I've now been to Poland twice in just under three years, which is far more than most people go in a lifetime, and God knows I never expected to be back again this soon. Back in 2007, I loved Krakow; it was beautiful and kind of warm and sunny and up until the point when we went to Plaszow, it was one big party. Of course, things got bad afterward and didn't really pick up until I got to Israel, but Poland had its beautiful moments.
Not so much this time around.
Krakow was still quaint and cute and really pretty in places, but of course, I was there for a different purpose this time around. The first time I was there was for the March of the Living, which, in retrospect, is not the most logical of programs because there's no way 17 and 18 year olds are mature enough to handle everything they throw at us in the span of a week - Plaszow, the ghettos, Auschwitz, Birkenau, mass graves, Tikocyn, Majdanek. I'm not even sure there's an age that ensures that one is mature enough to handle the camps because the camps are completely incomprehensible. But, I guess, for my first trip to Poland, I was there for a Jewish teen pilgrimage, a more emotionally intense version of the teen tour I was never able to do. I'm grateful to the March for many things, especially the fact that I was able to go into Poland this time with a vague knowledge of what to expect.
Going with a completely secular group was a new sensation, and I can safely say that I'm not a fan of touring the camps in a group in the slightest. It's not something that can or should be done in a pack; there will never be enough time to try to comprehend and reflect on the experience. The Miami group was not there for a seminar in the Jewish experience in Poland; we got Polish history as a whole and then a bit of Jewish history, but the makeup of the group had me slightly on edge. Unlike with the March, not everyone was Jewish and not everyone's family was affected by the Holocaust; even more so, not everyone had family members in Auschwitz. My mom had me reading literature about the Holocaust from a very young age and I'm grateful for the exposure; it's probably part of the reason why I'm a history major today. But that means I'm going to have a vastly different take on the events of the Holocaust, and that means I'm going to react in a vastly different way.
Truth be told, I didn't really need a return visit to Auschwitz, certainly not this soon after my first, but it was a facet of the Classroom Europe trip and I didn't really have a choice. I can now safely say that the next time I go back will either be with my mother or with any children I may have. It requires reflection and contemplation but I don't learn anything while I'm there. If anything, it makes me feel numb and doesn't elicit much of a visceral reaction, and the fact that I'm not reacting makes me upset, and then it's a big cycle of feeling terrible. I thought it would be better this time around now that I knew what to expect, but I knew that I'd see the room with the entire wall of human hair and the 40,000 pairs of shoes and the suitcases meticulously labeled by people who would never see their belongings or homes again, and just that knowledge was terrible in and of itself.
On the way to the camps, I had many of the same thoughts that I did on the way in last time, that every house we pass along the highway could have belonged to a Jewish family at one point in time, that by the grace of God and my family's emigration I exist today, because if they had stayed in Europe there's a pretty decent chance that everyone from those generations would have been murdered.
I hate visiting the camps because I'm a visual person in that I need to be able to picture a place as it was when it was operational; it's not limited to the Holocaust or World War II but even frustrated me in London and Paris, where, for instance, I couldn't imagine the French Revolution taking place in what I know was a very different Place de la Concorde. The images of the Holocaust that I had before the March was that of a black and white, two-dimensional Holocaust, no more than figures in a film. I still can't picture the camps as operational - that isn't to say I would ever dare deny the Holocaust, but it's just hard for me to picture actual humans living and dying there. Auschwitz has always felt more like a film set or museum display than an actual camp that saw one million Jews and thousands of others killed, which is why going there frustrates me immensely.
I also don't really know how to approach the Holocaust. On one hand, I'm a history major (and in some ways a very amateur historian) and I try to treat it objectively and clinically and just as something to be studied; God knows I've read enough about it. On the other hand, I'm a Jew with European ancestry and also a human being, and the Holocaust isn't something that should be looked at objectively; it's the greatest crime against humanity to date. And at what point do you stop blaming a country for its role in such a heinous crime? I know tons of young Germans who want no association with the Holocaust because it wasn't their generation that did something so terrible, but at what point do you absolve a country of its past transgressions? And does that set a dangerous precedent ("Kill a few million but we'll forgive you in 60 years")?
Anyway. Poland wasn't all Auschwitz and doom and sadness, though it was pretty fucking cold and that sucked because I didn't anticipate it at all and hence I might have frostbite and/or pneumonia. We left just before 8:30 on Friday morning and got to Krakow nine hours later after 2000 stops, three back-to-back passport checks (and one in which Samantha's passport was stolen by a Polish police officer/drag queen), and two instances of almost plowing down a Krakow tram. But we got there, dropped our stuff off, went to dinner, and while I have no idea what anyone else did, I got almost 10 hours of sleep that night and it was FANTASTIC.
On Saturday we toured Wawel Castle (which I remembered last time only for its presence on The Amazing Race) and it was interesting but all chapels and tombs start to blur together after a while. Afterward we went to Kazimierz, the Jewish Quarter in which we spent most of our time back on the March, and we went to the Old Synagogue's Jewish museum, which I remember pretty vividly from 2007. Of course, it wouldn't be Poland if I wasn't surrounded by LOUD Israeli tour groups, so that was comforting in a way. Samantha and I went on a quest for a mezuzah and books, and I witnessed a very uncomfortable interrogation in Czech by a Polish shopkeeper, and it might have been the funniest part of this weekend.
After lunch we went to the area of the Jewish ghetto. I remembered the chairs memorial and the small part of the wall that my group had seen on the March, and then Samantha led us to the ghetto memorial and then Oskar Schindler's factory, which was in the most depressing part of any town I'd seen up to that point. The factory was just another building, though I guess I wouldn't have been impressed unless Liam Neeson was giving me a personal tour. I suppose everything seems bigger because of movies so I can't be surprised by how small it felt.
Samantha and I headed off to a bookstore afterward and then I found hair gel (!!!! I'm such a guido, wow), and then our travels took us to a shopping mall. I guess I should take the time to note that I love seeing three things in foreign countries: highways, rest stops, and shopping malls. I know it's weird but whatever, I love seeing how residents of other countries live and travel and so on. All I can say is that this mall put many American ones, including the terrible Florida malls, to shame because it was three stories tall and FABULOUS and it's odd to see how much more developed Poland is than the Czech Republic. Carrefour also needs to get itself to Prague RIGHT NOW because it was like Super Target and I'm mildly obsessed. I nearly went food shopping in Krakow just because I could. Also, Bruce Willis is apparently a spokesman for Sobieski vodka and hence his face is plastered all over the boxes of the gift sets of vodka, and it is HILARIOUS.
I've been thinking a lot about the scene from The History Boys that I quoted in the previous entry. Before those lines, it says this of the Holocaust:
AKTHAR: It has origins. It has consequences. It’s a subject like any other.
SCRIPPS: Not like any other, surely. Not like any other at all.
AKTHAR: No, but it’s a topic.
I wish I was mature enough to comprehend it because I thought there would be a ton of progress on the front since I was 17, but I don't think there is an age at which the Holocaust becomes easier to comprehend or emotionally manage. The camps shouldn't be a tourist attraction, but then again, there really isn't another way to present them.
Nothing is appropriate.
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