My Trip to Eastern Europe - Part 4

The fourth day of my trip would be another day delving into the events of the Holocaust but this time in Warsaw.  Warsaw of course was the place where the Nazis established the largest Jewish Ghetto in all of German Occupied Europe.  The ghetto had over 400,000 Jews imprisoned there in an area of just 1.3 square miles.  It is said that there was an average of 9.2 persons per room in every building within the ghetto.  The challenge would be to see the sites where the events of the Holocaust happened in a city that was effectively erased at the end of the war by the Nazis and then rebuilt by the Soviets.  Regardless, I was sure that I would still be able to understand what they went through by simply walking in the places that they lived and suffered.  I knew it would be another tough emotional day.

Thursday October 11, 2018 – Warsaw, Poland

We were able to sleep in a little which allowed me to get in a tempo run after a good night’s sleep.  My run took me through Pilsudski Square and the adjacent park.  I ended up running 4.1 miles in 35:34 (8:40 pace).  My goal pace was 9:00 per mile.  I crushed it.  Probably because the weather was so nice.  When I finished my run, I walked a little to just enjoy the morning and to have a chance to really see the Square.

Pilsudski Square is the largest square in Warsaw named after Josef Pilsudski who was instrumental in the restoration of Polish statehood after World War I.  It is also the location of the Polish Tomb of the Unknown Soldier erected on top of the underground foundations of the Saxon Palace, destroyed by the Nazis in World War II.  They change the guards every hour on the hour 24/7.  We got to see a changing of the guard last night.  There is a large cross commemorating Pope Paul II’s visit to the square in 1979.  The only other monument on the square is the Smolensk Monument that commemorates an air crash that killed Poland’s president, his wife and 94 other people and military personnel  on April 10, 2010.

After we gathered and got onto the bus, we headed over to see a fragment of the Jewish Ghetto Wall.  Since the ghetto was destroyed at the end of the uprisings (Jewish and Polish), there is nothing left of the ghetto.  There are still a few pre-war buildings in Warsaw.  But there is no way to imagine what it looked like during the war.  It is a very peaceful place but you can’t help wonder what it must have felt like seeing the wall being built between the buildings locking you in with 400,000 other Jews and the trepidation of what was coming next.  It was a sobering thought.

We then drove over to see a pre-war building that is still standing so that we could try and imaging what it was like living in these buildings behind the wall.  History says that families were forced to live with complete strangers in rooms with more than 9 people trying to survive the harsh conditions.  We stood in a courtyard in the middle of the building where the children who were too young to work would have to play.  It felt so cramped in the courtyard.  I could imagine the lack of privacy and the difficulty everyone must have felt since they, in many cases, had to live with people they didn’t know.  Most of these buildings have been leveled and built over thus erasing from view the conditions the Jews of Warsaw had to endure.

The next stop was the Jewish Cemetery in Warsaw.  The Warsaw Jewish Cemetery is one of the largest Jewish cemeteries in Europe and the world.  The Jewish cemetery was established in 1806 and covers 83 acres of land.  The cemetery was closed down during World War II.   After the war it was reopened and a small portion of it remains active, serving Warsaw's existing Jewish population.  The cemetery contains over 250,000 marked graves, as well as mass graves of victims of the Warsaw Ghetto.  We visited the area where the mass grave was located.  The stones that surround the area had a black stripe to symbolize the tallit that these victims were not able to be buried with.  It was so sad to think about the families of these victims not knowing where their loved ones were buried.

We then visited the grave of Ludwik Zamenhof who was a doctor and the inventor of Esperanto.  As we stood there listening to the story of Zamenhof, I looked up to see that there was a headstone right next to the grave with the name Zygmund Frumkin.   I cannot express the shock and surprise in seeing my last name in a cemetery in Poland.   All I knew about my family was that the Frumkins were from Vilna.  But based on what I have learned about Poland, it is not surprising that the center of European Jewry being in Poland that Frumkins avoiding Russian persecution might end up living there.

As we walked over to see the grave of Ester Rachel Kamińska who was an actress and the mother of Ida Kaminska, I saw three more gravesites of Frumkin women.  It made me wonder how many other Frumkins are buried there.  Ida Kaminska was a well-known stage and film actress, who cofounded the Warsaw Yiddish Art Theater in the 1920s, and, in 1946, following the Second World War, played in the reestablished Yiddish theaters in Poland.

We visited the grave of Solomon Zangwill Rappaport, author of "The Dybbuk" who is buried with two other Yiddish authors.   We wrapped up the visit with the monument to Janusz Korczak who was a Polish-Jewish educator, children's author, and pedagogue known as Old Doctor.  He spent many years working as director of an orphanage in Warsaw.   When the Nazis established the Jewish Ghetto, he repeatedly refused sanctuary and stayed with his orphans.  When the entire population of the ghetto was sent to the Treblinka extermination camp in 1942, he stayed with his orphans walking with them over to the Umschlagplatz.  Once there he boarded the train to Treblinka with the children and is presumed to have been gassed with them upon arrival.   There are no words to express the dedication he showed those children.  I imagine that he comforted them trying to shield them from the atrocities all around them.

Before leaving, we stopped at the memorial to the child victims of the Holocaust.  There is no way to explain the deep sense of sadness I felt as I looked at the monument.  At that point, I was done with this part of the tour.  I was having intense feelings of sadness, depression, anger and existential questions as to how this could have happened.  I knew that my visit to Auschwitz and these sites in Warsaw would haunt me for a considerable amount of time after I finally returned home.  But we had one more stop before lunch.

We went to the Umschlagplatz mentioned above.  An Umschlagplatz (German: collection point or reloading point) was a holding area set up by Nazi Germany adjacent to a railway station in occupied Poland, where the ghettoized Jews were assembled for deportation to death camps during the ghetto liquidations.  We were standing where largest such collection point existed.  It consisted of a city square in occupied Warsaw next to the Warsaw Ghetto, used for several months during daily deportations of 254,000 – 265,000 Warsaw Jews to the Treblinka extermination camp.  The monument was erected in 1988 on Stawki Street, where the Umschlagplatz was located, to commemorate the deportation victims.  Like the stones in the cemetery where the mass grave is, this monument has a black stripe too for the same reason.  What was really moving is that they list the 400 most popular Jewish-Polish first names, in alphabetical order from Aba to Żanna.  Each one commemorating 1,000 victims of the Warsaw Ghetto.  I found my name, my father’s and son’s name on the wall.  All I could think of was there but for the grace of God, go I.

We needed to get out of this depressed feeling.  So we went over to Old Warsaw to have lunch and tour the “old” city.  After another fantastic lunch of pierogis and sour rye soup, we met up with Marta to explore the area and learn about it.  The Warsaw Old Town is the oldest part of Warsaw.  It was totally destroyed at the end of WWII.  When Eisenhower visited the ruins, he said that funds from the Marshall Plan could be used to rebuild it.  Stalin refused saying he didn’t need any American money and set out to rebuild it back to what it looked like before the war.

The Old Town was meticulously rebuilt.  As many of the original bricks as possible were reused. However, the reconstruction was not always accurate to prewar Warsaw, sometimes deference being given to an earlier period.  This was in an attempt to improve on the original or an authentic-looking facade was built to cover a more modern building.  The rubble was sifted through looking for reusable decorative elements, which were then reinserted into their original places.  Bernardo Bellotto's 18th-century painting, as well as pre-World War II architecture students' drawings, were used as essential sources in the reconstruction effort.  However, Bellotto's drawings had not been entirely immune to artistic license and embellishment, and in some cases this was transferred to the reconstructed buildings.  Despite these “flaws” it is really a beautiful area.

In the center of the market square is a mermaid.  The statue dates back to the 1800’s.  Marta told us legend says that the Warsaw mermaid originally hailed from outside Poland.  Accompanied by her twin sister the pair swam across the Baltic Sea, arriving in Gdańsk.  Here the sisters split, one swimming to Copenhagen and the other down the Vistula River arriving at the old town.  Local fishermen soon noticed someone tampering with their nets, freeing the fish in the process, and teamed up to catch this pesky vandal once and for all.  They soon changed their minds once they saw her beauty and siren like singing voice.  A greedy merchant decided to trap her and take her on tour through the sideshows of Poland.  A son of a fisherman heard her voice crying in a shed.  He hatched a daring plan to free her, and in thanks to the townspeople who rescued her she swore to make it her life's mission to protect Warsaw.  It’s this defensive stance of hers which explains why she is armed to the teeth with a sword and shield.

Our last stop was at the Jewish Geneological center and the Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute.   The Jewish Genealogy & Family Heritage Center was built to start to build a bridge between the two worlds of pre and post Holocaust.  For over twenty years, they have been assisting families from all over the world to discover their roots in Poland and offer a new point of view about their family story.  We had a chance to visit the Ringelblum Institute as well.

The institute is a repository of documentary materials relating to the Jewish historical presence in Poland.  The most valuable part of the collection is the Warsaw Ghetto Archive, known as the Ringelblum Archive Oneg Shabbat. It contains about 6,000 documents (about 30,000 individual pieces of paper) many of which are on display including the milk container that were buried before the end of the war and subsequently found when the war had ended.   Oneg Shabbat had historians, writers, rabbis and social workers as members.  They were all dedicated to chronicling life in the Ghetto during the German occupation.  They worked as a team, collecting documents and soliciting testimonies and reports from dozens of volunteers of all ages.  The materials submitted included essays, diaries, drawings, wall posters and other materials describing life in the Ghetto.  The collection work started in September 1939 and ended in January 1943.

The original plan was to write a book after the war about the horrors they had witnessed.  As the pace of deportations increased, and it became clear that the destination was the Treblinka death camp with few likely to survive, Emanuel Ringelblum had the archives stored in three milk cans and ten metal boxes.  These were then buried in three different places in the Ghetto.  Two of the canisters, containing thousands of documents, were unearthed in September 1946 and a further ten boxes in December 1950.  The third cache is rumored to be buried beneath what is now the Chinese Embassy in Warsaw but a search in 2005 failed to locate the missing archival material.  All but three members of the Oneg Shabbat were murdered in the Holocaust.  Emanuel Ringelblum escaped the ghetto, but continued to return to work on the archives.  In 1944 Ringelblum and his family were discovered and were executed along with those who hid them.  After the war, Rokhl Auerbakh, one of the three surviving members of Oneg Shabbat, initiated the search for and excavation of the buried documents.  These documents and Rokhl Auerbakh’s testimony were used in the trial of Adolf Eichman.

This was the end of a very busy day.  We headed back to the hotel to change and head to dinner at Momu.  We had dinner with members of Beit Polska.  They were also member of Beit Warszawa Synagogue, a liberal Jewish synagogue that opened in 1999.  Beit Polska is the umbrella organization for the Progressive/Reform Judaism in Poland.  It is good to know that the Jews are starting to re-emerge in Poland after the events of the Holocaust all but wiped out Polish Jewry.

As I sit back and think about what I saw in Warsaw that day, I am most grateful for the risks taken by the Oneg Shabbat.  Here we are some 70 years after the events of the Holocaust and there are still those who would deny that it ever happened.  One of the Oneg Shabbat members, 19 year old David Graber placed a note inside the top of one box that read, “I would love to see the moment in which the great treasure will be dug up and scream the truth at the world.  May the treasure fall into good hands, may it last into better times, may it alarm and alert the world to what happened…in the 20th century….May history be our witness.”  Sadly just hours after penning these words, 6,458 more Jews were deported, including Graber, who perished in Treblinka.

What makes me hopeful is that these records tell the story of the Jewish people of Warsaw at that time as individuals with names.  This means that we don’t have to depend just on the German sources.  The Germans saw them as faceless anonymous victims not worthy of being individually remembered.  Remembering our history is not just about scholarship.  An archive such as the Ringelblum shows us that you don’t have to fight with guns and violence.  You can also can fight with the pen.  This archive is and will continue to be a powerful weapon for the truth.  So in the end, David Graber’s wish was fulfilled.

Nov 13 – 5.10 miles (43:09, 8:28 pace) – Tempo Run
Nov 14 – 8.10 miles (1:17:04, 9:31 pace)
Nov 15 – 8.50 miles (1:13:58, 8:42 pace) – Mile Repeats
Nov 17 – 11.10 miles (1:48:17, 9:45 pace)
Nov 20 – 9.60 miles (1:23:48, 8:44 pace) – Mile Repeats
Nov 21 – 8.10 miles (1:16:36, 9:27 pace)
Nov 23 – 5.20 miles (44:50, 8:37 pace) – Tempo Run
Nov 24 – 8.20 miles (1:17:12, 9:25 pace)
Nov 25 – 18.10 miles (3:03:02, 10:07 pace)

Total Miles:  82.0 miles
2018 Total Miles:  1,703.1 miles

My Trip to Eastern Europe - Part 3

The third day of my trip was going to be pretty easy.  We were headed from Krakow up to Warsaw.  After the trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau, it was going to be nice to just have a day to recover from the emotional rollercoaster we had experienced.

Wednesday October 10, 2018 – Warsaw, Poland

I did not sleep well last night.  Too many emotions from the previous day.  I tossed and turned for most of the night.  I finally gave up and got up and headed out for a 6 mile run.  I decide to run a loop that would go up to the Market Square, through the park and then along the river again.  If nothing else, I would be able to clear my head a bit.  It was another cool morning.  I love running in real fall weather.  I ran 6.1 miles in 56:00 (9:11 pace).  What a nice way to shake of the deep emotions from yesterday.

After breakfast we gathered our things and loaded them onto the bus for a drive to the train station.  The bus was going to drive our bags up to Warsaw while we took the train.  I figured that I would be able to get a little bit of sleep on the train to make up for the lack of sleep I got last night.  We got on the train and found our first class compartments for the ride up to Warsaw.  It was about a 2.5 hour train ride.  It was comfortable and soothing.  I got some much needed rest.

We got off the train and met our Warsaw guide Marta who led us to our bus.  After a short drive through the city where Marta talked about how little of pre-war Warsaw is still standing.  The reason there was almost nothing left was due to the response of the Nazis to the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. The uprising had infuriated German leaders who then wanted to make an example of the city.  What better way than to destroy the entire city.  In the end they lost the war and the Soviets took over Poland in 1945.  This meant that the rebuilding of the city was done by the communists.  You can definitely see it in the design of the buildings throughout the city.

One building Marta pointed out to us as we drove was The Palace of Culture and Science which is the tallest building in Poland and the eighth-tallest building in the European Union.  What surprised me is that it is also one of the tallest buildings on the European continent.  She told us that it is 237 meters (778 ft) tall.  It originally was named the Josef Stalin Palace of Culture and Science.  But his name was removed during De-Stalinization.  Marta said it had other nicknames as well like - Stalin's syringe, the Elephant in Lacy Underwear and the Russian Wedding Cake.  When I looked it up later, I also found that they also refer to it as Stalin's Dick - LOL.

We stopped to have lunch on our own at Hala Koszyki a local food hall.  We learned that the ‘Koszyki’ market hall, commonly known as the ‘People’s bazaar’ was built in 1906-1908 on Koszykowa Street in Warsaw at the then ‘Koszyki’ grange place.  It went through many changes and had to be rebuilt after the war.  I looked it up to see who rebuilt it to its present state.  I found that in 2012 the building was bought by Griffin Real Estate who restored Koszyki to its’ previous glory.  In the autumn 2016, Hala reopened as a social and culinary center, where there are numerous restaurants and pubs.  There are also retail stores where you can buy fresh products at the natural/organic store or grocer downstairs.

After a good meal of sausage and pierogi, we got back on the bus to head to our first stop.  We went to the location of Mila 18.  Mila 18 was a building in Warsaw where “on 8 May 1943, three weeks after the start of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the bunker was found out by the Nazis, there were around 300 people inside. The smugglers surrendered, but the Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa (Jewish Combat Organization), also known as the ŻOB, command including Mordechaj Anielewicz, the leader of the uprising, stood firm. The Nazis threw tear gas into the shelter to force the occupants out.  Anielewicz, his girlfriend Mira Fuchrer and many of his staff committed mass suicide by ingesting poison rather than surrender, though a few fighters who did not commit suicide managed to get out of a rear exit and later fled from the ghetto through the canals to the "Aryan side" at Prosta Street on May 10.”

Because the Nazis destroyed the building and did not remove the bodies, the spot became a war memorial as early as 1946.  In 1946, the monument known as "Anielewicz Mound", made of the rubble of Mila 18, was erected.  A commemorative stone with the inscription in Polish and Yiddish was placed on top of the mound.  Later in 2006 a new obelisk was erected on top of the mound.  It is a very peaceful spot now in the middle of the city and is really hard to imagine what it looked like back in 1943.  We all placed a stone on the base of the obelisk to honor and build up the memory of those brave Jews who fought back against the Nazis at this place.

We then walked over to the Poline Museum.  This museum is designed as a cultural institution where they present a 1000-year history of Polish Jews.  It is made up of 8 rooms with each telling a part of the story of how the Jews came to Poland and thrived for many years.  Of course it also tells the story of how they were then destroyed during WWII only to rise again from the ashes and taking their place again in Polish society.  It was a fascinating museum and so well done.  I could have stayed in there all day.

Before we went in to visit the museum, we stopped in front at the Ghetto Heroes Monument.  The monument commemorates the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943.  It is located in the area which was formerly a part of the Warsaw Ghetto and at the spot where the first armed clash of the uprising took place. The eastern part of the monument shows the persecution of Jews at the hands of the Nazis.   The western portion of the monument facing the museum is much more triumphant.  It shows men, women and children, armed with guns and Molotov cocktails.  The central standing figure of this frieze is that of Mordechai Anielewicz (who died in the uprising on May 8, 1943).  The monument has plinth on which carved in Polish, Yiddish, and Hebrew the words “The Jewish Nation in honor of its fighters and martyrs.”  The labradorite (black marble) used in parts of the monument comes from the German supplies, ordered by Albert Speer in 1942 for planned Nazi German monuments they planned to build when they won the war.  Ironic that it was used in this way.  The monument was unveiled in 1948.  It is a stunning monument.

We then went to our hotel to get some rest before going to dinner.  We ate at a great little local restaurant called the Informal Kitchen.  After a long day, I was ready to get some sleep.

As I reflect on the first day in Warsaw today I am still amazed at the contrast between Krakow and Warsaw.   I am glad I was able to visit both cities as they each offered entirely different experiences.  I will post my notes from the second day in Warsaw.  But to try and summarize, Krakow was a beautiful, medieval and quaint town with the dark shadow of the Holocaust over it.  Warsaw is more cosmopolitan with modern skyscrapers and a bustling city center.  While they are very different, I would recommend to anyone that they visit both cities if they travel to Poland.

Nov 6 – 7.20 miles (1:02:51, 8:37 pace) – Speed Work
Nov 7 – 7.10 miles (1:06:13, 9:18 pace)
Nov 9 – 2.10 miles (19:04, 9:05 pace)
Nov 10 – 7.10 miles (1:08:18, 9:37 pace)
Nov 11 – 17.10 miles (2:50:29, 9:58 pace)

Total Miles:  40.6 miles
2018 Total Miles:  1,621.1 miles

My Trip to Eastern Europe - Part 2

The second day of my trip was going to be a tough day emotionally.  When I got up the morning we were headed to Auschwitz-Birkenau I felt a real sense of foreboding.  Even though I had read so much about the Holocaust, visited both the U.S. Holocaust Museum and Yad Vashem, I wasn’t sure if I could handle walking in the footsteps of so many of my ancestors.  I was sure that my emotions would take over my rationality.  I wrote these words when I got back to my hotel that evening.  But I am sure that they in no way truly represent the entirety of my feelings.  As I look back, I now know I’ll never find the right words to describe what Auschwitz is and what it represents to the world.

Before you read on, I want to make sure that anyone who reads these notes about my visit understand the basic layout of the camp.  The camp is actually broken up into three sections.  The first (Auschwitz I) was built by the Nazis, used as headquarters for the SS and for the first experiments and murders.  It is now a Museum. This camp held around 16,000 prisoners at a time.  The second and by far largest camp (Auschwitz II-Birkenau) is located about 2 miles away from Auschwitz I.  This camp is where millions of people were killed in the  gas chambers and from inhuman living conditions and their bodies cremated.  The camp held more than 90,000 prisoners at a time of which 68% were Jews.  While the numbers are not easily determined more than 1.5 million people (90% Jewish) were exterminated at Birkenau.  The third camp and one we would not visit was Monowitz (or Buna).  This camp was mainly a labor camp and is now completely destroyed.  The camp held around 12,000 prisoners, including Italian survivor Primo Levi who wrote the book Survival In Auschwitz (If This Is A Man) in 1947.

Tuesday October 9, 2018 – Krakow, Poland and Auschwitz-Birkenau

Our plan was to leave early in the morning for our bus ride out to Auschwitz.  I got up extra early to get in a training run.  Plus I figured I needed to get myself mentally prepared for the day.  I find that a run always clears my head allowing me to enter the day ready to handle anything that is brought my way.  I planned to run 3.1 miles along the Vistula River.  It was very dark and quiet.  I only saw a couple of people running and biking along the path.  It was mostly cloudy and a crisp 49 degrees.  I ran 3.1 miles exactly in 28:29 (9:12 pace).  After a short recovery walk, I headed into the hotel to get ready for the day’s journey.  I had no idea what I was going to see or feel as I got ready to meet the rest of the group.

We got onto the bus for the drive out to Auschwitz.  As we left the city limits, we were greeted by a clear sunny sky.  I thought to myself that we were about to visit a place where millions of people were exterminated and a sunny day seemed wrong.  As we approached the site, the sun disappeared and a fog started to thicken and the clouds came in.  It was a bit eerie.  The change in the weather was a bit foreboding.  We exited the bus and headed to the entrance where we had to go through a metal detector.  Auschwitz doesn’t allow private guides, so we met our guide Szymon who would lead us through the camp.

My first impressions of the camp were that it was full of brick barracks buildings which I did not expect. Every picture, movie and television show has the buildings depicted as wooden shacks.  It was a bit surreal.  As we started walking from the entrance I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.  With the exception of the electric fences the brick buildings and neat streets did not belie the fact that so many atrocities occurred at this place.  In fact, I thought that it actually looked a little like a nice small Polish town.  What is interesting is that except for the trees and grass that has since grown here, the

camp has been left almost untouched.  According to Szymon it is just like it looked when the Nazi left in January 1945.  Today most of the blocks have been turned into a Museum.

We learned that the original buildings were actually an old Polish army barracks that were repurposed.  During the camp’s construction, nearby factories were appropriated and all those living in the area were forcibly ejected from their homes, which were bulldozed by the Nazis.  Obviously this was to hide what was happening from the nearby residents.  Szymon explained that Auschwitz was originally to be used simply as a detention center for the many Polish citizens arrested after Germany annexed Poland in 1939.  The prisoners would initially include anti-Nazi activists, politicians, resistance members and people from the cultural and scientific communities of Poland.  However, when the Final Solution became the official Nazi policy, Auschwitz became the ideal death camp to carry out their heinous plan.  The reason was that Auschwitz was near the center of all German-occupied countries on the European continent.  Plus it was in close proximity to the rail lines used to transport the victims to the various concentration camps.  As we walked towards the most famous sign in the camp, I was struck by how peaceful and beautiful the surroundings were despite the knowledge of what happened there.

Total madness, right?  It was when I saw the infamous sign “ ARBEIT MACH FREIT” – Work will set you free that I finally knew where I was standing and a chill came over me.

The museum is a path where each block building number has been given a particular name to identify the horrors that took place during the Holocaust with pictures, signs and panels telling the story of what happened there.  Szymon would bring us into a building where we would see the museum displays.  Each building got progressively worse as we learned more about what happened here in graphic detail.  I noted that whenever Szymon spoke about the beginning of the camp he stressed that the original prisoners were Polish political prisoners some of whom were Jews.  I wondered whether or not that this was because of Poland’s Holocaust Law that states that it is illegal to accuse the Polish nation of complicity in the Holocaust.  Regardless, he still did not spare us any details about the atrocities.

I have visited both Yad Vashem and the US Holocaust Museum and seen the piles of shoes, suitcases, etc.  But this time I was seeing the detritus of these poor souls in the place where it happened.  These rooms were the hardest to visit.  I found myself staring in disbelief.  You notice the small shoes amongst the many piled there.  An overwhelming sense of loss and sadness welled up inside me.   I tried to imagine that child who’s life was taken too early for no reason at all.  But I couldn’t find him or her.  I realized that this is why we visit Auschwitz – to become a witness for the witnesses.

It took so much will on my part not to breakdown and simply sob as I continued to the room filled with the suitcases.   You see that each one has a name and a date on it.  There they were all piled together each silently telling a story of a family torn apart and lost to us.  Of course I couldn’t help but think about  the lies the Nazis told the prisoners as they arrived into the camp.  Standing there looking them in the eye and assuring them that they would get their belongings back after they had taken a shower.  I tried to understand how one human could do that another.  But sadly there is absolutely no human logic to it.

In my life I have read many books that had dramatic effects on me over the years.  This was because I could imagine and picture to a certain degree the feelings that the victims felt at the time.  But this time and at that place seeing the real evidence left me speechless.  So I gave into my emotions and let the tears fall.

The final blow that had pushed me over the edge was when I walked into the room filled with the hair of the victims.  Szymon told us that it represented 40,000 people in this one small room.  You could still see all of the different hair colors, course, thin, curly, straight, etc.  Standing there and seeing this was so hard.  Plus we had just been told that the Nazis had sold the hair to fabric manufacturers made me sick.  The hair was used to produce socks and carpets.  There are no words to describe the deep disgust, sadness and frankly hatred I was feeling at that moment.

We then had a chance to go into a new exhibition created in conjunction with Yad Vashem located in Block 27.  It says:

“Open your heart, visitor. And your mind. And your soul. As you walk through the exhibition "SHOAH" and are enveloped by the sights and sounds of the past, hear the voices of the victims, see the drawings of the children, touch the names of the murdered. Be this place's messenger. Take with you a message that only the dead can still give the living: that of remembrance.” - Elie Wiesel

It was an incredible exhibit.  The room that almost brought me to tears again was the children’s room where they had recreated drawings on the walls depicting what the children drew depicting what they saw around them.  The drawings were copied fragments of the originals drawn in a pencil, exactly as they were, onto the walls of the room dedicated to the children.  We all know that children will draw on whatever they can – even on the walls surrounding them.  According to the exhibit these drawings were drawn on a scale of 1:1.  As you walk around the room the drawings drawn at the height a child would have drawn encircle you creating a powerful message giving voice to the children who perished.  So moving.

We then had a chance to see some video of survivors telling their story before going to the final stop in a room that contained books hanging on a rack.  One of Yad Vashem's central missions is to collect the name of each and every individual victim.  According to Hillel, Yad Vashem has been collecting these names for over 60 years.  The result is that they have 4.2 million names of the 6 million Jews murdered so far.  The "Book of Names" shows the name, birth date, home town and place of death for each victim.  There are 58 volumes of 140 pages each with 500 names per page.  Here in one place you can see and read the immeasurable loss of the Jewish people and ultimately to humanity.

I thought I should take a moment and look at the book to see if there were any Frumkins there.  I found the book with the list of names beginning with “F”.  I figured there might be a couple of Frumkins listed.  So I wasn’t surprised to find the first names in the book on the bottom of the page.  What totally threw me for a loop was when I turned to the next page and it was filled top to bottom with Frumkins.  There they were 500 Frumkins all who were killed unmercifully by the Nazis.  I had no idea how many of these names were my direct descendants.  But I felt an enormous sense of permanent loss.   I had to sit down for a few minutes to try and process my feelings before we headed to the last stop on the tour.

The last stop was at the gas chamber/crematorium at Auschwitz I.  As I walked into the gas chamber I had the most uneasy feeling.  This huge gas chamber could contain a maximum of about 800 people.  When the gas chamber was filled with victims, the gas-tight door was closed and bolted, and the SS doctor on duty gave the order to insert the poison gas.   After 5-10 minutes death by suffocation usually occurred.  When I looked up, I could see the holes the Nazis had dropped the Zyklon B through to kill their victims.  It sent chills down my spine.  Through a door on the left we walked into the room with the reconstructed ovens.  The ceiling in the room was black from soot.  I simply couldn’t stay in the room for more than a few seconds.  I felt nervous, scared, mad and sad all at the same time.

We then headed out to the exit where we would meet our bus.   As I sit here just a few hours after leaving Auschwitz, I still can’t describe the alienating feelings and the overall numbness I am feeling.   I realize now that nothing could have prepared me for this experience.  While I will try to tell those who ask what it was like, I truly believe that no one can really understand what I was feeling as I left Auschwitz I.  I will tell them that the only way to truly understand is to experience it first hand and then they will understand how difficult it is explaining how it affects you.  I felt all the emotions as I walked through the camp.  I was numb, sad, detached, mad, frustrated, speechless all at the same time.  I kept coming back to the thought that I came here to pay my respects to the victims and to be aware of what human beings are capable of doing to each other.  And I couldn’t leave without remembering the words of George Santayana “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

We headed from Auschwitz I to Auschwitz II (Birkenau).  As the bus approached the site the sun finally came out.  As I said earlier, a bright sunny day felt wrong.  But at the same time, I thought it would not allow anything to hide in shadow.  The entire camp would be laid out before us and we would be able to see every detail.  We could see the size of the camp as we pulled into the parking lot.  My first reaction was that it was so much larger than I expected.  The other thing was that there is not much left standing.    As we got off the bus and looked towards the front of Birkenau, I finally actually felt cold inside.  It was a very strange feeling standing there in the bright sun and feeling cold.

Hillel suggested that we walk silently into the camp through the main gate before we even started discussing anything.  I cannot find the words to explain the great sense of loss and sadness I felt as I surveyed the area.  We were standing on the ground where so many of my fellow Jews got off of the transports and their fate was decided.  We, of course, know the end of their story.  Yet I cannot fathom what they were thinking as they descended the transport and were separated from their families many never to be together again.  It was a truly sobering experience standing there. 

When we reached the entrance gate, I realized immediately that wherever I looked, all I could see were countless identical barracks on the left and almost none on my right.  On the right it seemed to go on forever.  The site was massive.  I stood there in the middle of the rail lines surrounded by destroyed barracks where only the remaining chimneys could be seen and feeling completely alone despite the fact that there were people all around me.  No words or tears.  Just a deep sense of emptiness.

We left the entrance gate and started walking to the back of the camp.  There is a historic train car that has been placed at the ramp or unloading platform where beginning in the spring of 1944, Jews deported to Auschwitz by the Germans disembarked and underwent selection by SS doctors there.  They were ordered to form lines to prepare themselves for the selection process.  It was here that the Nazis selected which Jews would be sent straight to their deaths in the gas chambers and which Jews would remain alive - temporarily.  As we know, more than 80 percent of those who arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau were immediately murdered.  The majority of the remainder died as a result of overwork, mistreatment, disease or lack of food.  It was here that I felt the first sense of the souls of the victims.

As we walked on there was only empty spaces and the rails.  We finally stopped at a dead end on the far western end of the camp where the main crematoriums and gas chambers were built.  They of course were destroyed by the Nazis in an attempt to cover the evidence of their atrocities.  There between the ruins of the two largest gas chambers and crematoria (Krema II and Krema III) is the International Monument.  The Monument sits at the end of the railroad tracks which were built in April 1944 to bring the Jews to the western end of the Birkenau camp where they disembarked near the gas chambers making their deaths more efficient.  At this place those selected for immediate death were walked directly to the Krema II and Krema III gas chambers that were on either side of the tracks.  Those who were selected to work walked down the road behind the Monument to the Sauna where they took a real shower and were given their striped uniforms to wear.

The monument itself is quite large with a jumble of dark stones that to me looked like grave stones.  Hillel told us that they actually were meant to resemble the victims.  I couldn’t see it.  I walked along the front of the Monument and could see the row of granite slabs, each with a metal plate on top which has an inscription in a different language, including Yiddish, English, and every major language of Europe. I found the granite slab inscribed with English words on the far right of the Monument, as you face it.  The inscription reads:

Forever let this place be a cry of despair and a warning to humanity, where the Nazis murdered about one and a half million men, women and children mainly Jews from various countries of Europe.   AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU 1940-1945

We then went over to the gas chamber/Krema II which is left in the same condition the Nazis left it in when they were trying to destroy the evidence.  As we walked around the ruins, we came upon 4 stone markers that were placed in front of a pond.  Here is what is written on the stones in English, “To the memory of the men, women and children who fell to the Nazi genocide.  Here lie their ashes.  May they Rest In Peace.”  Hillel explained that this is known as the ash pit of Krema II.  The ash pit contains the ashes from the crematory ovens in Krema II.

There is no way to know how many Jews ashes were disposed of in this place.  I have still not processed my feelings from seeing this site.  I stood there looking at that pit, that silent land and thought that nothing made sense any more.  I knew what happened there but standing on the spot some 70 years later, I suddenly didn’t want to believe that it really happened.   Yet in this peaceful place there are no traces of the atrocities that occurred there.  

My Temple brethren and I held a memorial service at this place.  We lit 6 yahrzeit candles which each represented 1,000,000 of the 6,000,000 Jews who were killed in the Holocaust.  The first reading helped me to remember why I have wanted to visit this place for so long.  It was written by Elie Wiesel,

Memory
Remembering is a noble and necessary act.  The call of memory, the call to memory, reaches us from the very dawn of history.  No commandment figures so frequently, so insistently, in the Bible.  It is incumbent upon us to remember the good we have received, and the evil we have suffered…How are we to reconcile our supreme duty towards memory with the need to forget that is essential to life?  NO generation has had to confront this paradox with such urgency.  The survivors wanted to communicate everything to the living: the victim’s solitude and sorrow, the tears of mothers driven to madness, the prayers of the doomed beneath a fiery sky.

For us, forgetting was never an option.

I read to myself these words, “One hole in the net and you slipped through?  I couldn’t be more shocked or speechless.  Listen, how your heart pounds inside me.”  All I could think of was that but for the grace of God, go I.  I too, like these nameless victims, might have suffered a similar fate, but for God's mercy.  “May the memories of all who suffered at the hands of the Nazis be sanctified with joy and love.  May their souls be bound up in the bond of life, a living blessing in our midst.”  I feel blessed to have had a chance to say Kaddish for those who have no one left to say it for them. 

Our last stop was one of the last standing women’s barracks.  I went into the building not sure what to expect.  It had a dirt floor and bunks that were just wooden slats.  The barracks were spot clean except for the dirt floor.  As I stood there in the barracks I just couldn’t sense the evil nor the pain and suffering. Then it dawned on me the people who lived and died in here didn’t leave any trace of human feelings. They had been de-humanized so deeply that they simply couldn’t leave a trace of humanity behind.  I don’t know how any of them could have survived.  It left a lasting impression on me.

Before we left this spot, Hillel wanted to tell us a redeeming story of hope.  It is the story of Angela Polger whose mother Vera Bein arrived at Birkenau May 25, 1944 and was 2 months pregnant.  Somehow she was able to get through the selection process, survive the hard work and even being used as a guinea pig for sterilization experiments.  Somehow she gave birth to Angela on December 21.  Her fellow inmates helped Vera hide her baby and a little over 1 month later they were liberated by the Soviet Army.  Angela was even lucky enough to get official proof of her arrival in this world: a birth certificate that her adoptive father got for her before the family left Poland.  Prepared in 1945 in Oswiecim, the Polish name for Auschwitz, the certificate gave her name as "Angela Bein." The surname was that of her biological father, Tibor Bein, a lawyer, who died of maltreatment in the camp.   She even has a copy of her birth certificate, issued in 1989 by the Communist authorities in her hometown, Sarospatak, Hungary.  It was a really uplifting story to end a very emotional day.

We had lunch in the town next to Auschwitz – Oswiecim where there are no Jews left.  The last Jew to live in the town was Shimshon Krueger who died at 72 in 2000.   But there is an active synagogue there known as the Osweicim Synagogue.  It was built in 1918.  Next to it where we had lunch is a Jewish center, museum and cultural center dedicated to Jewish heritage and reconciliation. The center is located in Krueger’s home and opened in 2013.   This gave me hope that the Jews of Poland will never be forgotten.

After a little rest, we headed over to the Krakow JCC to have dinner with them.  It was nice to see that despite all of the tragedy and 90% of Polish Jewry being destroyed that there is still a spark of Yiddishkeit growing again in a place that Jews had lived for over 1,000 years before the war came to Poland.

Tomorrow we head to Warsaw for the next stop on our journey.

As I sit here almost a month since my visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau, I am still haunted by the  thoughts of the desolated railway line that brought the men, women and children to their end.  I still find it very hard to express in words what I felt at Auschwitz-Birkenau.  But the feelings are with me.  In time I will be able to find the words to be able to bear witness to the pain, the suffering, the hunger and the emptiness of the people who died there.  I wanted to visit this place to be able to feel a connection and to better understand.  I wanted to pay a tribute to my people who fought for their life every single day.  Upon reflection there is nothing that will ever allow me to truly understand how this could have happened at all. 

Auschwitz-Birkenau is definitely a tough place to visit whether you are Jewish or not.  But it’s critical that we do so to keep the memory alive.  We must visit to allow us learn from the past and to stay alert as similar things are still happening today.  Pittsburg was only a recent incident against the Jewish people.  Jews make up about 2 percent of the U.S. population.  But statistics say that Jewish Americans account for more than half of the hate crimes committed due to religious bias.  The Anti-Defamation League identified 1,986 anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. in 2017, up from 1,267 in 2016 along with a major increase in anti-Semitic online harassment.  Hatred of the other never goes away completely.  We must remain diligent in pointing out hateful words especially our President’s that are contributing to the rise of the anti-Semitic and intolerant sentiments in our country.

I believe that my visit happened at the perfect time in my life and where we are as Jews in our history.  It could happen again.  But if more people like me were to visit and learn about the past atrocities, about the escalation of hatred, about the culmination of persecution, then perhaps the rhetoric would change in our politics.  My hope is that the lessons taught by a visit to a place of such deep evil and hatred would help us better guard against repeating the mistakes of our past.  I know that for the rest of my life, I will never forget that day in Poland.

Am Yisrael Chai  עם ישראל חי (The People of Israel are alive!)

Oct 31 – 6.30 miles (53:37, 8:31 pace) – Speed Work

Nov 1 – 7.20 miles (1:06:13, 9:12 pace)

Nov 2 – 7.20 miles (1:03:16, 8:47 pace)  – Tempo Run

Nov 3 – 10.10 miles (1:35:55, 9:30 pace)

Total Miles:  30.8 miles

2018 Total Miles:  1,580.5 miles