After spending almost two weeks, traveling the country and seeing some of the most amazing sites, tasting the food and experiencing the culture. The one thing that many of the locals reiterated to the group was that the weather was unusual for May. During this time frame, it rained more days than there was sunshine.
We were only on the trip for a couple of days when my umbrella broke. As in, it completely disintegrated in my hands as I was trying to close it. Unfortunately, I was unable to purchase a new umbrella due to the time. Most shops in Kazimierz close early during the work days and we were leaving, early in the morning for Oświęcim. Once we arrived in Oświęcim, every shop, whether it was clothing or sporting goods, even a primary school supply shop, nobody had umbrellas, and the forecast for the next couple of days at Auschwitz-Birkenau, was rain.
I tell you all this because as we were sitting at a red light, on the bus, and I just happen to look over and notice a corner kiosk. The corner kiosk had almost everything a person would need at the last minute. But, what caught my eye was sitting front and center … barbies. I laughed when I saw the barbies, and all I thought was, ” yeah, can I get a candy bar, water, and oh, I’ll take the barbie in pink too?”

Today was a very hard day for me, Dr. Chapman and the students. We journeyed from Warsaw to the site of the extermination camp Chełmno. We were very much in the middle of nowhere, and spent much of the day en route with very little to eat. We arrived in Łodź “hangry” as Melonie likes to say—-with major low blood sugar, a tired and agitated group.

Chełmno is hard to fathom. It was the first extermination camp where around 300,000 Jews (and some Roma) were killed. Today about 30,000 tourists a year visit the site—not so easy a task. But the director told me some only visit the small museum while others go to the actual site of the burial pits some 4 kilometers away. We see only two women on bicycles, locals it would seem. We are alone with each other on the vast expanse of what was. And there is little there to reflect the horror of what happened—-where Jews were gassed in vans as they were driven to the site where they were first buried and later exhumed and burned. The desolation makes the experience so profound, especially since we know the Nazi ruse of “resettlement” did not last long at sites like Chełmno and Treblinka where people were beaten and tortured almost from the moment they arrived. Chełmno feels like a forgotten place, but one where the earth still screams in pain. The few “poppies” growing on the site attest that Chełmno has been largely forgotten; the poppy itself a symbol of death (most often associate with World War I) doesn’t grow here in large numbers but rather like everything else on the landscape is sparse. I read that a baby’s remains was found a few years ago near the museum site and buried in a small grave near the memorial. The sign I read said the baby must have been hidden at the time. But how many babies, children and pregnant women died here? Taking my students to Chełno is important to me. I’m proud they made the journey because the victims at who died here must be remembered.

On site at Chełmno is a ring of tombstones. They aren’t original. They were found elsewhere, having been moved by the Germans and used now at Chełmno as a sort of make-shift memorial. One has a domestic scene on it that I think is unusual, but I can’t find a good description to explain the iconography. It contains a “pitcher” so a reference to ritual washing, but since it looks like a kitchen scene, I’m supposing it is the grave marker of a woman. It reminds me that Jews were taken from their homes—-the sites of their daily lives—-and removed to horror on a barren and hidden landscape where their identities were stripped from them before they were murdered.

Near the end of the day we saw the Radegast train station in Łodź from which so many Jews were deported. The memorial is extremely well done with a railroad track running along the ceiling, and a real rail line close by—-making for eery moments when a train goes by.

As a thundstrom was potentially about to roll through, I took out my phone and quickly snapped the photo of the barbed wire on the train car. Once I was sheltered from the potiental storm, I looked at the photo and thought, “as an outsider looking in… what does an outsider see?”
I thought about the answer to this question most of the evening, and the answer that I could only come up with, there really isn’t just, one answer.
As an outsider looking in, I see men and women with with hopelessness in their eyes. I see brothers and sisters who have fear and worry stricken on their faces. Children are being held high enough to possibly get a glimpse of the outside world. I see husbands and wives embracing each other, as it may be the last time they feel ‘safe’. These faces are Hungrian, and Polish, Jewish, Romanian, and Sini. But, what I actually see most of all … nothing.

The only downside to Study Abroad is the jet lag. For me the heavy responsibilities of such a trip make sleep difficult anyway. There is so much to organize, remember, prepare for each day as I study my notes, read, blog, and reflect before engaging the students. There is no down time. And of course, I must assess my own reflections of the sites we visit. Today at 3:18 AM, Norfolk Public Schools started texting. Then it was impossible to return to sleep. On the upside, I did spy an awesome view of Warsaw from my hotel window at 4:26 AM!

In many ways, this was the most exhausting day of our trip to date. We didn’t walk all that much, not like yesterday or the day before. But we went to the site of the extermination camp at Treblinka where over 800,000 Jews were killed. Unlike Auschwitz-Birkenau that is teaming with tourists, Treblinka is still in the middle of nowhere. Only one other group was there. It’s a quiet place meant for contemplation. A circle of stones indicates the towns, villages, and shetetls where Jews were arrested—their homes. The site memorializes communities that are no more. The brutalities at Treblinka were worse than at Auschwitz-Birkenau if you can believe that because people were often beaten, raped, or tortured before they were killed. It’s a difficult site to see, moving and painful. Later we re-emerged in 2019 in Warsaw for a tour of the city and a feast at a great restaurant…feeling conflicted and confused. Does one have a right to enjoy oneself after Treblinka?

Here I am with Jan Karski, a Polish Resistance hero who informed the Allies about the Warsaw ghetto and other aspects of the Nazi genocide of the Jews. He is a hero in Poland, and his statue is everywhere. (Notice Jan is smoking)! There’s also a shot with my wonderful students on our way to Warsaw via train.

“Every Jewish street in Warsaw was a town of its own.”   So said Isaac Bashevis Singer who grew up on Krochmalna Street in Warsaw, and made the street come alive in his novels. “Shosha” is my favorite.  When I was a teenager, I devoured Singer novels, and I could well image the courtyards of Warsaw with all the joys and sorrows of that life, the center of Yiddish culture in the prewar environment.  That world is long gone, destroyed by the Nazis in World War II. On October 12, 1940, the Nazis ordered that a ghetto be established in Warsaw, and it eventually included 400,000 people in 1.3 square miles.  The inhabitants starved; disease became rampant, especially tuberculosis which was more serious than the typhus epidemics one hears about so often.  During the summer and fall of 1942 most of the Jews in the ghettos were deported to Treblinka although some were killed in the ghetto.   The well-known ghetto uprising began on April 19, 1943 and lasted until May 16, 1943 and during that time the remaining Jews were either killed in their bunkers or eventually captured and deported, but they had put up heroic resistance.  World War II ended the rich Yiddish culture that had existed before the war…what Singer wrote about.  Today, virtually nothing exists excepts some monuments put up to commemorate what was.  I exhausted my students today walking them around the former ghetto where there is nothing to see. Everything was destroyed.  I hope they realize that “presence of absence” and what it means.  Even my beloved Krochmalna Street exists only in my imagination.  It’s just a dirty street today with nothing but a plaque to indicate what it was, what it had been to a young Isaac Bashevis Singer.

Holocaust Landscapes by Tim Cole, the chapter on “GHETTO” tells the accounts of Janina Bauman and her family who are Jews, and live in the Warsaw ghetto. Janina had a privileged upbringing and the status of having the means, gave the Bauman’s an opportunity, most did not have in the ghetto. They were able to pay smugglers to get food, medicine, other items from the other side of the wall. As I am reading this, I’m imagining a wall, maybe of average, even a little taller in size.
While on our tour of the Krakow ghetto, our tour guide, Maciek Zabierowski pointed out that the Krakow wall is the original wall from the war. After he stated that fact, all I thought about were the smugglers and what it took to scale the walls for not just the Bauman family, but others too. The ability to be completely incognito and transparent from the guards, both leaving and returning to the ghetto is simply… remarkable. The lengths these individuals went through, risking their own lives, daily, just to provide a piece of benevolence from the outside world.

On this trip to Birkenau the sky has been difficult to understand. Lots of big clouds, but today there was a rainbow over Birkenau. A rainbow. I don’t think I can say more than that. Earlier, while in the Women’s Camp B1A, I was searching for the section of the camp built by women deported from Western Europe in the summer and fall of 1942. They were the first women to arrive in Birkenau. Esther Fersztenfeld, the teenager I’m writing about, was among them. She arrived on convoy 34 from France and survived about six weeks, dying on October 28, 1942. Auschwitz-Birkenau is hard to understand; the landscape is difficult to read. I thought I would come once, but this is my sixth trip.

Rainbow over Birkenau; 2) Big sky over the Women’s Camp at B1A; 3) Near exit gate from Women’s Camp, B1A, where some of the first barracks were built at Birkenau beginning in March 1942.