What can I say about the last few weeks? Actually, quite a lot. My best thoughts always come after I’ve spent time in solitude to digest the pieces then put them together into a whole, sort of like a jigsaw puzzle. I ask myself all of time why I chose to study the Holocaust. After all, I’ve only been a serious scholar of the Shoah for less than 2 years. Just as there are many different pieces of a whole, there are many different reasons I took this path that are both professional and deeply personal. Hardly a moment went by anywhere we went in Poland that I didn’t know I was in the right place, and I was there for the right reasons. Mission accomplished!       

We had so little time together before the trip, I fretted that students might come back home without understanding it is nearly impossible to comprehend the history of the Shoah without invoking geography. Well, I worried for nothing. Judging from their many questions, observations, interactions, discussions, reflections, etc. while we were in Poland, all of them were ‘practicing geography’. So, congratulations to the historians, they are now honorable geographers.   

I also learned much from the group…..For example, did you know Alex can eat an entire Zapiekanka all by herself? Impressive. Dan knows his Bison grass Polish vodkas, Logan can sleep upside down on a bus, and Kelly studies the perogies on her plate like a rabbinical student studying the Torah (very seriously). All valuable life skills. Elena also has admirable detective skills finding something on the menu that didn’t include meat or dairy (a real challenge in Poland). Kaerra hates the camera almost as much as the camera hates him, and don’t ever serve cold apple pie in Melonie’s presence. Last but certainly not least, Dr. Finley missed her calling as a boot camp trainer (my legs fell off somewhere near Lodz).

Since coming home a week ago from Poland, (I can’t believe it’s already been a week!) I’ve had a moment to readjust to the time and weather.. (I definitely could go back to the cooler weather over this hot, sticky mess). Going on this study abroad trip, I didn’t know what to expect, except that this trip was going to be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I went in with the mind set that this was going to be a humbling experience… and it was truly, all of the above.

I haven’t fully proceeded or decompressed all of the valuable information that was explained to us, or shown to us from our guides, each day on the trip. As it says in other blog posts, “we may have been exhausted, but we never complained. We are not Princeton” and that was the truth!!! We absorbed as much information as possible and knew each moment was going to be an unbelievable experience. Even if our feet ached, and our legs cramped, our backs throbbed, or we felt like we just had fallen asleep.Yeah, I had a few bumps in the road, along the trip with my suitcase wheels busting off. A disintegrating umbrella and a pair of shoes that also leaked, as Dr. Finley’s did too. That being said, I think each one of us would do it all over again to relive each one of those unbelievable moments.

Many thanks to those who worked with us in Poland on an amazing study abroad. The list is quite extensive…all gave amazing presentations/tours/conversations/insights/relfections. THANK YOU! Annette Finley-Croswhite, Ph.D. and Tom Chapman, Ph.D.

Krzysztof Suszkiewicz, Plaszów; Dr. Edyta Gawron, Jagellonin Unviersity, Kraków; Maciek Zabierowski, Learning and Special Projects, Auschwitz Jewish Center, Kraków, Oświęcim; Paweł Sawicki, Press Office, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Oświęcim; Dr. Agnieszka Haska, IFiS, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw; Dr. William Glass, Professor of American social history at the American Studies Center of the University of Warsaw; Michał Chojak, Deputy Director of the Research Center Yahad-in Unum–for our work in Piotrkow Trybunalski and Tomazow Mazowiecki; Hubert Buczak (investigator), Yahad-in Unum; Renata Masna (interviewer/interpreter), Yahad-in Unum. And the amazing NINA KROLL, our interpreter in Warsaw, Łódź, Piotrkow Trybunalski, and Tomazow Mazowiecki!

I’m not sure why I trek half way across the world taking students to sites of atrocity. Many people tell me that they don’t know how I do it. My response, is: how could I not? I was born Christian, the daughter of a Protestant minister, and it was devout Christians who in many instances participated in the Holocaust as perpetrators and bystanders. Doesn’t the long history of religious violence tell us that we have to be very careful where religion in involved. The great irony is that religions can promote both love and hate. Many Germans, in fact, praised Martin Luther’s anti-Jewish writings to promote their own antisemitism during the Holocaust and justify their horrific actions. Not that’s a history lesson.

I was thinking yesterday, I’ve done this trek six times now, when do I stop? To this point the students often can’t keep up with me so physically I think I’m doing just fine. I do have the ability (and always have according to my mother) to exist without much sleep…but I don’t advise trying this at home! Pushing oneself in foreign climes strikes me as an important experience for students. (One of my students told me the study abroad trip was good practice for OCS training in the Marines! Now that one made me proud)! In hindsight there is so much to teach from a historical point of view amplified in the last two versions of this course with a focus on human geography. But beyond the history and geography lessons, perhaps the most important outcome of a class like this is to teach empathy. The Nazis didn’t attack world Jewry all at once…anti-Judaism and antisemitism were intensified over time. When we let down our guard today, when we accept rudeness, incivility, and cruelty as a matter of course, we all take one giant step towards the dehumanization of those around us. That step is just too dangerous…doesn’t the Holocaust teach us that?

For some reason I’m still struck by the man who passed us outside of Piotrkow Trybunalski while visiting a small Holocaust memorial after we met the witness Stanissalaw S. who saw Jews killed when he was a boy.  The man parked his car and walked up to Renata Mansa who was with us to say he had driven by the memorial all his life but for some reason when he saw us that day he felt the need to stop and pray for the victims.  He was young, probably only 35 or so, but collective memory has a way of touching many generations. The fact that he would see our class and feel compelled to confront the history of his town was powerful to me. Had we trekked to Poland for this? And I’ll never forget Elena singing the Mourner’s Kaddish at two execution sites.  I reflected on that in an earlier blog post, and I thank Elena Simon for her willingness to say Kaddish for the victims; it could not have been easy.  I had the overwhelming sense that the victims had been waiting for her, for us, to arrive. If that was a mitzvah, it included all of us as participants (Elena) and observers (our class and guides).

I hope in the days to come my students will reflect on their own actions in the context of what we have learned.  All of us, all humans, single out others for ostracism.  We note difference…it is human nature.  Some of us may be more evolved and more aware of prejudice, racism, and antisemitism in our environments and we may fight it already.  Maybe that isn’t the case for all; I am always learning when it comes to confronting hatred. This course should make the participants bolder in standing up for social justice, for what is right, for refusing to be a bystander when people are singled out for their color, religion, ethnic background, linguistic heritage, personal disability, sexual orientation or for the multiple reasons that humans try to divide instead of unite.  The onslaught against the Jews in the 1930s didn’t begin over night.  It was a long process of selective discrimination that in the end had murderous consequences.  But all of us see difference, and sometimes in my own life I’ve found this course has helped me to forgive others who have hurt me, even when it was very, very difficult. I have tried to be less angry with situations and employ more empathy even when it is hard. The course has helped me to stand up for others.  Building walls of separation do no good for the human story.  Father Patrick Desbois says in “Holocaust by Bullets” “believing in the human race is a serious responsibility and a position that needs to be consciously created and constructed (p. 68).”  Those are some of the most powerful words I have ever read, and I quote them to my students and my sons all the time. I state them here so that readers can contemplate them in the context of their own lives.

Pictured below is Stanisslaw S., a witness to atrocity and introduced to us by our colleagues at Yahad-In Unum. We also see the marvelous interpreter, Renata Masna, who taught us all a lesson in oral history interview methods. She was marvelous.

Yesterday is a blur. 6:30 am hotel departure, 10:40 am flight from Krakow to Munich; 12:20 pm flight from Munich to Washington, D.C. Dulles; 515 pm flight from Washington to Norfolk. Below is our last picture, minus Kaerra Smiley who left a few hours before we did for a flight to Guam and Dr. Chapman who stayed on a few extra days in Krakow. This was by far the most extensive study abroad trip I’ve ever done…years of planning, really, an evolution of sorts. And it was also the most exhausting. I really didn’t realize how much it took out of the students physically and emotionally until some conversations on the plane ride home. I always push myself through the fatigue and foot pain, and I’ve been such a traveler all my life, I think I forget sometimes how difficult travel can be. I’m always in the “teacher-zone.” But Alex, Logan, Melonie, Kelly, Dan, Elena, Kaerra (Smiley) are amazing students and for different reasons, I’m proud of each and every one of them. Thank you for taking this voyage with me and Dr. Chapman. May the memory of this course remain with you always as a lesson in human responsibility. You were brilliant!

Today was our last and maybe our hardest day. I can’t explain enough to the world out there what a hard trip this is. Most people don’t get it. For most people at ODU, it’s one of many classes, and we have lots of hard classes at this university. And students probably don’t realize when they sign up for it how hard a class it is, intellectually, emotionally, and physically! So here are some of the difficulties and delights.

1. We often walk 10 miles a day. Sometimes it’s very cold and this trip and been cold and rainy. We’ve been drenched and cold. I’m cold by nature…look at my pictures, I have on a down vest, heavy jacket and rain jacket in most of the pictures! I bought new boots (in Krakow with Melonie) when my old ones leaked. My legs ache so much at night that I wake up with leg cramps. I’m in my 5th decade and have to carry on as if it were my 2nd or 3rd decade. I have to push myself sometimes when I’m just so tired, and that mean’s I’m pushing my dear colleague, Tom, and the wonderful students….who can all get put out with my obsession to see as much as possible. No one signed on for Annette’s trek into Poland’s past, but everyone held up mightily We are a hearty bunch! One guide told us that the Princeton students couldn’t make the Warsaw ghetto walk with her; they complained and she had to cut the tour short. Not us, not ODU, we pushed on!
2. There is always unpleasantness. One of our bus drivers made an antisemitic comment. The students were asleep, and I cut him off quickly. But… Our two African American students felt the pain of racism as well, as people stared at them and there was some unpleasantness.
3. We had to see and learn things no one ought to have to see and learn. Going to sites of genocide is never easy, but on this trip we saw in particular the desolation of landscapes like Chelmno and the killing sites tied to Holocaust by bullets where Jews were killed in forests and buried in mass graves. The pits moved for three days afterwards, we know. But seeing them now is really difficult. Vegetation grows heavily where bodies are stacked beneath. One learns these things over time, but it’s hard to inculcate. I learned things on this trip with regard to pregnant women that I dare not write about on a blog out of respect for those who suffered horrific deaths.
4. And then we have the delightful part of study abroad, new relationships and new friendships were made. Karerra Smiley did eventually…smile, and he and Logan became celebrities in Lodz :)! We had amazing guides, Maciek Zabierowski in Krakow, Pawel Sawicki at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Agnieszka Haska in Warsaw, Nina Krol in Warsaw, Lodz and Tomaszow Mazowiecki. And the incredible team of Michal Chojak, Renata Masna, and Hubert Buczak in Lodz, Piotrkow Trybunalski and Tomaszow Mazowiecki was beyond words. Hubert found the witnesses for us to speak with, Michal arranged and directed it all and led us to incredible places, and Renata taught us all the art of the interview in the context of oral history. They were extraordinary.
5. And now it ends and we head home, exhausted, richer, wiser, and more aware of our responsibilities as human beings.

Many eat with their eyes rather than their stomachs. I am one of those individuals. The presentation of food, along this fourteen day journey, has been extraordinary. From three course meals to grab-and-go, I assure you, Polands cuisine has been delicious.
I have taken pictures of almost, everything I have eaten while traveling Poland. I’m not going to bombard you with copious amounts of food photos (maybe just a couple of extras), so I have decided to pick the ‘best’, ‘not the best’, and ‘don’t ever assume’, meal and dessert’s.
We will start with the ‘not the best’ meal.. Poland is known for their Pierogies. Unfortunately, the meat pierogies as Dr. Chapman expressed, “they are awful. It’s looks/taste like Alpo dog food” and I have to agree, they were the worst, however. The beetroot and onions were fantastic. The ‘best meal’ was the lentil stuffed chicken with roasted vegetables. I don’t think I tasted a bit of it. It was that fantastic!
The reason I added, ‘don’t ever assume’ spot, because I did just that. One night for dinner, Dr. Finley and I had dinner in the hotel restaurant. Well…the listing on the menu was, “cherry soup and potato. ” I ASSUMED cherry soup as in, cherry tomato soup. That wasn’t the case. It was actually a bowl of cooked cherries, in there juice. It was like eating a cherry pie. Not what I expected for soup.
Now, on to dessert… again, we will start with, ‘not the best’ and this dessert will also fit the ‘don’t ever assume’ too. The goes to the fruit and sorbet dessert. Unfortunately, once the dessert came, it was a fruit cup dumped into a bowl and sherbet placed on top with a mint leaf. That was not what I expected for fruit and sorbet. Finally, my favorite dessert while in Poland … (drum roll please) … the brownie souffle with caramel creme and raspberry and white chocolate shavings. Oh My Goodness.. all I can say is.. Yum!

I love nature. I love the peace and the tranquility that nature provides. On this day, a brief rain storm came and went. The birds were singing, and the sun was shining through the trees. The air was calm, and even though it was a small hike, I could just sit and take in the atmosphere. Late 1943, early 1944, that wasn’t the case for many Jews. This place in nature that suppose to be serene and peaceful, was a time of terror. This is the site were many, many Jews marched to their death. The mass graves in Tomasźow Mazowiecki do not have a memorial placed nor is there a commemorate marking. If a person was hiking through nature, taking in all its beauty, would not know this site exists.

Today was the most profound teaching experience I’ve ever had, the culmination of years of work, reflection, research, and networking. Today Michał, Renata, and Hubert from Yahad-in Unum led Tom, the students, and I deep into the past. They introduced us to the world of witnesses, children who long ago sat atop trees or perched on walls and watched genocide happen before their eyes, and now as old men these scenes play over and over in their minds. The witnesses guided us to these places to relay what they saw. And so we visited sites in the middle of woods where no one has been for so very long, where horror still hangs in the air and cries, although silent, still ring in one’s ears in these places linked to the Wolborski Forest and to the landscape outside Tomaszow Mazowiecki. Today, at these execution sites, Kaddish was finally said by one of my students. To witness all of this, to hear Elena’s sweet, sweet voice singing the Mourner’s Kaddish while surrounded by my ODU students gave me goose bumps. A long path culminated in that moment with a feeling that we had been quite right to come to Poland to study the Holocaust, we had done something of great importance. In that moment I felt proud of my seven students and their willingness to believe in humanity, even when confronted with the horrific past.