Krakow was...well...Krakow? It was cute. Very dainty and touristy and colorful and old. Like Prague or Paris. Or something. It was also a backpacking, touristy hell mouth, in many ways. You know -- one of those places where 18-year-olds go to get very very drunk for very, very cheap. Yes. That kind of place. Like New Orleans. Or Daytona Beach. Or Ibiza. Eww. We stayed at a hotel that was in the center of Old Town and I don't think either one of us has had a decent night's sleep in about three days. The hotel was charming -- very Belle Epoque with a rod iron elevator and high, high ceilings and shiny bedding and heavy, golden keys. But it was so fucking loud!
The first two nights, we were subjected to everything from The Eagles to Bon Jovi until about 3 a.m., thanks to the numerous night clubs that surrounded us. And even then we weren't granted a reprieve, thanks to random groups of tourists that would then spill out of the bars and stop to chat drunkenly under our window for what seemed like hours. The first night, a girl decided to scream bloody murder at about 5 a.m. and then the second night, I realized how much drunk men love to kick random shit. Seriously -- at least four different groups of dudes of various nationalities decided to kick the same construction site fence at the corner of our street. At half hour intervals. I wanted to die.
By the third night, we changed rooms. In fact, we were actually planning on leaving Krakow early, but realized we couldn't if we still wanted to visit Auschwitz. So we asked for the quietest room they had -- and we thought it was all good until about midnight., when some shitty live band started playing all sorts of horribly R&Bish bluesy type bullshit until about 4 a.m. I guess this is the karmic payback I get for being a horrible drunken tourist at several points in my own life. I just hope that God finds these last three nights to be enough payback for now.
The main reason for heading to Krakow was really to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau, which is about a 1.5 hour train ride from the city. It's located in a sleepy, industrial town called Oswiecim.
Liz and I grabbed the 2:45 train out of the city. It's amazing how cheap and easy it is to take the trains here. We found our seats and I proceeded to teach Liz how to play One Thousand. It's a card game that my grandmother taught me when I was about ten-years-old. She said that it was my great-grandma's favorite card game -- and the only card game she knew. During the war, they'd play it constantly to keep their minds off the pain and suffering that seemed relentless and never ending.
After two games of One Thousand, we arrived in Oswiecim. I guess you could compare it Lima, Ohio, with a European spin. The train station was creaky and rusty and empty, aside from a watchmaker's shop, where I proceeded to buy a Casio calculator watch for $20! Then we grabbed a cab to Auschwitz.
Auschwitz...I really don't know what to say. It hasn't really sunken in yet. As I skim my mind for what to write, I simply end up with a stomach ache. The smells, the quiet, the buildings, the dirt paths, the barbed wire, the killing wall. It is, in many ways, intangible how oppressive and intense that place is. I don't feel capable of writing about it just yet, other than to say that it is horrific. Walking through the barracks, you could feel the sheer terror of what went on there and the irrationality and senselessness of it all -- more so than I've ever felt reading about the Holocaust or watching a documentary. It was so much, that we couldn't bring ourselves to take the shuttle to the Birkenau camp -- Auschwitz II -- where the crematorium was. It was just too much to handle. The scope of it was just too much.
What I can say is that it was such a jarring contrast to visiting Trawniki -- the camp where my great-grandmother was for a year, before she escaped. There was literally nothing left of that camp, aside from a small memorial and an old wall with barbed wire. The sheer mundanity of the town and the quaint pastoral setting added their own heaviness and surrealism to what I've learned of Trawniki. It's odd, because most people have never even heard of the Trawniki camp. Even Poles. Except for David Tenenbaum.
I was introduced to David through Rabbi Schudrich. David was 12 when his small town near Lublin was liquidated of all its Jewish inhabitants. His entire family disappeared and he was sent to work in four different camps before surviving one of the most infamous death marches. Today, he lives in New York, but visits Poland often. He is a jovial, talkative man full of long, tangential anecdotes and Jewish bravado.
I met him at the Synagogue the morning before I left for Krakow. David knew much about Trawniki. He had an aunt who died there. And he worked at a camp not too far away, where he served cognac and cigars to important SS men. He remarked at how much they loved their boots shined, too.
David worked as a servant for a very important general. Every morning, David would appear at the general's office to deliver milk to his secretary. That is when David would skim through the intelligence of the day, just to see what was going on.
David soon learned that Lublin was the base for the architects of the "Final Solution." It was from this point that the SS was trained in the methodical mass murder of the European Jews. And he said that Trawniki was one of the worst training grounds.
At Trawniki, SS officers were taught how to most quickly and effectively round up, displace, and then murder entire populations of Jews -- from small villages like David's to urban areas like Warsaw. Jewish workers were rounded up from various Ghettos and shipped to Trawniki in order to wait on the German staff. My great-grandmother was one of these workers. She worked as a maid for an officer for over a year -- ironing his shirts, cleaning his room, mending his socks, and fetching his milk.
But what my great-grandmother never realized was the real purpose of her visit. That is because she was only one of two women to have survived Trawniki.
The "workers" who were brought to Trawniki were eventually used for target practice. The Germans would practice the easiest and most effective ways of killing as many Jews as possible. They would line the women up and then shoot as many as three through the head at one time, in an attempt to save ammunition. Once the group of workers was killed off, another group would then be shipped in and the process was repeated over, and over, and over again.
This is what David told me. And this is what has been written about the camp, as well. Yet, its ruins do not bare the mark of such horror in the way that Auschwitz's do...and, I guess, also don't. The value of ruins...yup. I got a lot to think about.
For now...here is a bit of footage I took at Auschwitz. I eventually stopped tapping, because I just couldn't bare it anymore. But here is the bit that I do have, for those interested:
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Hey Denise,
ReplyDeleteI was struck by your last comment about the value of ruins, lot to think about, etc.
I was thinking about who ruins benefit most, or why their healing or preservation might be valuable — and don't ask me why, but it made me think of the scar my brother has from heart surgery when he was a kid. I was remembering how awful it was when it was fresh — not because of how gruesome it was, but how painful it looked and how much it bothered me to see that pain. But it doesn't look bad anymore (and hasn't for years), so I don't have to be reminded of that part so much. But for him it was all really the same — when it hurt, it hurt; when it no longer did, it no longer did. How it looked had little to do with how he experienced it.
Maybe the same is true for places. That Auschwitz is a gruesome reminder because it's a place that's been presrved, that has not been allowed to heal so we can remember what can happen. Trawniki is a reminder that things, even the most hideous things, can fade with time.