Warsaw
Our flight from Milan to Warsaw, landed on time just before 1PM. Here, we would be meeting up with our good friend, Carrie Niederer, who would be joining us for this portion of our adventure. Prior to departing on this long journey nearly six months ago, we published our itinerary to friends and family and invited them to pick a spot and join us along the way. Thankfully, many of them did.
To our surprise, Carrie picked the week identified as The Holocaust Tour. She could have picked among some of the other adventures like hiking the Camino de Santiago or the Jungfrau region of the Swiss Alps, a safari in Kenya or sailing the Greek Isles. Or perhaps other explorations into history such as the Pyramids of Egypt, Petra in Jordan or the Holy Lands of Israel. Or something relaxing like a week in Tuscany. But, no, she picked The Holocaust Tour.
The Holocaust Tour made our list because our plan from the outset was to emphasize education over tourism. Our itinerary has allowed us to explore the Moors invasion of the Iberian peninsula and subsequent expulsion by the Christian Crusades over several centuries; Henry VIII’s ‘reformation’ obliterating the Catholic Church, installing the Church of England and the centuries of fighting with France and Ireland that ensued; and then the more recent history including the genocide memorial in Rwanda; and Germany where we visited the former location of Hitler’s summer house, the Berghof, the nearby bunker system where war plans were made, and then Berlin and the installation, and subsequent dismantling, of the Wall following Germany’s defeat and the beginning of the Cold War. These experiences have been instructive and stark reminders of man’s inhumanity to man, as noted by poet, Robert Burns. With the rise of nationalism in my home country, the United States, and its growing popularity elsewhere in the world, a week on The Holocaust Tour seemed to be exactly what we needed. Apparently, Carrie recognized this for herself also.
Although we later learned there was more to it than that for Carrie. Her ancestral roots are Polish and Jewish. Her grandparents, on father's side, were Polish Jews. Given the success of Hitler’s edict for “the complete destruction of the Jews” – 90% of Poland’s Jews were murdered by the Nazis – it’s a miracle that Carrie even exists. If not for the fact that her grandparents emigrated to the US before the invasion of Poland by Germany in 1939, it is highly unlikely that Carrie would have ever been born, much less, traveling to Poland to join us on this trip. We were thrilled to have her join us and her ancestry gave our trip a special purpose.
Carrie’s flight from New York had arrived minutes before our flight and we met her at baggage claim where we retrieved our bags, hailed a taxi and went to our hotel in Warsaw, the Polonia Palace. Our official tour, arranged by The Cultural Experience, doesn’t begin until tomorrow, but we arrived a day early to take in a little of what Warsaw has to offer.
Our hotel sits directly across from the Palace of Culture and Science, a gift from Josef Stalin to the Polish people following the defeat of Germany and Poland’s annexation into the Soviet Union. Now, calling it Poland’s ‘annexation’ is only partially true. In actuality, following the conclusion of WWII, the Allies, at the famous Yalta Conference, agreed that the eastern portion of Poland (parts of Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine today) would be annexed into the Soviet Union, but that Poland would be expanded to the west by taking over parts of Eastern Germany. In total, Poland’s landmass was reduced only moderately, but its borders were shifted left to the west. With that said, the Soviets also installed a communist regime and ignored the Polish government in exile that was operating from London. So, the spoils of war go to the victors and it was the Russians who “liberated” (we’ll come back to this later) Poland from the Nazis and, so, it was Stalin who dictated the direction of post-war Poland and installed communism. But, at least, they got this lovely Palace of Culture and Science as a gift in return, a building that looks identical to its several cousins by the same architect in Moscow.
After lunch, the three of us head to Old Town and are surprised by what we see. First, the 3 km walk takes us past relatively new buildings with terrific roads, a metro system, trams, lots of inviting retail stores with many European and International brands. Warsaw, by all appearances, has a very healthy economy and is providing a high quality of life for its citizens. This is not your typical, post-war, post-communist country. And it’s true, but it took some work.
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| On the square of Old Town in Warsaw |
Perhaps the most important post-war event was the elevation of Karol Wojtyła in 1978 to become Pope John Paul II. With a population in Poland that is nearly 90% Catholic, this election of one of their own to be the head of the Catholic Church was a harbinger of good things to come. And John Paul was a frequent and enthusiastic spokesperson for the Polish people and human rights. Worker’s rights were a big issue in communist Poland leading to strikes and the rise of an electrician, Lech Walesa, who formed the trade union, Solidarity. A few years later, Mikhail Gorbachev ushers in Perestroika – a loosening of the reigns for Soviet-controlled countries – elections are declared and in 1989, Walesa is named president of Poland.
So, a visitor to Warsaw in 2019 is seeing a very different Warsaw from the one 30 years ago. Indeed, it appears that Warsaw has benefited from 30 years of prosperity. Although, as I had visited Warsaw once before, likely 10-15 years ago, from my memory (which is unreliable), much of what I see today is new…like in the last 10 years new, suggesting that becoming part of the European Union has had a huge impact on Poland.
Eventually, we arrive in Old Town and it is beautiful. A large open square surrounded by beautifully decorated buildings with restaurants spilling onto the expansive cobblestone square. We are all flabbergast. Not at all what we expected, but here it is.
From Old Town we take a short walk down to the Vistula River and walk along its banks before making our way back into the city and strolling through Ogrod Saski, a beautiful park with gardens, fountains, groves of trees and paths to meander.
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| Ogrod Saski - a city park in Warsaw |
Eventually, we make our way back to our hotel and freshen up before heading down to the lobby where we will meet our hosts from The Cultural Experience along with our other tour participants. Among the first people we meet are Andy Markowitz and Jeffrey Sanzel, both from Long Island, NY. The Cultural Experience had made available a website for our group to provide trip info and logistics and allow for participants to introduce themselves. Only a few did including three women from the Boston area. So, now it looks like two from NY, three from Boston, plus the three of us – all from the US!
We are surprised by this as The Cultural Experience is a London-based tour operator and mention our surprise to Andy and Jeff who also believed that they would be the only Americans on this trip. As it turns out, 16 out of the 22 tour participants are from the US, five are from the UK and one – the youngest by a long shot at under 30 – a woman from New Zealand. Who knew?!
Eventually, we are all accounted for and are ushered from the lobby into the restaurant where dinner awaits. Before dinner, our hosts introduce themselves. Julia Morris is our host. She is from the UK and is a contractor the The Culture Experience uses to host trips like the one we are on although this is the first time that Julia will have hosted this trip. Her duties are to keep us informed and on track for the activities of the day and to attend to the multiple ‘issues’ that inevitably arise with a group this size where 60 is close to the average age. In this regard, Julia does a wonderful job attending to my every need whether that be food related (I am vegetarian and prefer to be vegan) or assistance with a lost wallet (yep, I lost it on the tour bus, but she recovered it).
The other person from The Cultural Experience is our guide, Paul Salmons, who is also a contractor specifically for the purpose of guiding this trip. In August, we had received an email from The Cultural Experience to let us know that the original tour guide, a professor from the University of Virginia who specializes in the Holocaust, due to unforeseen circumstances, would not be able to guide our tour. Oh, no! But then I read on and learn that they have secured a replacement guide, Paul Salmons, and here is his bio-
“Paul Salmons is curator of the major new exhibition, “Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away.”, which has traveled to Madrid and New York City and will tour Europe and North America for seven years. He is now curating a new exhibit, “Seeing Auschwitz” for the United Nations, which will open in January 2020, and is currently a consultant to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC.
A world-renowned expert in Holocaust education and consultant on numerous international projects, Paul worked for ten years at the Imperial War Museum, helping to create the United Kingdom’s national exhibition on the Holocaust and developing its distinctive educational approach. He was a founding Director of the Centre for Holocaust Education at University College London and has taught across Europe, in China, Australia, South America, and South Africa.
As consultant to the memorial at the former Nazi concentration camp at Mauthausen, Paul helped to create innovative new approaches to touring and learning from authentic sites of the Holocaust, and he has extensive experience of leading tour groups in Poland and Lithuania.”
Wow! This guy sounds perfect! And, in fact, he is. I don’t think I have ever learned so much, including skills in observation or how to question, how to process, how to feel and how to empathize, as I did with Paul during our six days together. He took this topic – the systematic murder of 6 million humans, overwhelmingly Jews, and invited us to observe it from every angle. What would it be like to be a Jew, a Pole, a German, a victim, a perpetrator, a bystander, a man, a woman, a child, a father, a mother, a husband, a wife? How did this happen? Why did this happen? Could it happen again? It was exhausting and it was awesome. Our tour starts tomorrow.
Day 1 – Warsaw
We start in Old Town at the town square where Carrie, Liz and I had been the day before. Paul, our guide, brings us together and then gives us an assignment – take the next ten minutes to walk the square and take pictures of anything that you think epitomizes the authenticity and antiquity of Warsaw. We each dutifully follow. As I walk the entire perimeter of the square, my eyes are drawn to the many old and interesting doors to these beautiful buildings. While in Europe, I have become fascinated with doors. They are more elaborate, more substantial, they seem to want to make a statement about what this place is, who lives there. After our allotted time, we reconvene and Paul asks for volunteers to share what they noticed. A few reply, but nothing stands out.
Then Paul passes out a picture. It is a black and white photo of the square showing absolute rubble. Then Paul explains, that near the end of WWII, when it was clear that Germany would not win the war, there was an uprising in Warsaw by the Polish underground resistance. This uprising infuriated the Nazis and they retaliated with a deliberate plan to completely destroy the city. Here is the official order –
“The city must completely disappear from the surface of the earth and serve only as a transport station for the Wehrmacht. No stone can remain standing. Every building must be razed to its foundation.” SS chief Heinrich Himmler, 17 October 1944
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| Old Town Warsaw in 1945 after the Nazis demolish the city - same buildings as first picture above |
And over the course of the next couple of months, the Nazis executed this order destroying over 85% of everything in the city.
Paul then goes on to explain post-war efforts to rebuild the city in as authentic a way as possible using original architectural designs, paintings and photographs. While much of the work was completed by 1955, some of it continued into the 1980s. What we see today is not authentic. It is a recent recreation of a historical past that is gone forever. He further points out that 150,000 Polish citizens were needlessly killed during this exercise to destroy the city. He closes this lesson by asking us to be observant. To not take things at face value. To look behind the curtain. Important lessons that will serve us well this week and forever.
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| Old Town Square - authentically restored |
From the square, we then walk to the Vistula River. As we look over the river, Paul explains that Russian troops had arrived across the river while the Warsaw uprising was underway, but they did not advance. In fact, under orders from Stalin, the Russian troops stayed put from the time of the end of the uprising, October 2, 1944, until the Nazi withdrawal on January 14, 1945 after the city was demolished. Only then did the Russian troops “liberate” Warsaw. As Paul explains, “they liberated the rubble”.
Why? Why didn’t the Russian army come to the defense of the Poles? Why didn’t the Russians engage the Germans? Paul explains that it was all about geopolitics. For centuries, Poland has had the misfortune of sitting between two totalitarian regimes – the Germans to the west and the Russians to the east. From the middle ages right up to 20th century, Poland has had relatively few years of peace and harmony in which it operated as an independent state with the exception of the Polish Golden Age (late 15th century to the mid 17th century) when Poland was one of the largest and most important countries in Europe.
WWII was simply the past repeating itself with, first, Germany and Russia signing a non-aggression pact at the start of the war to divide Poland and, then, Russia sitting on the sidelines while Germany destroyed Warsaw and then walking in to “liberate the rubble” and bring Poland into its sphere for the next 45 years. Your heart needs to ache for the Poles.
From the banks of the Vistula, we walked to the Jewish Historical Institute where we observed its outdoor display. While there, Paul gave us a brief history of Jews in Poland which dates back over 1,000 years. During the 15th century, as other European countries were expelling Jews (yes, anti-Semitism has a long history), the Poles openly welcomed them and Poland became the center of the Jewish world. During the Polish Golden Age, Jews flourished as a result of Poland’s religious tolerance. By the end of this period, 750,000 out of a worldwide total Jewish population of 1.2 million (62.5%), lived in Poland.
The challenges that beset Poland after this period impacted the total population, but the Jewish community more so than others. While under Russian influence, anti-Semitism was encouraged and on the rise, often including restrictions and forced movement into the cities. This resulted in many of the Jews fleeing the east and settling in the western parts of Poland. By the time WWII broke out in 1939, it is estimated that there were 3.5 million Jews (10% of Poland’s population) with 77% living in the cities. Although, due to their natural affinity for community, the Jews frequently represented a significant portion of the population of the cities and towns they chose to live in, often over 50%. And so, it was only natural, that Hitler’s goal for “a complete destruction of the Jews” would play itself out in Poland.
While walking to our next destination, we pass a statue of Stefan Starzyniski, the President (Mayor) of Warsaw at the time of the Nazi invasion. Starzinski is a beloved political figure in Poland having presided over one of Poland’s largest economic expansions. However, this all came to an abrupt end with the Nazi invasion which led to his imprisonment and, ultimately, his death at the hands of the Gestapo.
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| Memorial to Stefan Starzynski, President of Warsaw, grandfather to my colleague, Pawel |
I bring this story up, because I know his grandson, Pawel Starzinski. Pawel was the manager of Bentley’s operations in Warsaw. When I was previously in Poland – 10-15 years ago – it was a work trip and I spent most of my time with Pawel. He told me about his grandfather, but his story is even more interesting. When he was a young teen, both of his parents died in a tragic car accident leaving Pawel an orphan. As Pawel explains, soon he found himself directionless and heading down a dark path. A mentor intervened and suggested he immerse himself in sports. Pawel became active in swimming, so active that he made the 1984 Olympic Team for Poland which were held in Los Angeles. However, as a result of the Soviet-led boycott of the LA Olympics (in retaliation for the US-led boycott of the Moscow Olympics in 1980), Pawel never did swim in the Olympics. With that said, Pawel is a heck of a guy and I was proud to be standing in front of his grandfather’s statue.
The next stop on our tour was a visit to the Warsaw ghetto. When the Germans completed their occupation of Poland, they quickly implemented a plan to segregate the Jews into ghettos – enclosed areas with highly restricted access to and from. There were over 600 ghettos established in Poland with Warsaw being the largest, housing over 400,000 Jews in a space 1.3 sq miles with an average of 9.2 persons per room. These were squalid living conditions with little access to food and highly restricted freedoms. The Germans believed the Jews to be infested with lice and disease and forced them to live in conditions that would make this image come true.
Over the 2½ years of its existence until demolished by the Nazis following the Warsaw Uprising in 1943, essentially all of the ghetto inhabitants were killed by the Nazis either through gassing at an extermination camp, execution, starvation or during the final demolition of the ghetto. If you are interested in learning more about life in the Warsaw ghetto, I can highly recommend the book Mila 18 by Leon Uris.
We visited a portion of the wall which was three meters high and topped with barbed wire when originally constructed. Anyone trying to escape was shot on sight. While reviewing the memorial plaque placed on this section of the wall, Paul asked us to look around. What did we see? The wall connected two apartment buildings that were part of a larger apartment complex. Paul noted that these apartments are also part of the ghetto and their walls are also part of the ghetto walls with their rooms housing an average of 9.2 persons each.
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| A portion of the Warsaw Ghetto wall |
We also visited the Nozyk Synagogue, the last remaining synagogue in Warsaw. Paul noted that Warsaw once was home to over 400 synagogues, but with only 30,000 Jews in all of Poland today, less than 1% of the number in 1939, synagogues and signs of Jewish life have all but disappeared.
From here, we walked to the Umschlagplatz – the waiting area for Jews who were being transported from the ghetto to the extermination camps by railcar. Today there is a memorial at the Umschlagplatz that reads, “Along this path of suffering and death, over 300,000 Jews were driven in 1942-43 from the Warsaw Ghetto to the gas chambers of the Nazi extermination camps.”
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| Jews awaiting deportation at the Umschlagplatz in Warsaw |
Our last stop of the day was the POLIN Museum – a museum that sits inside the area of the Warsaw Ghetto – providing a rich look of the 1,000 years of Jewish history in Poland. It is a large and impressive museum. We were instructed to concentrate on the on the pre-war and WWII section of the museum as we only had two hours. Those two hours proved to be insufficient. The exhibits are really excellent giving a wonderful look into what happened, what life was like for the Jews as well as what life must have been like for their non-Jewish neighbors. More on that later.
At long last, our first day is over and we return to our hotel. It has been exhausting, but highly instructive. Paul is showing himself to be not only an expert in the Holocaust and its surrounding events, he is also a master at teaching and engaging his students in the process. It is clear that this will be an extraordinary week.
Day 2 – Jadow and Treblinka
This morning we load into the bus and head for Jadow, a small town (population 1200) about an hour’s drive north and east of Warsaw. While not on the original itinerary, Paul has some experience with Jadow and wants to share this with us.
Our first stop is the Catholic cemetery on the edge of town. Paul asks us to respectfully walk through the cemetery after which we will re-group and share our observations. It is a large cemetery, beautifully maintained. Almost every headstone has flowers and/or candles placed on them giving the sense that each stone is frequently visited and cared for. At one headstone there is someone vigorously scrubbing it from top to bottom to returning it to its original sheen. I have never seen anything quite like it.
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| The Catholic Cemetery in Jadow |
Next, we are back on the bus and we drive a short distance down the road and pull over next to a wooded area that has a plaque indicating there is a Jewish cemetery within the woods. Paul leads us back into the woods. The path back is not maintained at all. One has to be careful walking. A hundred meters in we spot a newish looking headstone. Paul suggests that we will come back to this and beckons us to move yet further in. Another 50 meters and we come across the remains of an old cemetery with a few headstones. By contrast, this cemetery is not maintained at all. It looks totally abandoned. Paul explains that, due to the size of the former Jewish population in Jadow, there must have been hundreds of gravestones here which have since been removed and used as building supplies by the Poles returning to Jadow after the war and occupying the homes previously owned by the Jewish residents who will never come back as they have been murdered.
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| The Jewish Cemetery in Jadow |
Paul then asks us to walk around the area and see what we can see. After re-grouping, he points out what appears to be the remains of a wall that runs for 50 meters or so. Now, it is quite grown over and only stands a few inches above the surrounding ground level. But you can see that it runs a straight line and then you can see it takes a right turn and then another right turn and another until the rectangle completes itself, Paul points out that this used to be the Jewish cemetery and there once were other buildings, perhaps a synagogue on this site as well. Jadow, he explains, used to be a town of 2,000 people where 90% were Jewish. The entire town used to center around Jewish life. This cemetery, in its day, used to look like the Catholic cemetery that we had visited earlier. But today, with no Jews left, the former life is all but forgotten and nature has taken over.
On our way back to the bus, we stop at that first headstone. It is for Pamieci Sary Litwak, born in Jadow in 1915, died in Chicago in 2011. Paul researched the origin of this stone believing that Mrs. Litwak’s descendants must have traveled from Chicago to place a stone at the Jewish cemetery in the town of her birth. What he learned is that Mrs. Litwak was fondly remembered by some of her non-Jewish neighbors living in Jadow and when they learned of her death, they placed the stone there to honor her. Paul reiterates that the truth isn't always what you think it will be.
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| The headstone for Pamieci Sary Litwak |
We next drove into the small town center of Jadow and walked the perimeter of the small square. From there, we walked several side streets including one with a run down, dilapidated building that used to be the rabbi’s home. Paul pointed out that the Jews are all gone from Jadow. There is no one left to maintain the cemetery or the rabbi’s house. There is no synagogue. Everything is gone. And then he points out that we could visit any of the more than 600 ghetto sites in Poland and the story would be the same. The Jews are all but gone from Poland.
Treblinka
We re-board the bus and begin the one-hour drive further north and east to Treblinka. On the way, Paul explains the different types of camps utilized by the Nazis and the evolution of their use. Prior to this trip, I was familiar with the term “concentration camp”, but Paul tells us that there are also POW camps, work or labor camps, and extermination or death camps.
A POW camp was used for prisoners of war and were used for military personnel captured by the Nazis. A concentration camp was used for citizens who were imprisoned without trial. This was used for the intelligentsia (the highly educated among the population), political dissidents, anyone opposed to the Nazi party, Jews, etc. Labor camps were used as a source of free labor and were largely filled with citizens from conquered territories such as the Poles in Poland. And, finally, death camps. These camps were designed with only one thing in mind – the rapid and mass murder of people, primarily Jews. Some camps, such as Auschwitz, might serve multiple purposes – a labor and a concentration camp, and then might transition to a third, such as becoming a death camp. Others, like Treblinka, were designed for a single purpose from the outset – a death camp.
How did we get here? How did the Nazis move from labor to concentration to death camps? It begins with Hitler’s initial edict, “Our firm goal has to be the complete destruction of the Jews”. Initially, this meant forced labor including abuse and starvation that often resulted in death. At one point, there was a plan to ship all of Europe’s Jews to Madagascar. But, ultimately, The Final Solution (as it has come to named) was to actually exterminate or murder all of the Jews- all 11 million of them.
It began as firing squads where Jews were made to dig their own graves and then were shot by Nazi troops. This proved to be time consuming and inefficient, but mostly, demoralizing for those involved in the shooting. A quicker, more sanitary approach was needed. And, thus, the gas chamber with a crematorium to dispose of the bodies was born. The author of The Final Solution was Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Reich Main Security Office and was adopted as the formal Nazi policy at the Wannsee Conference of 15 senior Nazi officials in January 1942.
The construction of death camps immediately ensued with Belzec operational by March 1942, Sorbibor (May ’42), Treblinka (July ’42) and Majdanek (Sep ’42). Auschwitz added gas chambers to its capabilities in March ’42. It is notable that all of these camps are in Poland.
As we arrived at Treblinka, Paul explains that the Nazis, when they realized they would lose the war, continued operating the death camps for as long as possible and, when that was no longer feasible, they destroyed the camps to hide the evidence. Treblinka is a camp that was almost completely destroyed. What stands there today is a large open space with a powerful memorial to those that died there and a small museum to describe what happened at Treblinka.
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| Treblinka Memorial - Rail ties and platform |
We visit the museum which includes a model of the camp, and then head out to the site and the memorial. This is a well designed memorial. As you enter the space, you walk along 100 meters of stone columns laid horizontally in the ground in place of the railroad tracks that once lay here. These terminate at a platform and then off to your left stands a wide-open area of several acres consisting of the balance of the memorial. There are jagged stones planted in the ground, like grave markers, many with the names of countries or towns from which Jews had been deported by rail for execution here. There are literally thousands of such stones scattered in groups across this landscape. In the center, stands a large stone memorial 25 ft high, 20 ft across and 12 ft deep whose top is a sculpture of tortured bodies.
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| Treblinka Memorial - stones with inscriptions of the names of Polish cities |
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| The memorial in the center and the plea for "Never Again" |
As you walk these hallowed grounds, you can barely imagine the horror that happened here. It is unthinkable. And, yet, it happened. The sign reads, “Never again”.
Our last stop is stone with the name Janusz Korczak, the pen name of author Henry Goldzmit. Paul explains that he ran an orphanage in Warsaw that eventually was moved to the Warsaw Ghetto in 1939. He was also the author of children’s books. In August 1942, the Nazis came to the ghetto to collect the children – 192 in all. Korczak, due to his popularity as an author, was given the opportunity to escape on three occasions, but insisted that he remain with his children. Here is the account of an eyewitness as Korczk and the children marched through the ghetto on their way to the Umschlagplatz –
“Janusz Korczak was marching, his head bent forward, holding the hand of a child, without a hat, a leather belt around his waist, and wearing high boots. A few nurses were followed by two hundred children, dressed in clean and meticulously cared for clothes, as they were being carried to the altar.”
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| The stone for Janusz Korczak, aka Henry Goldzmit |
In the 15-month's time that Treblinka was operational as a death camp, 800,000 Jews were murdered there – that’s over 1,750 fellow human beings every day.
We then re-boarded our bus and made the 3+ hour trip to Lublin where we spent the night. What an exhausting day.
Day 3 – Majdanek and Belzec
The Majdanek death camp is a short drive from downtown Lublin. Unlike Treblinka, Majdenak is relatively intact. Apparently, the Nazi withdrawal from this camp happened too quickly for them to be able to decimate it completely. Although much of what exists today are restored structures or built as replicas of previous buildings, the grounds consist of 80 buildings located on about a third of the footprint of the original camp. The interior of the gas chambers are original although we will not be able to visit them today as they are undergoing restoration. The concrete structure and the ovens of the crematorium are also original, as are the bathhouses.
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| Barbed wire fencing at Majdanek |
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| A display of shoes of the Jews murdered at Majdanek |
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| The crematorium with its smokestack. The city of Lublin in the background. |
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| The ovens in the crematorium |
Belzec
After Majdanek, we drive 2½ hours to Belzec, about 10 miles from the Ukrainian border in southeast Poland. Belzec is another former death camp that has been turned into a memorial as the Nazis had demolished all evidence of its existence.
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| The plaque that greets you at the Belzec Memorial |
You arrive at the platform where the trains would have arrived and then you enter the memorial and walk 200 meters down a narrow path that leads to where the gas chambers were. As you walk, the walls on either side get steadily higher and by the time you complete the walk, they tower 25 ft above your head. On the walls at this intersection where the gas chambers were located are thousands of names of victims. You can also walk the perimeter of the memorial where are listed, by the month and year, the names of cities from which victims were transported to Belzec.
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| The Belzec Memorial and the long walk down to the gas chambers |
Now remember, this is a death camp. Accordingly, victims arriving by train were unloaded, ushered to a changing room where they striped naked, then they were marched to the gas chambers in the hopes of a shower, but got carbon monoxide poisoning instead. The victims died within approximately 20 minutes after which they were removed from the gas chamber, searched for gold teeth, then sent to the crematorium with their ashes spread outside or used as fertilizer in a local farmer’s field. This all occurred within an hour or two of their arrival and then the next train and the next and the next…
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| The memorial to the rail cars that kept arriving, one after the other, after the other |
In total 434,500 Jews were murdered at Belzec averaging almost 1,000 every day for the 15 months that it was in operation. To get a sense of just how effective The Final Solution was, consider this: in mid-March 1942 some 75-80 percent of Holocaust victims were still alive, while 20-25 percent had perished. A mere 11 months later, in mid-February, the percentages were exactly reverse. Based upon this math, the daily murder rate was between 9,000 and 11,000 humans.
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| The Belzec Memorial |
Adjacent to the memorial is a very informative museum with lots of information about specific people who died at Belzec as well as information leading up to The Final Solution. Here are a couple of quotes from Nazi leaders –
“A judgment is being visited upon the Jews, while barbaric, is fully deserved by them. The prophecy that the Fuhrer made about them for having brought a new world war, is beginning to come true in a most terrible manner. If we did not fight the Jews, they would destroy us.” Joseph Goebbels, March 1942
“Most of you know what it means to see 100 corpses lying side-by-side, or 500 or even 1,000 lying there. To have persevered and, disregarding exceptional cases of human weakness, to have remained decent: this has made us hard. This is a never-written and never-to-be-written page of glory in our history.” Heinrich Himmler, October 1943
In order to carry out these gruesome murders, the Germans employed Jews for the worst tasks of clearing out the gas chambers, the crematorium, sorting through the belongings and clothing or, if you were lucky, as a motor mechanic. These Jews were referred to as the Sonderkommando and were typically gassed and then replaced with new recruits. Only one Sonderkommando survived Belzec and was able to tell his story, Rudolf Reder, who reported the following –
“We moved like automated figures, just one large mass of them. We just mechanically worked through our horrible existence…Every day we died a little bit together with the transports of people…When I heard children in the gas chambers calling: ‘Mommy, haven’t I been good, it’s dark’, my heart would break. Later, we stopped having feelings.”
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| "I heard children in the gas chambers calling...", Rudolf Reder, Sonderkommando |
From Belzec, we drove an hour north to Zamosc where we would spend the night.
Day 4 – Krakow
The next morning, we drive 4+ hours west to Krakow. In the afternoon, we tour the Old Town with the help of a local guide. Unlike Warsaw, Krakow is reasonably well preserved. The Germans had established Krakow as the capital of its Polish possessions and perhaps this is why it was spared the destruction fate they visited upon Warsaw. Like Warsaw, Krakow sits on the Vistula River. It is a beautiful city and totally “authentic”. It is definitely worth a visit.
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| The town square in Old Town Krakow |
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| St. Mary's Basilica - Krakow |
Day 5 – Auschwitz
The next morning, we are up early and on our way to Auschwitz, a 1½ hour drive. There we are met by Pawel Sawicki, head of press relations at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, and a personal friend of Paul’s. They have worked together on various Holocaust-related projects over the years, and it is clear that they get along quite well.
We spent the next six-hours touring Auschwitz. Pawel is an incredibly good guide and, as an employee of the museum there, he was able to get us into places that the general public cannot go.
Auschwitz is by far the largest camp operation established by the Nazis comprised of over 470 acres consisting of Auschwitz I, the main camp; Auschwitz II, Birkenau, a concentration and death camp combined; and Auschwitz III, a labor camp housed at the nearby IG Farben synthetic rubber factory.
Auschwitz is also the camp that most people think of when they think ‘concentration camp’ or 'Holocaust’. And it has some of the most iconic imagery largely because of a photo album that was discovered containing the only known pictures from within any of the various Nazi camps. Here’s the story of the album –
Lili Jacob, a Jew, was selected for work at Auschwitz-Birkenau, while the other members of her family were sent to the gas chambers. The Auschwitz camp was evacuated by the Nazis as the Soviet army approached. Lili passed through various camps, finally arriving at the Dora concentration camp, where she was eventually liberated. Recovering from illness in a vacated barracks of the SS, Lili found the album, containing 193 pictures from Auschwitz, in a cupboard beside her bed. Inside, she found pictures of herself, her relatives, and others from her community. The photos were taken at the end of May or beginning of June 1944, either by Ernst Hofmann or by Bernhard Walter, two SS men whose task was to take ID photos and fingerprints of the inmates.
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| Women at Auschwitz after being 'cleaned' and numbered. Lili Jacob, front row-center |
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| Lili finds pictures of her brothers - Yisrael (11) and Zelig (9) - in the album. Both are sent to the gas chambers |
The album's existence had been known publicly since at least the 1960s, when it was used as evidence at the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials. Nazi-hunter, Serge Klarsfeld, visited Lili in 1980 and convinced her to donate the album to Yad Vashem – The World Holocaust Remembrance Center. The album's contents were first published that year in the book The Auschwitz Album.
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| Hungarian Jews arriving at Auschwitz. Chimneys from the gas chambers can be seen in the background on left and right. |
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| The Selection process: men are separated from women and children. Each individual is inspected by a German officer. |
Fake showerheads were affixed to the ceiling of the gas chambers. Beaten and intimidated by SS dogs, 2,000 victims were crammed into the chamber approx. 80ft x 30ft. The chamber door was locked and Zyklon-B (cyanide gas) was poured in. The bodies were stripped of gold teeth and jewelry, their hair was cut off, then the bodies were burnt in the crematorium.
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| Women and children, moments before entering the changing rooms and gas chambers. |
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| Sonderkommandos sorting through the Jews possessions. Useful and/or valuable items are sent to Germany. |
After the museum, we walked through Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II (Birkenau). We toured the barracks, the men and women’s changing rooms, the gas chamber, and the crematorium. It was exhausting and powerful.
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| Entrance to Auschwitz II - Birkenau |
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| Barbed wire fencing |
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| The ovens |
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| The original gas chamber door |
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| Empty canisters of Zyklon B - cyanide |
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| Victims shoes |
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| A memorial to murdered Jews - each one has a name, each one is a person |
Six hours after walking through the gates of Auschwitz with the sign that reads “Arbeit Macht Frei”, work sets you free, we walked out again. 1,000,000 Jews were not as fortunate. They were murdered.
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| Arbeit Macht Frei - Work will set you free |
Here’s the Jewish death toll of The Final Solution –
- Auschwitz 1,000,000
- Treblinka 800,000
- Mass executions 700,000
- Belzec 434,500
- Sobibor 180,000
- Chelmno 170,000
- Majdanek 58,000
- Total 3,342,500
But I thought the total was 6 million? Isn’t the number 6 million? Yes, the number is 6 million. The difference between the 3.3 million above in death camps and the 6 million figure popularly quoted are the number of Jews that died in the Soviet Union (2+ million) at the hands of the Germans, primarily through starvation and mass execution, and the number of Jews who died in the ghettos or in countries far flung from Poland and the death camps (59,000 Jews in Greece were murdered).
By the end of WWII, The Final Solution had murdered about two-thirds of all European Jews and a third of the worldwide population. This genocide was remarkably successful. Imagine if the Germans had won the war.
One of the open questions for me is how the Poles are judged for their role in the Holocaust. I asked Paul this question to which he responded, Certainly, there are those Poles who cooperated with the Nazis and turned in their Jewish neighbors to save their own lives. But there are also plenty of stories of Poles who risked their lives to hide and protect their Jewish neighbors and countrymen. Remember too, that the Poles were also victims of the Germans. While there were 3 million Polish Jews that died in the Holocaust, there were also 3 million non-Jewish, non-military Poles that died during WWII.
Day 6 – Krakow: the Jewish Quarter, Schindler’s Factory and the Salt Mines
For our last day of the tour, we begin with a walk through Kazimierz, the Jewish Quarter of Krakow. It is a bit like walking through Jadow – all things Jewish have been abandoned as there are no more Jews in Krakow, but it is more noticeable in Krakow. As Poland’s second largest city, Krakow had a large Jewish population approaching 60,000 citizens. There is no one left to take care of the Jewish Quarter as there is hardly any Jewish life left. As Paul instructed us, when studying a place, sometimes you must look for what’s not there, not what is there.
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| Kazimierz - the Jewish Quarter in Krakow today |
The Schindler Factory, made famous by the Spielberg movie, Schindler’s List, has been turned into a museum and, frankly, it is badly curated. It is so broken up with multiple floors and rooms, and poorly defined exhibits. Carrie stated that it was worse than going through the Ikea store. I would advise against going.
Finally, we went to the Wieliczka Salt Mine – a 40-minute train ride from Krakow. This is an interesting way to spend a half day if you have an extra half day to spend in the Krakow area. If you don’t, then you haven’t missed much.
This was our final day on The Culture Experience tour. We say goodbye to all of our newly formed friends with extra special hugs to our host, Julia, and our extraordinary guide, Paul. We give the entire trip two big thumbs up with an asterisk. The only negative was some of the food choices and hotels we stayed in. At times, it seemed as though having lunch was an afterthought rather than a plan and some of the room accommodations were rather beat up. But we didn’t come for the food and complaining about either sleeping accommodations or meals when you’re on a Holocaust tour may seem a bit out of touch, so I will leave it there. For its main purpose, learning about the Holocaust, this tour was outstanding.
That night, we had dinner with Andy and Jeff, the two guys from Long Island that were the first two people we met on the trip. Andy runs a large and successful dental practice on Long Island and Jeff is the executive artistic director of Theatre Three, a live performance theatre and theatre ensemble on Long Island which, among things, provides educational theatre performances focusing on the Holocaust for grades 6-12. Andy is his Board President. We enjoyed one of the finest meals we had during our entire 8-month trip at a restaurant called The Art Restaurant. We made fast friends with Andy and Jeff and hope to catch up with them again perhaps in NY or DC some day.
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| Saints Peter and Paul Church - our last night in Krakow |
October 23-26, 2019
Prague
The next morning, Wednesday, October 23, I pick up a rental car at the Krakow train station and Carrie, Liz and I begin the 6-hour drive to Prague where we will stay for four nights. Thankfully, the car ride is uneventful as the three of us need to chill out a bit after our intensive week in Poland. We each feel incredibly grateful for the experience we shared, happy that we aren’t facing another week of the same and ready to experience what Prague has to offer.
We arrive in Prague about 4:30PM and make our way to the AirBnB which is this terrific two-bedroom unit, one flight up, and a short walk to Old Town. It will be a perfect place for our stay in Prague. Later that evening, we take a walk to Old Town which is defined by a large, open square with beautiful buildings all around and a magnificent cathedral or two to boot.
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| Our Lady before Tyn Cathedral on Prague's main square |
Prague had the good fortune of escaping bombing, mostly, during WWII as the Germans saw it as their capital in the east and it became home base for Reinhart Heydrich (yep, the same guy who orchestrated The Final Solution). Heydrich brought his nasty disposition to Prague executing hundreds of people upon his arrival to establish his command. Eight months after his arrival, Heydrich suffered an assassination attempt from which, days later, he died. Czech rebels were blamed for it and the repercussions were immense. Hitler ordered the execution of 10,000 Czechs, randomly selected, in retaliation.
We ate dinner at La Finestra, a wonderful Italian place in Old Town, and then caught a Vivaldi concert at St. Nicholas’ Church on the square. What a fantastic introduction to a great city.
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| St. Nicholas' Church |
I have been to Prague before, a couple of times, for work, Liz had spent a day here once and for Carrie, this was her first visit. I think it is one of the quintessential European cities with an outstanding Old Town, Royal palaces, sits on a river (the Vitava), has a history that goes back thousands of years, great architecture, great culture, great food and you can walk everywhere. All of this is true which is why Prague is also very crowded. Here we are in late October and Prague is packed with tourists. They are everywhere.
The next day, Liz and Carrie head out on a shopping adventure while I take the time to blog. Several hours later they come back empty handed and we take an afternoon walk across the Charles Bridge, constructed in the 14th century with fabulous views of the city on both sides as well as the Vitava River. The bridge is wall-to-wall people, but we manage to get to the other side and from here, we climb the hundreds of stairs to get to the Old Royal Palace perched high up on a hill with terrific views back across the river towards Old Town. While there, we also visit the St. Vitus Cathedral dating back to the year 930, although the current Gothic design was built in the 14th century with renovations added in the 19th and 20th centuries.
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| The Charles Bridge - traffic jam of people |
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| St. Vitus Cathedral |
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| St. Vitus Cathedral |
That night we go to a puppet show at the National Marionette Theatre. As it turns out, puppets and Prague have a long and rich history. Who knew? Well, now you do.
On Friday, we head to the Jewish Quarter and the Old Jewish Cemetery as we haven’t fully scratched the itch of fully understanding Jewish history in Europe. The Pinkas Synagogue at the Jewish Cemetery has been converted to a memorial to the 80,000 Czech Jews who were murdered during the holocaust. Everyone is listed by name including dates of birth and dates of death. The names are organized by the town in which they lived and then alphabetically by surname with all names written by hand. It is powerful to walk through both floors of this memorial, read the names, note that the dates of death are all in late 1942 to mid-1943 and take in that they were all murdered.
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| Some of the 80,000 names of murder Jews in the Pinkas Synagogue Memorial |
Outside is the Old Jewish Cemetery which resembles some of what we saw in Poland except that this cemetery is crammed with hundreds and hundreds of stones. The cemetery dates back to the 15th century and was in use through the 18th century. However, the Jewish community ran out of space and was not able to acquire new space, so the deceased were buried on top of each other and new grave stones were added to the surface until there simply was no more room for stones.
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| The crowded gravestones in the Jewish Cemetery |
Next, we take a boat ride on the Vitava and follow that with a visit to the Holesovice neighborhood, on the far side of the river, which is supposed to be the new, hip, up and coming neighborhood for young folks and entrepreneurs.
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| The Charles Bridge from the Vitava River |
During our last full day in Prague we walk down to the farmer’s market along the river front. It was listed as one of the must-dos on a Saturday, but we all agreed that we could have easily skipped it. From there we cross the river and eventually find ourselves at Museum Kampa, a modern art museum. Now modern art, as previously documented in an earlier blog, is not my thing, but this museum was fine, largely because it was small. We are done within an hour and back on the streets walking.
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| Liz and Carrie walking the streets of Prague |
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| Malcolm, Liz and Carrie - a selfie as we cross one of Prague's many bridges over the Vitava River |
That night we have tickets to see the Prague Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra perform at the Church of Our Lady before Tyn Cathedral (more commonly called the Tyn Cathedral) which sits on the main square in Old Town. We had visited the cathedral the day before and purchased tickets for tonight’s performance. The concert was terrific including pieces from Bach, Mozart, Vivaldi, Beethoven, Handel, Pachelbel and others. We were treated to chamber music, organ pieces and three arias featuring a terrific soprano including The Magnificat and Ave Maria. And what a fantastic venue to hear such spectacular music. Prague was known to attract famous composers over the centuries including Beethoven, Mozart and Dvorak with Mozart actually debuting his opera Don Giovanni in Prague. What a thrill to sit in the Tyn and take in this concert.
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| The Clock Tower on the main square |
The next morning, we breakfast at Home Kitchen and then head to the airport. And that completes a week and a half of traveling with Carrie. Liz and I are thrilled she made the decision to join us for exactly this portion of our itinerary. While I gave her some grief on the front end of this blog for this questionable choice, now that our trip is complete, I don’t think she could have made a better choice. We had a great time together and she is a fabulous traveling companion. We are already looking forward to our next trip together, no matter where that might be. Love you, Carrie.
Oh, and one more thing before I complete this post. In several other posts, I have mentioned our tempting fate with the Schengen visa violation. As we depart Prague, we will have been in the Schengen region for 148 days during a 180-day window. You are only allowed 90 days without a long stay visa and, since we don’t have one, we are deeply in violation. Leaving Prague is our last opportunity to be caught.
So, as we approach passport control, Liz and I are playing it cool. Just as it becomes our turn to be next, the guy in the next booth over signals for us to come to his lane rather than the one we are in. He normally processes passports from EU countries only, but since his lane is now empty, he is ready for us. Liz goes first and the guy starts flipping through her passport. He flips some more pages and some more, scratches his head and flips some more and then he says to Liz, “how long have you been in Schengen because it looks to me like it’s been more than 90 days”. To which Liz replies, as practiced, “yes, but not 90 consecutive days, we have been to London, Ireland, Kenya, Rwanda in between”. To which he replies, “its not 90 consecutive days, its 90 days within a 180-day window”. Busted.
At which point he picks up the phone and calls his supervisor. After a few minutes he hangs up and directs us to a side door to go have a chat with the supervisor. We head over there, knock on the door and hand her our passports. She takes them, closes the door and leaves us outside. Ten minutes go by before she comes out and says that we have overstayed our welcome. We explain that we thought it was 90 consecutive days. She goes back inside, another five minutes passes and she emerges to inform us that we are going to have to pay a fine.
She asks how many Czech Koruna do we have on us and we tell her not much. She then asks how much room do you have on your ATM or credit card? I’m beginning to think we are going to get a shake down. We tell her we have plenty of money and she says, well, give it all to me. Liz smartly asks, how much is the fine and she says 4,000 koruna, to which Liz asks, each? And she says, no, for both of you. Well that’s less than $100 a piece which is about the cost of a long stay visa. We hit up an ATM, get the 4,000 koruna, give it to her, she gives us a receipt and we are on our way.
We hurry to our gate as this little diversion has eaten up all of our extra time and only once we are at the gate, do we have time to see if our passports have been stamped to exclude entry into the Schengen region for the next two years which is the other penalty that they can assess. Thankfully, both of our passports are clean. $200 and we are done. Caught, but no real harm. We get on the plane, breathe a sigh of relief and now we’re off to London.
Musings...
Loved having Carrie join us! It was great to share this experience with her. And it gave me another opportunity to have a shopping buddy in Warsaw. We visited several stores specializing in the Baltic Sea amber that is famous throughout Poland. Happy to say that we were both successful in acquiring a couple of pieces. Good way to remember our visit.
Malcolm already sang the praises of our guide, Paul. He was outstanding. Think of the best college prof you had - Paul was that person. I truly hope we have more opportunities to interact with folks like him on future trips.
There really are no words to describe the utter horror of the Holocaust. I know you already know that. But visiting the memorials and camps, the ghettos, the museums, reading the stories, listening to the guides, and viewing the photographs, brings it all so close. It’s the atrocity of our lifetime. The fact that man is capable of that atrocity is the most horrific part of everything I heard and saw. And the fact that genocides have happened since, in various parts of the world, is still more unbelievable. I just kept asking myself how can people do this to other human beings, very often their own neighbors? There is no good answer to that question. And that makes it even scarier. And the scariest of all questions is what would I/you do in the same situation? Would you comply, fight, resist, ignore? None us can answer that because there is really no way to put yourself in that situation. It’s too horrific to know how one might react. But we can pray we would do the right, the moral thing. I pray hard. Although it was a somber week, it was also profoundly impactful. I highly recommend it if you have any interest in the topic.
Prague - beautiful city. But so crowded! Outside of the tourist areas was much more manageable. I was very surprised to find so many tourists in late October. Cool place, but feel no need to go back.
We’re on the last few weeks of our journey - can you believe it? Been absolutely fantastic and exhausting;). We have incredibly interesting stops ahead (Egypt, Jordan, Israel and Istanbul) so lots more to see and learn. But definitely looking forward to having our feet on home turf for awhile.
You may not hear from us before Thanksgiving so we hope you enjoy your holiday! We’ll be celebrating in Istanbul - somehow I doubt that will include turkey and cranberry sauce;).
Cheers!
