hard to believe this was actually it.  I could picture role call early in the morning when they counted the numbers still alive and removed those who had died during the night.  It was still hard to make it real, though, until we entered one of the barracks and saw the beds lined across the entire structure.  It became real.  The picture of Elie Wiesel amongst other prisoners would not leave my mind.  We left these rooms and continued to the crematorium where we saw the furnaces, an execution room and a small tomb of ashes.  I learned that the water prisoners used for their occasional showers was heated by the furnaces burning their families bodies and the ashes of many of the victims were used in the Nazi gardens as fertilizer.

Outside were trenches still bloated from the largest mass killing of Jews on a single day at one location.  The Nazis shot 18,000 Jews in one day, making them kneel, staring into the trench where they saw the bodies of those they would be joining soon and shot them into the pit before shooting them.  It is obvious what had happened there and made me want to lay on each hill and cry, telling those people they were not alone and that they are not forgotten.

Enormous Mausoleum next to the Crematorium

Right beside these trenches is the most unusual mausoleum I will probably ever see.  When I walked up the stairs I was greeted with a massive pile of ashes.  A mound better describes it, but it was maybe the size of the hill in my back yard.  It is covered above, but open for all to peer in and see the horrible consequence of the Holocaust and what tens of thousands of people can be reduced to.  In the ashes bones lay scattered all around and the reality of once living human beings, having no idea they would one day be peered at by my group of Americans because of the atrocities that happened to them, overwhelmed me.  It will be impossible for me to go another Christmas day without thinking of the people at Majdanek.  My life is changed.

It is very moving to spend a Christmas with such an amazing, inspiring and large group of individuals who have all sacrificed a holiday and a break to do something they deem equally as important and special.  Words cannot describe how honored I am to be here with all of them and hear their thought and experience through them just as much as through myself.  They are some of the most beautiful people I have ever met and I look forward to seeing how this trip impacts and changes our lives and what great things I know they will go on to do because of it.

And for everyone who will read this.  I know I am publishing this later on your Christmas day, but if you do happen to sit down an read this on the 25th of December 2012 I am equally honored to know our thoughts have been in the same place and with the same people today.  Not many people think about the Holocaust on their Christmas.  We are doing so.  Although it is not a holiday that 6 million of the victims of the Holocaust celebrated, it speaks immeasurably that your thoughts have drifted to them.  I hope if you are religious or not you will send a prayer or thoughts this way and to every single person, Jews, POW's, Poles and even beyond the Holocaust to whom this has happened before and since in places like Cambodia, Manchuria, Darfur, Rwanda.  The list can go on for ages.  Think about all the victims.  Think about all the crimes.  Question if you have had a part in them, directly or indirectly.  Question what you can do about it, directly or indirectly.  But mostly, question yourself and what you know and what you believe in.  Turn off the cellphone, perhaps take out a notebook, a sketchpad or go to a deserted room and give yourself the gift of time to reflect.  Not everyone has the opportunity to do such a thing, but I bet you do.  I will be doing the same.

No post for yesterday.  I will post the story of my visit to Belzec extermination camp soon, but tomorrow I head to Auschwitz-Birkenau so I am sure I will have thoughts and pictures to fill up 5 blogs.  Auschwitz is the symbol of the Holocaust certainly for Americans and for most of the world.  I am not excited, but I am ready.

Merry Christmas to all.  And, again, Happy Hanukkah.

gracyn

Chelmno, The Children of the Holocaust and Sobibor

Alright, I'm a day behind.  I'm gonna fit two days into one post...this might be even longer

12/22

Chelmno (HELM-no)

Yesterday we went to a camp called Chelmno.  This place only JUST had it's first book published about it in the last couple months and Dr. Halperin said he has never met a person in the United States other than people who have intensely studied the Holocaust that have even heard of it and most know little to nothing about it.

About 150,000 Jews, Poles and others died at Chelmno.  They were brought to a historical old palace and told they were about to be transported to somewhere better for them.  They went to the living room which had huge windows overlooking the river, a beautiful view.  They were told to undress so they could was their clothes and then were taken into the basement.  There they were forced into the back of a large truck that had backed into the cellar.  The Germans had rigged the truck so that all the exhaust fumes were all sent into the back and on the drive to the burial pits everyone in the back of the van suffocated.  Our bus took the exact route these buses would take.  It took us quicker, but at the rate of their automobiles it took about 20 minutes.  It was quite a long time.  If after arrival there were some who were not dead, the SS would shoot them.  They had Jews at the burial site who dug mass graves and carried the bodies from the trucks, at the end of the day knowing they would be shot and new Jews would be there to take their place in the morning.  In 1942 the graves were opened and the bodies were burned.  At another point the officers wanted to experiment with more efficient ways, so they had a trench dug and put Quicklime into the trench, ordered people to get in and then poured water all over them, causing a slow and very painful death.  The camp shut down in '43 because it wasn't efficient enough but was again reopened in '44.

With the book Chelmno and the Holocaust.

There are two parts of the Chelmno memorial.  The first site is where the palace stood before the German's blew it up.  There are some ruins of the palace and a small museum.  The state does not fund it, it is all kept up by this one Polish man who speaks no English.  He expected us to come and Dr. Halperin brought with him a picture of him from last year.  Our presence must have spoken to him just as his spoke to us because he invited us into his own little museum in what may have been his home and showed us a copy of the brand new book that just came out that I mentioned before.  He showed us where he was thanked multiple times and what great reviews the book had from major scholars of the Holocaust.  We took a picture of him and the book and then he asked for a picture of us.

One of the burial trenches.

Down the road was the second memorial.  There is a lot here, it is still in a bit of an identity crisis.  There are tombstones, sculptures and the markings from where the burial trenches were.  It is a huge space that was cut out of the forest so to be out of sight and is so obviously for mass deaths.  Only a couple people were ever able to escape this because they were thought to be dead and had to crawl from the grave at night and after that they were in the middle of nowhere with no idea who they could go to.  This camp held so much power for our little group.  Here our little group of bundled Americans were, traveling overseas and then on a bus traveling along the same path and walking along the graves where so many naked, murdered bodies were thrown and we were here to remember them.  It was awful, but also hopeful.  It is hopeful to see so that people will still come from so far away to be there and remember all of these people.  It feels right to be here during the Hanukkah and Christmas season and show our love at a time when they are normally forgotten.  I will never celebrate Christmas again without thinking of the 11 million people who were lost.

The Children of the Holocaust

We returned to Warsaw and went directly to meet with a group called The Children of the Holocaust.  What an honor it was to meet with five survivors of the Holocaust who are still living in Poland!  They are amazingly hopeful and joyful and say it was only after they found one another and could share their stories that they could stop crying because they are not alone.  Their stories are amazing.  I will only mention a few for now, though.

Four of the five survivors that we met.

One lady was put into a car of strangers by her mother who said she would be back in five minutes, she never returned.  She was raised by these people with a new name and was told every day she was a "terrible Jew."  She grew up knowing she was Jewish because of this but knowing nothing about her true identity.  It wasn't until she was 55 that she learned who her mother was and what her own name was.  Her birth name is Clara Gross.  She still does not go by that because she felt she was not actually Clara.

A gentleman was eleven when he escaped the Warsaw Ghetto.  He and his family needed a place to stay that would be safe and a Pole helped him find a home in the German section of the city.  He said it was safer to live among the Germans because they had an ignorant idea of what a Jew looked like and could not recognize them well.  The Poles were more aware of what a Jew could look like and could recognize them also by the way they spoke Polish (not many Jews could even speak Polish because they spoke solely Yiddish).

Another woman who is usually in attendance but could not be there this time, watched her father jump in front of a train and commit suicide.  Her mother took her to jump off a bridge into the ice cold water to do the same but was fished out still alive by a Polish dock worker.  He hid them and took care of them.

All of the survivors stressed that it was because of other people, especially non-Jewish Poles, that they were still alive today.  They also stressed it was because of other people, including non-Jewish Poles, that they had lost almost all their family.

I find it interesting that there are so very few Jews in the country today.  In 1939 at least ten percent of the nation was Jewish but today there are fewer than 25,000 in the whole country.  And most of them are not practicing Jews.  One woman did not know she was Jewish until her mother told her in 1980.  Her mother would not tell her in order to protect her.  Jews have left Poland due to many waves of anti-semitism.  Some because they hid from the Germans in Russia and when they came back did not want to be under communist rule.  A handful have stayed though, "because this is our country too."

It's almost ironic that they call themselves "The Children of the Holocaust" because they were robbed of experiencing a childhood.  One and a half million children died in the Holocaust and there are now 700 of those now elderly Jewish children left in Poland.  How lucky I was to talk with them.


12/23

Sobibor


Today was the most difficult day so far, so I am going to skip the history lesson for today because I am not yet ready to totally relive what I saw.  Here is what I wrote in my journal after I got back on the bus.  This was the only place we went to today.  I urge you to watch the movie "Escape from Sobibor" when you can.  It tells the story of an amazing rebellion, of which many Jews escaped but only 50 survived.

The names and ages of an entire family.

From my journal:

"Just got back on the bus from Sobibor where I had perhaps the biggest breakthrough of feeling.  Looking at the mausoleum that contained the ashes of all who died there I began to yearn for God.  I became so upset that this can happen in the world and is happening as I type this.  As I was walking around the tomb I began to sob.  I wanted the top to be made of glass so that God could witness it every day.  Great scholars of all faiths are asked how such a thing as the Holocaust could happen and I have heard some very insightful answers, but I am just a bit frightened that religion can justify something like this occurring and God being a part of it.  Today I yearned for a God to reach down and give me answers.

I cannot stop crying.  Reading all the plaques on the stones with the names of whole families who were killed together will not go from my mind.  I miss my mom and my family so much.  I think of them all the time.  My brother just got his license and I can only imagine how beautiful my house looks for Christmas.  I want to curl up in my parents bed and watch an E Hollywood story with my mom, a thing we rarely do but I miss so much, while my dad is grilling stake.  I want to see my boyfriend.  I want to be warm under the covers sleeping in late into the morning.  I am so grateful to be here but it is so sad every day.  But I do think it is the only way to do it.  It is still only starting to sink and mean something to me personally.  One trip to one camp is good but acts more as a history lesson.  To really learn you must experience, the best teachers of any subject know this."

The Mausoleum holds the ashes of victims.

It was an emotional experience, but an amazing one.  I really do miss everyone a lot and I am so thankful to my family for letting me come on this trip.  It is changing my life.

Love you all,

g

Jedwabne and Treblinka

Hello!  We are in Warsaw now and I am in love with it.  It is beautiful and large and a city I definitely hope to visit again.  I am working hard on my Polish and converse only a little, but I hope to come back when I know more.  Perhaps I will try to live in the Polish section in Brooklyn...or at least visit it often.

When we arrived in Warsaw, by train, it began to snow.  This was their first snow of the year that stuck.  That night we toured around and then had a reflection group about the places we had visited.  Here is some about them.

Jedwabne

the monument where the barn once stood

The first place we went was Jedwabne.  This is a place that is very controversial in Poland and barely known in known in the United States.  I think it would be hard to find someone who would recognize the name, but it was here that a horrible event, called a pogrom, took place.  The Poles of Jedwabne gathered up all the Jews in their town (over 300) who had been their neighbors, business partners and friends and put them a barn and set the barn on fire.  If anyone tried to escape they would cut off their limbs to make sure they couldn't get out.  The memorial is the outline of the barn and a charred door in the middle.  Soon after this they destroyed the Jewish cemetery just a few feet across the street.  Now all that remains is the wall around the cemetery and the trees that now grow in place of the graves.  All of this happened in sight of two Catholic churches. While we were there I kept thinking was the scene in The Patriot.  This is perhaps the hardest scene to watch in any movie and to be standing on a similar ground where so much hate and violence occurred is heartbreaking. 

As I said, this place is not well known.  It has no real road leading up to it and wasn't until 2011 that this event was even brought up in the country, much less the world.  Jan Gross published the book Neighbors that told the story and asked how neighbors could turn so violently upon each other.  Poland was in uproar.  Some people mourned but most were extremely angry, the Pole's were victims and wanted to remain so.  The evil was in Germany, not Poland.  However, looking back at the history of the Holocaust it was very often that people were turning their neighbors in and helping to capture Jews. 

swastika shadow remains from September

In September of this year the memorial was graffitied with swastikas and the phrases, "They were flammable" and "Don't apologize for Jedwabne."  The vestiges can be made out on the back of the monument.  Anti-Semitism is very present in Poland, something I was surprised to hear.  Our Warsaw tour guide, Olga, said it is amongst the uneducated who believe the Jews killed and persecuted the Jesuits and want revenge.  I do not say this as a fact, but it just as the belief of one.

There are many Poles who mourn the event too.  While we were there a man from the town saw us get off the bus and followed a ways behind us as we walked to the site.  I thought he was making sure we did no graffiti, but he eventually came up and asked in Polish for us to take his picture.  We did so and then he began taking pictures using his timer of him and the site.  While we were at the cemetery I looked over and saw him laying on the snow cradling his head and rocking while sobbing.  This was incredibly moving.

Jewish Cemetery that was destroyed 

church overlooking the barn

Treblinka

Never Again

Treblinka has perhaps had the biggest impact on me so far. About 800,000 people died there.  Treblinka was different than the other permanent camps because it was more like an assembly line.  People were put on trains from the Warsaw ghetto and told they were on their way to a better city just for them.  When they arrived they walked into what looked like a train station and were told they were going to take a shower before entering. They took off their clothes and then were forced down an outdoor corridor to the gas chamber and were gassed within 20 minutes of arriving.  No documents were taken they were just gotten rid of.  Instead of Zyklon B, carbon monoxide was used, a much slower death.  Some Jews from Eastern Europe heard of Treblinka and that it was a better place for them to go and bought expensive tickets with them.  They brought their furs and jewelry and all were taken by the camp officers and sent home to Germany.  After they had been gassed the Jews who had been spared because they had professions that would benefit the troops (like Tailors) would gather the bodies and put them on an enormous grill and burn them.  This often wasn't efficient enough and they would dig mass graves.  

extends until you cannot see

It is important to note that there was also a labor camp that was part of Treblinka.  This is where the Poles and POW's went.  Although many still died from the conditions at the work camp, it was only Jews who were sent to the gas chambers and are part of the 800,000 who died.

When I walked to the main part of the memorial my breath was taken away.  It is breathtakingly beautiful. This bothered some people in my group but I actually greatly appreciated it.  The memorial is treated as a cemetery to those who passed.  I found it almost more of a place of hope and a reminder of life.  When you enter there are large coffin sized stones that represent the railroad.  They travel into the distance and you are greeted with a stone platform.  This is where the people would get off the trains.  You turn the corner and the space from the camp appears.  In the middle lies a large stone monument with a part that says in many languages "Never Again" and around it are many stones.  Different communities that people were from have donated engraved stones and they have been placed where the burial pits were.  They total about 17,000 stones.  This is an overwhelming amount to look at and to imagine 800,000 is impossible. It is to me a place of peace and honor and beauty built specificly for the people who passed and whose names are not even known.  I like this idea.  At Stutthof I felt ashamed to be looking at the ashes shown in the memorial.  I feel those people deserve their rest and piece and something beautiful just for them.  If they couldn't have it at the end of their life, it seems important for after they are dead.  I think the feeling of anger and disgust that I felt looking at them is important to feel at these places, but at the expense of the people lost seems a bit wrong.

there are 17,000 of these

shows where the location of the large human grill

As you can see, the site was covered with snow.  Our tour guide at Stutthof said "These camps speak in this weather" and she is absolutely right.  It was so quiet and still and I could almost hear the stones speaking.  Some were crying, some were screaming, some were humming.  This place spoke to me and I was glad to hear them.  Very few people visit any sites except Auschwitz and an incredible number have been forgotten by most of the people in the world.  I wanted to lie down and just be there for a while.  Someday I hope to come back in the summer and do so. 

Stutthof

Happy Hanukkah!  And happy Winter Solstice!  This is always a sad day for me because I think of the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.  I was fortunate enough to do a play called The Women of Lockerbie about this even and I now cannot reach December 21st without being a little sad.

Anyway, yes, it is December 21st here in Poland and I did not post a blog last night.  I felt horrible as I was going to sleep last night about not doing it, but I was so tired and I knew if I could do it in the morning it would still be the 20th for everyone back home.  So then the morning came...and went.  I'm going to separate the two days, so another post will come in about eight hours.

Yesterday was the first of our sad outings.  We went to the Stutthof death camp.  Most people know little to nothing about Stutthof.  I'm curious about this--have you heard of it?  I feel like Auschwitz is the only one ever talked about.  Anyway, here is some info about Stutthof and my experience of it.

Stutthof (STOO-toff)

small history lesson:

So Germany attacked Poland on September 1, 1939 and opened Stutthof "Concentration Camp" on September 2nd.  They knew their plan and were anxious to put it into action.  At the Wannsee conference only a few months before, about 15 of Hitlers generals gathered to solve the "Jewish Question."  They had concentration camps and ghettos in Germany, but they felt the Jews were still taking up too much land.  They needed to start direct annihilation.  They did not want this to happen on their own land, so they needed Poland to be the place. This is something many people don't realize: There were no death camps in Germany.  Many people died in the concentration camps and they were not meant to be easy to live through, but the only places that had gas chambers and were meant solely for extermination were the camps in Poland.

most would do anything rather than go to the hospital.  the hole in the center of the table it for the blood from the surgeries and injections the doctors would experiment with.

my experience:

We loaded into the bus at 8am and were off to our first camp.  It was an interesting air of anticipation on the bus.  Everyone has been waiting for this for the past few months and now it was happening.  It felt wrong to say we were excited, but we all knew where we were going to change us and that is exciting.

Our tour guide Kate told us a lot about Gdansk as we travelled and about how the land is quite below sea level making it a difficult but good place to farm.  She told us how amber is all around, but has a complicated history in the city.  In the medieval times if anyone found amber they had to give it to the royalty who burned it to create incense.  Later it was a law that a fistful of amber could buy you a slave.  During communism the amber found was crushed and destroyed.  Now it is a popular thing for jewelry and little boxes and carvings.  It is quite pretty.  She later told us about the storks that live in this area and how one in four storks in the world are from Gdansk.  They build incredible nests that weigh around 1 1/2 tons and are considered a symbol of hope.  After the Germans evacuated the area they burned all the dikes and the area flooded for years.  When the water left it was then left covered with rats and the storks were the first things to return and eat all the rats allowing people to come back.  Most homes in this area have a sculpture stork on their roof or in their yards because of this.

As we were getting closer to the camp, I noticed we were following along a railway line.  It looked smaller, though, than the tracks used today and I soon learned those were the tracks that brought the people to Stutthof.  We were following the exact same route.  

Soon we were pulling into the camp.  Kate pointed out the commandant's home, which is extremely well preserved.  It is a lovely, large home at the top of the hill.  Able to look down and into what was going on.  We drove in a bit more and came to a gate.  It was that most people would get off their train and enter.  They were treated to a "Welcome Comedy" where they were hit with batons and bitten by dogs.  They then entered the "Death Gates."  One prisoner asked, "when can we leave?" and an officer replied,  "do you see that chimney?  That is your only way out."  Their clothes and shoes were removed and they were given the infamous striped outfits and wooden clogs.  We entered into the room where this happened and there is a collection of some of the shoes found.  Look at the picture below...these are just some of the shoes, if you look on the back wall you can see a mountain of them.  There were many of these.  

Walking through the gates was indescribable.  The camp is perfectly preserved and you see the barracks around you, the SS officers large brick home towering behind you and in plain sight the gas chamber and crematorium.  All of these are original except for the crematorium structure.  Walking through the barracks you can feel the people in there.  Up to 200 people were kept in one tiny room, three to a bunk that I could barely fit on.  Before the bunk beds were introduced, they would sleep on the floor and have to rotate every hour so one side didn't freeze.  You couldn't leave to use the restroom without permission.  Imagine as a woman not being able to get up to use the restroom at certain times in the year.  At one point I found myself leaning up against a wall and it occurred to me the history that I was becoming a part of by being there.  

Barracks post with engravings

furnaces

inside the gas chamber

We walked through the barracks and then began walking to the gas chamber.  The gas chamber and crematorium were right next to each other.  It's still hard for me to process that I saw the room where close to 85,000 people were murdered.  There is a hole at the top of the roof where the gas was pumped in and all around it is still black.  It is an experience that I couldn't put together there and honestly I am still have trouble comprehending.  I sometimes want to cry when I think about it and other times I just feel completely text book.  It's just so huge.  

We then went into the crematorium where they had the original furnaces where they would burn the bodies.  There are flags from the countries of people who died there and it is very reverent.  It is kept almost like a cemetery.  

Near that is the memorial given in honor of everyone who was a victim.  This is something I still don't know how I feel about.  One side of the memorial has a glass strip horizontally across it where you can look in and see all the ashes that were found upon liberation.  There are chunks of bones all throughout.  It was hard to see and hard for me to deal with.  I don't feel like the little that's left of these people should be on display for the world to see.  The camp then became for me more of a monument to the evil of the Nazi's and less of a place to grieve for those that were lost and remember them so that it will never happen again.  I think this is okay, but I prefer the message of the second because we are never better because we feel hate.

It was a very powerful first day and there is so much more to talk about involving Stutthof, but I must go to bed.  I'm looking forward to writing about what we did today.  It was extremely tough, but very rewarding.    If you want more info or have questions or if I seemed to have left something out tell me!!

g

It's begun:

 Gdansk


Well, I am here!  Before you start reading I have to say: I am extremely tired.  Like running on very little sleep for the last 48 hours tired, so I am not going to review this for punctuation, spelling and idh;io errroijiuohs,

Thank you for understanding :)

I'm going to break this down so you can skip or know where to go back to:

What I Packed:
For those of you who are concerned about my constant losing or forgetting here is my list.  You may tell me what I forgot or what I am likely to lose, but I think you will be impressed by the light yet effective packing...It's all in two carry-ons...and smaller ones too!

coat

long underwear

2 pair smart wool socks

snacks - milky way, special k bars, fruit strips

Emergen-C

face warmer

hat

outer gloves

umbrella

hand/foot warmers

stocking

passport

journal

pens, pencils, sticky notes

camera

deodorant

small toothpaste

lotion

toothbrush

cherry blossom spritz 

razor

advil PM

excedrin tension headache

brush

face wipes

pj pants

pj shirt

blue bra

SMU long sleeved shirt**

navy long sleeved shirt**

folded backpack

inner gloves

camera charger/bryan's pill

everything I brought...

camera case

slippers

3 jeans

white fleece

camera case

eye cover

cough drops

detergent 

phone

phone charger

3 hair bands

converter

padded sports bra

2 t-shirts + white long sleeved shirt

brown shirt

make-up

discman

computer charger

9 pairs of underwear

bananagrams

swimsuit

bug spray

Traveling
After saying goodbye to Bryan and going through security with no problems (even though I forgot to remove my liquids from my backpack!) I headed to my gate.  The American Airlines flight to Frankfurt, Germany was to start boarding at 2:40 and I was almost three hours early.  I sat down to work on stuff-or play on facebook-and was sad to see DFW still has no free wifi.  This is silly.  I called my parents, sister and brother (HAPPY BIRTHDAY AUSTIN!) and then sat and watched sky chef load the food onto the aircraft.  It was about 2:15 when the voice came on the intercom and told us our plane was broken and to stand by.  This is where the story could end tragically, but I have great news--American found us a new plane, removed all the food and luggage already loaded from the first and taxied it to the next plane and got us in 5 minutes early to Frankfurt.  Sure the plane was crappy and only had a couple TV's and didn't serve us free wine like all my friends on the Lufthansa flight, but boy did they make up for it.

On the flight I was seated next to an army guy who was being sent to Germany instead of Afghanistan where he will take care of our injured soldiers.  He is not thrilled about this change of plans.  He was very kind but had extremely large elbows and I felt a bit cramped between them and the window.  Our meals were excellent, Cars II was not as good and with about 6 1/2 hours to go I popped half a sleeping pill and dozed off.  I woke up to the smell of coffee and croissants and we had just an hour and a half left.

When we (I should mention I was traveling with only two other people from the trip, the rest travelled lufthansa or went to Berlin earlier) got into Frankfurt we began by waiting in multiple wrong lines.  Unable to read the signs and without any tickets to our next flight we scurried around the airport looking for customs and where we were supposed to be.  Many people laughed at us but eventually we made it to our gate and met up with the rest of the group.

About the group:
We are a group of 21-
9 students (mix of graduate and undergraduate)
4 SMU professors
2 SMU administrators
3 Dallas Professors
The head of the Dallas Holocaust Museum
An interested community member
A father of a student

back to traveling...

My Polish Snack

So we had to go outside and take a bus to our tiny plane and finally we were off.  The final lap of the trip...sort of.  The plane ride was fun. My seat was next to one of the SMU professors whose son graduated from the theatre program the year before I got there.  I know of him and could probably recognize him on the street though he would have no idea of my identity, but I enjoyed speaking as if we had some kind of decent friendship and had spoken to each other.  I then turned on my Polish CD and worked a bit on that.  The man behind me fell asleep and snored extremely loud.  Eventually we were given snacks and a drink.  I had water (wodah sounds like VOH-dah) to drink and the snack was this peculiar sandwich with a yellow butter but not butter spread and two slices of cucumber.  In the United States this would have been insulting, but in Poland it was delicious.

Gdansk, Poland
Okay, so we got to Gdansk Poland safe and sound and with all the wheels on our plane.  The airport is undergoing some major renovation and is going to be absolutely stunning.  Prettiest airport I think I have ever seen.  We were picked up by a bus driver and tour guide who have been working with our group for a number of years.  The guide was so excited to see us.

On our way to the hotel, we had a talk about Gdansk and the history of Poland.  Poland's history is very complicated and Gdansk's is even more so.  She said young people don't want to study about either because it is too complicated.  So we only got a brief study of it and then we were at our hotel, right near the old part of Gdansk where the ghetto was.  We passed the SS house from the war and the hospital where the Germans removed all the patients and sent them to camps.  We walked around this area and looked at the shops full of amber and the beautiful Catholic Church's all around.  We made it to the Motlawa River, which was the cause for much of Gdansk's darker history and decided we were starving for dinner.  It looked and felt like 9:30 pm but it was only 4:00.  Eventually we found a place that was open and went in.

Dinner

Our very Polish Restaurant

Dinner was incredible.  The inside looked like a mix of a castle and my grandpa's elephant room completely decorated in Polish historical things.  I saw a samovar my mom would have died for.  We were in our whole group and were extremely early to be eating dinner but the staff was extremely pleasant and fit us all at two round tables.  For dinner I had hot borscht.  My goodness.  It was good.  I can't wait for more.  At the end of our meal a woman came and played the accordion and sang "Somewhere my Love" from Dr. Schivago.  My dad would have loved it.

Tomorrow
Tomorrow we are off to Stutthof camp and then we will take a train to Warsaw in the afternoon.  After today the trip is all Holocaust sites, that is the majority of what I will be writing about from now on.

***Thanks for reading!!!

To Begin

Yesterday was the 65th anniversary of the recognition of genocide as a human rights crime punishable by international law.  It seems hard to believe this could only be 65 years ago.  This is younger than my grandparents. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is just as young and still quite abused.  Obviously many steps forward have been taking in regards to nations looking out for human rights abuses and many NGO's such and Amnesty International work constantly to protect our rights, but there is still much that we do not see--and a lot we simply choose not to look at because it is scary or inconvenient.

Next week I leave for Poland.  I will be spending Christmas break going daily from each Nazi death camp across the country.  On Christmas Eve I will be in Lublin. On Christmas day head no to another camp.
When I tell people about my Christmas break I get various responses. Some people make jokes, others seem confused.  Many people have asked, "Why Christmas?" and I understand the remark.  Being at a place where millions of people were exterminated is sobering and humbling enough without spending precious holiday time away from family and loved ones.  But I think there is something special about the time.  Christmas and Hanukkah, or whatever holiday you may celebrate around this time, have always been a chance for reflecting on the year, on life and appreciating what you have been given.  I have been given a lot.  I have an amazing family, have attended amazing schools, and am blessed with an abundance of amazing friends.  This is one year where I can experience something different.  What's going on in the world doesn't stop just because it is Christmas, no matter how much we wish it could. Our little group of frozen Americans traveling by bus around the country will experience that along with the unity and common humanity that can be discovered by our awareness.  I think the people on this trip, only one of whom I have known before, will become another family.  Every Christmas after this I will think of my little Poland family and of all we witnessed.  Everyone knows about the Holocaust, but can they really feel the magnitude of it?  I know I do not and probably never will, but this trip will give me a glance.

I suspect I will be changed by this trip.  I'm not sure how, but I already feel different just in preparing for it. Christmas will never again be the same as it has for the last 21 years.  While this scares me, I also feel liberated by more consciousness of the world.  What happened in Europe during World World Two is over, but the consequences are still alive today.  I plan to prepare a solo performance piece based on my experiences to be performed in March or April of 2012.  Many of my ideas will be taken from what I write in this blog and how you might respond.

Note: This blog will not be solely about my experience in Poland, but the next few weeks will definitely be centered on it.

Thank you for reading.  Please visit again!

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