Day Four: Images to Ponder

The Sound of Silence

Oswiecim was the Polish name.

The Germans renamed it Auschwitz.

It was once just a little town.

People still live there, in the shadow of terror.

They go about their lives.

They never asked for or wanted the camps to be built.

Many of them, too, lost their houses in the war,

or came after the war for work.

Living there, they say, isn't uncomfortable,

but talking about what happened is.

What do you see in this photo?  

And what don't you see?

The snow covered hilltop was once the site of the Great Synagogue of Oswiecim.

It was destroyed at the beginning of the Holocaust.

Here, two thousand "progressive Jews" from the early 1900s came to pray.
Now it is a quiet hilltop.

What does it mean to have been a town where 60% of the people were of one cultural group,

and now, not even one person from that culture remains?

This man was the last Jewish man of Oswiecim.
Can you imagine him as a teenager?

Here are two collages I made of photos from the Auschwitz Museum.  

People used to live here.  Children... Adults...

Their communities bickered over congregation rules.  

They held fund raisers.

They had love stories.

They laughed and cried.   Some survived.  Most did not.

Adults of Oswiecim

Children of Oswiecim

Even among the people photographed, do you see how diverse they are?

Who do you relate to?  Why (or how?)

Resistance

Take a look at these photos from the Auschwitz (Oswiecim) Museum.

What are they doing?  Who is doing it?

Boys and girls, adults and children, Polish people (both Jewish and non-Jewish)  work together.

They are digging up ditches in the roads to try to make it more difficult for the Germans to invade.

They even looked hopeful.

A Quick Comment on the Death March

Footsteps in the snow at the site of the Great Synagogue

When the Nazis knew that the Soviets were getting close, they did a few things VERY quickly.

*    They burned the crematoria at Auschwitz-Birkenau (the larger camp).

*    They burned as many documents as they could.

*    They led many prisoners on a winter walk of great duress, sleeping outside in the snow, to another prison camp.

We walked about fifteen in the snow.

I wouldn't have made it.  That's all.  

Thank goodness for inhalers!

Thank goodness for SOOOOO much.

I'll never understand the cruelty.

BEGIN AGAIN

Survivors, soon after escape, wanted to have their photos taken in uniform.
BEAR WITNESS.  Do not forget.

Many of the survivors wore scarves, hats or even vests with the blue and white stripes of the prison uniforms today.

At first it was jarring.  Why would anyone want to relive something like that?

But I realized it was an act of courage.  

"I survived.  You can't take me away.  This is part of who I am. I won't forget.  Never forget."

Reclaiming identities

I was just pondering the red tape of getting all these identity cards for people who had lost so much.

It took A LONG TIME to sort out lives after the war.

Where will the orphaned children go?

Where will the refugees stay?

What country or countries will be home?

This still has a big effect on our history and on current events.

It also is relevant for other people in refugee situations today.

The Buried Past

Under the site of the Great Synagogue, some congregants dug holes and hid relics.

An archaeological dig, inspired by someone who remembered, uncovered these gems.

A Bar Mitzvah speech from 1896
Eliyahr Bombach would be come the chief rabbi in 1921

A Challah knife with the inscription "To honor the sabbath"

Candelabras and carvings , oh my...

I will add that my Reconstructionist Judaism is very different than what was celebrated back then.

I am much more of a feminist, and I focus on awe and action.

Sometimes I marvel that my ancestors came here, in part, for freedom of religion

but what I celebrate is so removed from their lifestyle.

But I think they would be proud of me.

I know my grandparents were, and I've felt their memory glowing strong all week.

THE BIG EVENT

First of all, this is the REAL thing.
This is the Death Gate, the entrance to Auschwitz Birkenau.
It was very unsettling how it looked like a theater prop.

How has our experience with movies, video games and even theater made us numb?
Does the old photo make it seem more real, ironically?

This was all inside a tent.  A huge tent.  HUGE.

So many dignitaries were there, but the guests of honor were the survivors.

Why is it important that so many dignitaries came?  (Believe me, it's important...)

Can you imagine how stranded by society the survivors must have felt in their captivity?

There was an urgency to make the world listen.

Roman Kent, a brilliant speaker and survivor.

When I'm back in NJ, I will post the full video of his speech.

But for now, I will give you one memory and several excerpts:

The memory:   He shook his fingers at the dignitaries urging them to take action.

Who else could do that!!!

Key parts of his speech:

One minute in Auschwitz was like an entire day, a day was like a year, a month,  an eternity.

How many eternities can a single person have in an entire lifetime? 

Even seventy years later, the daily cruelty and inhuman behavior in the camps is indelibly etched in my mind.

We survivors continuously came face to face with death, yet despair was not our response.
Despite hopelessness, we created light out of the world of darkness.

We survivors cannot, dare not, to forget the millions who were murdered,
for if we were to forget, the conscience of mankind would be buried alongside the victims.

What a superb opportunity to extend a meaningful, he artful message to leaders of all nations to the world at large:  WE MUST ALL REMEMBER. For if you, the leaders in the world , will remember and to teach others to remember, then the Holocaust and other atrocities like Darfur, Kosovo, as well as attacks as the present one in Paris will have no place on the face of the earth.

But to remember is not enough. DEEDS, Deeds are crucial.
It is our mutual obligation, that of national leaders and that of survivors, to install and  incur in future generations the understanding of what happens when virulent hatred and prejudice are allowed to flourish.

We must all teach our children tolerance and understanding, both at home and in school.
For tolerance cannot be assumed, it must be taught.
We all must make clear that hate is never right and love is never wrong.

Righteous Gentiles, just a few against tens of millions, showed the world that the answer to tyranny and indifference is involvement and the courage to make moral choices and ACT in accordance with their choices.  Their deeds should serve as an example of what might have been done and an indictment of what was not done.  As a moral torch in a world of oppression and darkness, these rescuers, nobles by deed by mothers by character told us that even in the hell known as the Holocaust, the individual had the choice and the capacity to behave humanly if she or he only cared and had the courage to act accordingly.  

Survivors share a common goal with the current generation.  And hopefully, with our future generations.
We do not want our past to be our children's future...because that's the key to my existence.
We survivors do not want our past to be our children's future.

It is now up to the leaders of tomorrow but there is still so much to be done.
We all must be involved and stay involved. 
No one , no one should ever be a spectator. 
I feel so strongly about this point that if I had the power, I would add an eleventh commandment to the universally accepted ten commandments:

You should never, ever be a bystander.

Thus I hope above hope there is a brighter future for mankind.  
After all, we live together on the same planet.
Perhaps, when we all finally realize we are one people, we can make sure that tragedy like Auschwitz will never again happen to us or to any other people.

Stephen Spielberg showed the world premiere of a short film, Auschwitz, voiced by Meryl Streep.

Ronald Lauder, president of World Jewish Congress

Some parts of Lauder's speech:

What was the reason that over one million Jews were murdered right here?

The reason was: They were Jewish.

For seventy years, philosophers, historians and theologians have tried to explain the Holocaust.

And for seventy years, no one has come up with an adequate answer.  So Auschwitz never goes aways. This awful place stands as a reminder that propaganda leads to anti-semitism, as a reminder that anti-semitism will grow if nobody speaks out, as a reminder that when whole countries are filled with hate, antisemitism leads to places like Auschwitz.

I was going to leave a very different speech here today, but after the recent events in Paris...and around the world, I cannot ignore what is happening today.  Jews are targeted in Europe once again because they are Jews. Synagogues and Jewish businesses are attacked.

Europe suddenly awoke to find itself surrounded by antisemitism again, and it looks more like 1933 than 2015. 

Once again, young Jewish boys are afraid to wear yarmulkas on the streets of Paris, Budapest, London and even Berlin.

Once again, Jewish businesses are targeted.

And once again, Jewish families are starting to flee Europe.

How did this happen again? Why, after seven decades and three generations, is this new storm of antisemitism  sweeping through Europe and targeting Jews once again? 

The targets of this hate are not just Jews, but Christians who are being slaughtered in Africa and the Middle East.  Women, and girls, are killed in Afghanistan just for wanting to go to school. Journalists are murdered in the Middle East and right here in Europe. An awful wave of hatred has ascended here on Earth once again.

There are representatives from forty countries here with us today, and we, the Jewish people, are really so grateful that you joined us. You are good, decent people, and because of what we are and what this place means, your governments must stand up to this new wave of hatred. 

Schools must teach tolerance of all people. Houses of worship should be places of love, healing and understanding. They should not be telling their people to kill in the name of God. 

All countries must make Hate a crime. And any country that openly brags about the annihilation of another country should be expelled from the family of nations.

Every country must have absolutely zero tolerance for hate of any type, because, unless it is checked right now, it will be too late.

Do not let this happen again.  Do not let this happen again.

Dignitaries and survivors lighting memorial candles

Thank you for being with me on my journey.

I have so much more to process, so much more to say.

But for now, all I say is BE KIND.

Always err towards kindness.