The following are my words, my impressions, based on what Raute has told me after she returned October 16th from her eight-day journey to Poland. I spoke with Raute, and told her what I thought I understood her impressions to be, and she agreed with me. So, even though this is my writing, it seems to speak for Raute as well.
The weather was great - an amazing warm autumn in Poland - warm days, cool nights, no rain. Raute said everything was green, the trees beautiful as the leaves changed colors. When Raute and her classmates visited Auschwitz, the skies were blue, the grass green, even the buildings looked nice. Walking around the site were tourists from all over the world, families dragging along young children. This was in total contrast to what Raute had expected. The colors, the beauty, did not match the horrorific past of the camp.
Treblinka was also set up beautifully - but here there no were no remnants of the camp. Stone monuments were set up in an asthetic design. Again, the good weather betrayed one's preconceived concept of the site.
In total contrast with the above two sites, was Raute's visit to the concentration camp called Maidanek (I had to do a search on the Net to get the correct spelling for that). Here everything was as imagined - piles of discarded shoes gave a visual picture of the vast numbers who had perished. Here the weather matched one's feelings. The sky was grey, and the air shockingly chilly. Raute reported that she was shuddering, not only from the cold, but from what she was seeing as well. The gas chambers - empty rooms where the only clue to their purpose was a little hole in the ceiling. More frightening were the crematoriums, where the whole process of the camp's final goal was vividly clear. Raute said she couldn't stop crying, and she was shaking as she participated in the short ceremony her school organized in remembrance of the camp's victims.
Raute did not feel she was overseas. Everywhere she travelled with her classmates, all the speaking was in Hebrew. The many visits to old, abandoned synagogues and huge stretches of graves at the centuries-old Jewish cemetaries, all had signs in Hebrew. Her guide, son of people who had survived Auschwitz, and who makes the trip with school groups to Poland some thirty times a year, was excellent, and full of many, personal stories. This was the barracks building in Auschwitz where his father was housed, he told them.
Along the way, the school group met up with interesting personalities - an elderly Jewish rabbi, who had virtually no congregation left. A Polish woman who had been honored by Yad Vashem for sheltering Jewish refugees during the War. Others who had survived the camps, the ghettoes. Being together as a group, Raute and her friends avoided contact with the residents of the towns they passed through. Only once did they come across a sign of modern-day anti-semitism - a nasty piece of wall graffiti.
Warsaw was a modern city - with no remnants of the ghetto that once housed an uprising. Electric cable-cars went along the streets. More beautiful was the southern Polish city of Cracow, where the school group spent Friday and Saturday. They walked through the Old City of the town, ate in the city's only Kosher restaurant, and watched the performanc of a Polish folklore troupe.
Raute adds that as strange as it may seem, she had a really good time on the trip, and learned a lot. Needless to say, the experience of flying, travelling with friends, staying at seven different hotels on seven nights, including a five-star hotel in Cracow (when the hotel originally scheduled was overbooked), all added up to a fun and memorable experience.
Why is it important to visit Poland today? As a parent, it was important for my daughter, who has no direct connection to the Holocaust, to learn about it firsthand. We must remember. We cannot allow ourselves to forget this great tragedy, for if we forget, we may fall victims again. Could it ever happen again? Unfortunately, that possibility still exists. Just today, I was the victim of receiving my first-ever piece of hate email, an anti-semitic attack that came my way from some nasty visitor to my homepage. These people still exist in the world.
Raute is home, and we are glad that her trip was a success. We are still engrossed in hearing the tales of those memorable eight days.
