Thursday, Krakow/Auschwitz/Birkenau

I wrote an entry last night, but when I pressed "publish post," it evaporated...we arrived to Krakow yesterday on a beautiful three hour train ride through the countryside. Whereas Warsaw decimated in WWII and really had to be completely rebuilt, Krakow was spared, and is a beautiful medieval city with a very old university. It has a large student and young population and a very hip vibe, especially right now as the Jewish Music Festival is going on. I dropped my bags and went out to hear Basya Schechter and her band Pharaoh's Daughter, from NYC. Basya plays oud almost weekly at Bnai Jeshurun on West 88th St. Her music is a very cool Ashkenazic/Sephardic fusion in sound and texts. She has really done some amazing musicological study, and they did a great performance last night.

We did the Yiddish program yesterday in the morning before we left. We did a great job on a very tight rehearsal schedule, and were able to go to the theatre in the morning for a dress rehearsal, where they treated us so well. We were able to borrow some props, work with people for sound and lighting, and really do a nice theatrical piece. I definitely lost some sleep and missed a couple of good lectures with our lecturing professor, but it was worth it to perform at the yiddish theatre of Warsaw!

Today was our visit to Auschwitz and Birkenau. I can't really form words to describe the experience yet. It was extraordinarily powerful and draining to be there. I am very thankful for the presence of our whole group (about 300) for the community support in taking on this journey. Preparing for this day was a little like preparing for Yom Kippur--I wanted to be comfortable in my sneakers, but was I really allowed to be comfortable? I wanted to eat a good breakfast. They never got a good breakfast. I put on one outfit. Not respectful enough. I changed. I brushed my teeth and felt gratitude for the ability to have a sanitary and nice place in which to do so. They got to shower maybe once in a month. As we rode the bus for more than one hour, looking out onto the gorgeous and lush landscape, I considered the possibility of this ride had it been 1942...what would have been the circumstances for us, on a tight train car, shoved to gether, not knowing where we were going? As I walked through the fist "Arbeit macht frei" gate at Auschwitz I, holding my mother's hand, I could not help but tremble and wonder what this would have been for us, had it been us.


We davened shacharit between the barracks at Auschwitz. Those who had aliyot cried. After Torah reading, we made a circle, a sukkat shalom--a canopy of peace--around the survivors among us, wrapping them in our tallitot. The survivots in the middle, their children in the next circle, then unwrapping the Torah and enveloping them in it, then the rest of us with our tallitot. That was one of so many peowerful moments of this day.

To stand where unfathomable numbers of human souls were gassed to death. Zyklon B, producing an "efficient" method of "liquidation."

To stand and see, behind various glass cases, the following: 750 kilos of human hair; a pile of baby shoes; toothbrushes and combs; an entire case piled full of eyeglasses.

To walk along the train tracks that end at death.


That's it, death. The train tracks pull into Birkenau and then they end, at the gas chambers.


That is where we had our memorial service at the end of the day, at the end of the tracks, facing back toward the tower at the entrance. It began with Eli, Eli, the poem of Hannah Szenes: "Dear God, let these things never end, the sand and the sea, the crash of the heavens, the prayers of mankind." Hazzan Rafi Frieder sang Psalm 23, dedicating it to his family memebers who were murdered in Auschwitz. Right here. About 8 of them. Hazzan Alberto Mizrahi chanted El male rachamim (the memorial prayer for the dead). His father had the job of loading bodies from the gas chamber into the crematorium. Right behind where he was standing. There were more moments like this.



Toward the end of the ceremony, thunder began to roll in. The sun remained shining. This is where it got eerie. Hazzan Steve Stoehr began to talk about all the incomplete souls in this place, souls yearning for a resting place. Could we listen for their voices, for their words, while we were here...and he asked us to listen closely and to adopt a soul to take along with us out of here, out of this hell. To take this soul to Israel with us and set it free to rest. And I kid you not, the blackbirds began to gather overhead and the majestic trees began to rustle. Really rustle. The wind picked up. There was simply no question that they were here, that they were speaking to us, moaning to us, connecting with us. All I could do was close my eyes and cry.



There is so much about the Holocaust that is unfathomable, incomprehensible. There is no amount of study, of reading, seeing films, hearing accounts from survivors, seeing tatooed numbers on arms, watching footage of Hitler, that helps me to wrap my hand around this amount of evil. Systematized, careful, meticulous evil. I spent much of the day trying not to dissociate from my body as I walked this place. Birkenau has mostly been rebuilt, exactly as it was--so here I am looking at the watchtowers lining this reasonable sized village of barracks from which human beings were shot as sport, little bomb shelters where guards could hide during raids, barracks extending in neat rows, gas chambers, crematoria, gallows...and the great irony is the depth of beauty of the landscape all around, the stark contrast of life and the promise of life against death.