Last year I was asked to organise the EHRS trip to Poland. I don’t know why: maybe my face looks Eastern-European. Or maybe it is my accent that gives me away?
Organising the second part of the trip (time in Krakow and a day trip to Auschwitz) proved quite difficult for me because I neither have been to Krakow nor had any intention to go to Auschwitz, ever.
Why would I want to go there if the Holocaust has been such an important part of me for most of my life? I read most books I could find about it, I watched most of the films about it and I struggled enough without going to the actual place to come to terms with the magnitude of evil committed against my people and other peoples too. What would I learn that I didn’t already know and why would I want to go the place which epitomises evil in itself.
And so a month ago I found myself walking into Auschwitz with 24 more people from our group while the names of the murdered children, women and men were said. We were walking in silence. And, almost like in a slow motion film, a moment of clarity dawned on me: this is me, being born 80+ years ago in Minsk, my hometown, walking towards my death. I could be any age. I was walking with a feeling of no escape, feeling the horror in my stomach: I am Jewish and therefore I had to die.
The sense of powerlessness was overwhelming. The sheer size of the camp was overwhelming. I didn’t expect to be affected so deeply by that visit.
Pawel Szczerkowski, our guide in Warsaw, took us to the only remaining part of the Ghetto wall. Warsaw Ghetto was the largest one during the Second World War. It was established in November of 1940. At its peak, as many as 460 000 Jews were locked in there.
We heard some harrowing and some inspirational stories of heroism and resistance there. The remnant of the wall, however, made the biggest impression on me. The wall itself wasn’t really high. People could easily jumped over it backwards and forward.
So I couldn’t understand why wouldn’t they do that?
Pawel explained to me that the much higher wall, separating people more than the actual wall, was in the heads of both non-Jewish and Jewish people. Even, if people did jump over the wall, where would they go? And who would want to hide a Jew, even if they were sympathetic enough, to risk their own life? It was a question of survival in so many ways.
The fact that the lucky Jews of the Ghetto became slave labour and only had to be given food and not money was putting Polish people off too: they needed food too.
And here, the circle, the cycle of history repeated itself yet again but in a much more apocalyptic ways for the Jews: in an ironic way, yet again, they were taking the jobs away from the Pols. As some people saw it.
As we learned in Polin – the Jewish museum in Warsaw – the same way as many peasants and other local people saw an enemy in Jews, who were not allowed to own the land over the centuries but were given jobs by the Royal family or the aristocracy to run their estates, collect the taxes, run pubs and last but not least to land the money. Many Jews could read and write which did work to their advantage.
I am sure that there were many good and bad Jews but what people saw: Jews coming to collect their money, Jews getting the jobs, Jews making money.
I really don’t want to simplify our history but it is remarkable to see how much economic hardships increase antisemitism or other types of racism. It is important to find a scape-goat to blame.
And antisemitism is still deeply rooted in Poland. Our group was shocked to learn about the expulsion of almost 3000 Jews from Poland in 1968 by its Soviet Government. Mostly there were people who played an important role in culture, science, education and the Government of Poland at the time.
It was good for us to learn how deeply once established prejudice is rooted in one’s people history. It also reminded us how important it is for us, the people who were on the receiving side of it not to succumb to the same conditioning. It is important particularly at this time of the year to look into the mirror of our souls and make sure that we deal with the facts that life presents – as long as we know what the actual facts are – and not with the prejudices and our own personal biases.
We also realised how important our personal friendships with non-Jewish neighbours are. We had the operations manager of the Barnet’s night shelter Marcin Nocek together with his mum meeting us at Aucshwitz and spending a day together with us. Their friendship and respect to our history was much appreciated.
So, we were very pleased to meet with the staff members of the Forum for Dialogue foundation in Warsaw. The organisation was established in 1998 by Andrzej Folwarczny, who at the time was a member of Sejm (lower chamber of the Polish Parliament) and chairman of the Polish-Israeli Parliamentary Group.
He created a space for Jews and Poles to meet and to get to know each other despite their historic differences and prejudice against one another.
We were told that in their 25th year one of the foundation’s aims is to have 250 Polish volunteers-educators, graduates from the Forum for Dialogue’s programme, who are prepared to engage some of Poland’s 36 million inhabitants into a Jewish-Polish dialogue.
Today is Shabbat Shuvah – Shabbat of Repentance and Shabbat of return. It gives us an opportunity not only to turn towards ourselves, within ourselves but also towards our history. Learning from our history is important so that we remember. And we remember so that our past helps us to shape our present and create a vision of desired future.
Our trip was fascinating and transformative too. We went to Poland as a group of people and came back as a group of friends. We had a few fun adventures too. We chose to celebrate life on our trip and not to become the victims of our very upsetting recent Polish history.
But I would like to leave you today with several lessons I learned on our trip:
Firstly, the power of community: one of the most profound experiences for me was our evening of reflection after the day at Auschwitz and a birthday celebration of one of our members. Secondly, The power of us as a group, being there together: talking, crying and reflecting was inspirational and the celebration of our new friend’s birthday that followed was simple but very joyful. We celebrated our survival, continuity, life and newly found sense of freedom from fear.
We refused to accept our haunting victimhood mentality upon ourselves and resolved to dedicate ourselves to celebrating our heritage, promoting it and enjoying it together with our Jewish and non-Jewish friends.
On this Shabbat Shuvah, I would like to finish by saying to our freedom, to our courage and to our beautiful and rich heritage, Shabbat Shalom!
