Every once in a while you get to experience a life-changing moment, a moment that will help to define who you are for the rest of your life. And sometimes you wonder how you managed to live before experiencing this moment. Some of these moments are moments of extreme pleasure, and others are moments of intense reality and darkness. Today, I had the honor, and I choose that word carefully, the honor of walking some very difficult steps as I experienced the very depths of man's cruelty to other men by experiencing the death camp called Majdanek. There is no preparing for a walk like this. No matter how much I have read and studied about the Holocaust, there was no way I could have been ready to take these difficult, yet important steps in my life. First of all, I need to express my gratitude to my brother in law Daron for being with me and walking these steps together. While there is no way I can adequately describe the events of today, I will do my best. I warn you in advance, the pictures will not be easy to look at. But this is my testimony in the face of all othe Holocaust deniers who continue to question whether these acts ever really happened. And I call on each of you reading this blog to be a witness through my words and photos. In the face of such darkness and cruelty we need to be the ones who bear witness to the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis.
For so long Daron and I had been planning to walk into Majdanek together. We choose this camp because we had been told that of all the camps that exist, this one was the most preserved and intact.
The beginning of our day was surreal. Here is the view from the restaurant on the first floor of our hotel in Lublin, about 10 minutes away from Majdanek.
Look at the people in the picture. How could they just carry on with their normal lives living so close to where 80,000 people, 60,000 who were Jews were murdered? How could life ever be normal again? We saw parents walking their kids to school, people driving and walking to work, business as usual. It was not business as usual for us.
The first thing that is most striking about this camp is how close it is to civilization. It is not secluded from civilians. It is right next to buildings and people. Look a the picture below that perfectly describes what we saw. This is one of the gas chambers at Majdanek. Standing inside I could literally pick up a rock and throw it through a window in the building next door.
While this building was not there during World War 2, other buildings were. And where was the outcry? Where was humanity as 80,000 people's lives were brutally ended for no reason? One reality I am becoming very aware of is that humanity was there, and chose to be silent. There is an anti-semitism that exists at the very basic level. In order for this camp to run for years killing every day there had to be collaborators who either helped or chose to look the other way. How could anyone look the other way in the face of such death? Unfortunately, I have yet to find an answer to this question.
Here is a photo of one of the two gas chamber buildings at Majdanek.
It is strange that our first stop on our tour of Majdanek was the very last stop for so many victims. I wasn't prepared to go inside, although I had studied the photos from the camp many times before. As we walked inside the first room we entered the shower room, where prisoners were "disinfected."
As we stepped inside this room there was a quiet, cold feeling that washed over me, as I imagine the feeling of fear washed over the people who were forced inside.
And then, we took those difficult, but important steps inside one of the gas chambers at Majdanek. The first thing I noticed was the blue stain on the walls from the Zyclon B chemical that was dropped inside the sealed chamber through a hole in the roof. You can see this hole in the second picture below.
It was a very distinctive color blue. I will never forget that color. As we stood there, we were totally alone, and yet we could feel the souls of those who breathed their last breath there. And a huge sense of responsibility came over me, that I have to be able to speak on their behalf, for those who are forced to be silent. I stayed in that room for a long time, running my hands along the smooth cement that lined the walls, continually asking myself how anyone could perpetrate such cruel acts against anyone.
Below is a room with the canisters of Zyclon B used in the murders.
To be honest, it was very hard to leave the gas chambers. I felt like I needed to stay there and interact with those souls for just a little while longer. And I think I was scared to face the reality of the rest of the camp.
Outside we toured many barracks that were located in the "ecomonic" part of the camp. As we were outside we noticed that it suddenly got very cold and rain began to fall. It was as if God was crying along with us, or maybe God was absent from this place and forgot to give us acceptable weather.
Inside of one of these barracks was something called "The Shrine" to the nameless victim. It was a room bathed in darkness with barbed wire balls illuminated with light.
We walked through the room and listened to the soundtrack that included strange music, a solid chord with changing notes that never resolved into a pleasing tone, with voices calling out from behind the music. I was transfixed by this music and the balls of light and then, almost rising out of the ash was the sound of someone reading the words of the Shema in an Easten European Ashkenazic Hebrew. To hear our most holy prayer said in a place filled with death and darkness literally stopped me in my tracks. How many of the 60,000 Jewish victims said these very words as they breathed their last breath? I will never pray the Shema the same way again.
We stayed in that room for what felt like hours as we waited to hear the Shema again, but it never came back... How fitting that what we were looking for wasn't there...
The next barrack was a storage shed where shoes were collected and stored. We learned that upon liberation there were more than 430,000 pairs of shoes found at Majdanek.
Shoes as far as we could see, rows and rows of shoes. Think about it for a minute. 430,000 pairs of shoes. Who's feet were walking in them? What did their life represent? What would they have accomplished if only given the chance? Another question left unanswered, another overwhelming question.
Afte this we left the economic section of the camp and entered through the gates to where prisoners lived during their time at Majdanek. Notice the fence and the barbed wire that kept prisoners in.
Walking into this section of the camp gave me a huge pit in my stomach. I could almost see the prisoners walking into the barracks where they slept.
I have seen photo after photo of bunks like these. To see them in actual barracks, as they existed during the war was something beyond description. We had a group of Polish school children, I would guess in middle school who were in the barracks with us. It was facinating to see how they absorbed what their teacher was sharing with them. Some were totally present, asking questions to try to understand the ununderstandable and others were distracted as teenagers often are. As we waited for them to finish so we could get a good look ourselves, we noticed how cold and wet it was inside these barracks. Imagine how it must have felt for those forced to live here... Literally freezing with only a concentration camp uniform and a thin blanket to keep them warm? And now imagine with the weather below freezing. Unthinkable.
As this reality hit us we were not prepared for what was around the corner, the crematoria.
I think this is the part of the camp I was most dreading to see. I cannot tell you why, except to say that to see these ovens in person brings a whole new and deeper reality to the darkness of the
Holocaust.
Outside the crematoria were the ditches that were the sight of the largest mass execution in any camp during the war. On November 3, 1943 18,400 Jewish prisoners were killed here in these ditches. There are no words that can describe this reality.
Our next stop in the camp was the mausoleum that was constructed as a memorial of sorts to the victims of Majdanek.
As we walked up were met with the sight of a mound of ashes, the remains of the victims of Majdanek who no longer had a voice, yet still were able to call to us from beyond their grave. Keep in mind this is not the remains of all the victims, as most were turned into compost.
It is hard to get the vision of the scale of this mound. I can tell you that it is huge, at least a hundred feel in diameter and who knows how deep. As I was talking to Daron trying to figure out how I would describe the scale, that group of school kids came up and I snapped the photo below to show you the scale of the ash that was in front of us.
At the entrance to the camp is this monument that seems to say "if people remain quiet the boulders will cry out." Beyond the loss of life, the largest tragedy of this camp for me is the silence of the people around it. The silence of the world in the face of the darkest of darkness.
Majdanek has changed who I am as a man, a Jew and a citizen of our world forever. Are you willing to be changed as well? I know that those who are traveling with me will be changed as we experience Auschwitz on Thursday.
It felt strange carrying my camera through this camp. But I felt a strong need to document with photos my experience to share with you all. This is my testimony. You are my witnesses.
After our experience at Majdanek we met our driver Anatole who drove us from Lublin to Kraków. The beginning of our drive was silent as Daron and I tried to absorb all we had experienced. Getting to Krakov I had a few minutes to skype Hayley before the went to school. It was so great to see her smiling face and hear about her poster contest she was participating in. I didn't tell her all I saw today. I couldn't. As a father I wanted to protect her from the reality of what I saw and felt. There is such a light in her eyes, such hope. I will do all I can to preserve that light.
Arriving in Kraków was another surreal experience, surreal because now I take my experience at Majdanek with me forever. Daron and I enjoyed a delicious dinner and even went and visited with some of our TAE travelers.
I am so looking forward to being there for them as they experience Auschwitz like Daron was there for me today.
So what do we do with an experience like today? We choose to bring light to a sometimes very dark world. We need to take responsibility for our own fate, especially when others remain silent. We need to be the humanity that was absent during the Holocaust.
On our way into Kraków this was some graffiti on a wall of an apartment building.
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