Christianity and Auschwitz?: Part I

The next day, Thursday (7/19), we drove to the Harmęże monastery, located in the small town of Brzeżinka (German: Birkenau), to view artist Marian Kołodziej’s “Negative of Memory. Labyrinth” (“Klisze Pamięci. Labirynty”). Marian Kołodziej was a Polish-Catholic political prisoner who survived years at Auschwitz. [**Side note: there is an award-winning documentary on Kłodziej’s life entitled “The Labyrinth”: http://www.thelabyrinthdocumentary.com/] Our tour of his art was led by a Franciscan friar, one of the monastery’s few residents. Kołodziej, who was on the first transport sent to Auschwitz in the spring of 1940 (where he was given prisoner number 432), only began drawing his experiences late in his life after he suffered a stroke. When we entered the exhibit, Kołodziej’s words greeted us: “I propose a journey by way of this labyrinth marked by the experience of the fabric of death” (Ocalałeś nie po to aby żyć masz mało czasu trzeba dać świadectwo). Multiplied through the exhibit space are ghoulish and demonic figures of camp prisoners, all drawn in pencil or pen, juxtaposed with Holocaust, Judaic, and especially Christian symbolism. For instance, Kołodziej turned cement posts from Auschwitz’s electric fence into a cross and drew the crucified Christ on those posts; the figure of Christ is enmeshed in the same barbed wire that encloses the camp.  Truth be told, I had visited last year, and promised myself that I would never return to a place that made me so genuinely uncomfortable. And yet, here I was, exactly 12 months to the date, surrounded by Kołodziej’s hellish portraits on the walls, on the ceiling, on the floor—there was no escaping the repetitive images of torture. But somehow, within my internal chaos of understanding human propensity toward evil, I realized was staring at an amazing exhibit of art—and feeling the inner turmoil that I am sure Kołodziej desired of his audience.

Kołodziej's art

The younger Kołodziej forcing the older Kołodziej to draw his experiences to show the world what happened.

A combination of demons, important figures from Polish history,  a god-looking figure, and a self-drawing of Kołodziej.

            Kołodziej also emphasized the martyrdom of Maximilian Kolbe, a Catholic priest (now saint) who gave his life at Auschwitz so another prisoner could live, in his artwork. Many of the artist’s images display Kolbe as Christ—both as suffering tragic heroes and sacrificing themselves for the ‘salvation’ of others. Kołodziej felt it was his duty to mankind to finally share his experiences as an Auschwitz survivor with the world through his art.

            The Harmęże monastery is connected with the Maximilian Kolbe Church, in which the Kołodziej’s hundreds of drawings are on display in its basement. We all went upstairs to view the church after our visit to Kołodziej’s underground ‘labyrinth,’ and there was actually a shrine to Maximilian Kolbe behind barbed wire, utilizing camp imagery, such as the red triangle (used to label political prisoners in the camp), and Kolbe’s inmate number 16670. Having a shrine to a Catholic priest in a church was already slightly beyond my Protestant understanding, but the narrative is further complicated by the fact the Father Kolbe was the editor of Mały Dziennik, an antisemitic newspaper before the war. Then again many Catholic priests held (what is now considered) antisemitic views before the war. A list of Catholic friars and priests who perished at Auschwitz-Birkenau is also etched on the wall of this church.

The shrine to Maximilian Kolbe inside the church.

While it is imperative to remember Kolbe’s heroic actions, I also feel commemoration can go awry if it appears that the Church and worshippers at this shrine are simply dismissing Kolbe’s pre-war antisemitism (especially for those in the Jewish community visiting the Kołodziej exhibit). Even a simple shrine to Kolbe connected with the art museum of a Catholic-Polish political prisoner made me once again think about the concept of space, how space is used to remember the past, and the complications of commemoration in certain spaces. Offsite memorials (which often include religious overtones) and memorials on the sites where the atrocities occurred, contribute to the narrative of memory and how the viewer experiences the space, physically, emotionally, and even spiritually. I instantly think of the Radegast memorial in Łódź, where visitors could walk into the cattle car present on the same tracks that deported Jews from the Łódź ghetto and most likely to their deaths. Our group had mixed reactions over this use of space and one’s chance to “experience” it. For some, walking into the cattle car was disrespectful, for others it was more about the knowledge gained by visualizing the conditions, etc. I did walk into the cattle car at the Radegast memorial and did not feel guilty, but had an emotional reaction at Treblinka, where the absence of everything forced me to dwell all the more on the hundreds of thousands murdered where I stood, is a small, personal example of how different memorials in different spaces can affect different people in different ways… And maybe it is just in these different uses, that the message of the Holocaust can be disseminated and grasped by the myriad of visitors to these blood-stained sites.

Oświęcim v. Auschwitz

I know it has been weeks since I have updated my blog—that is the sad truth of graduate school and part-time work keeping me from doing what I love: blogging about Poland. But I did make potato and cheese pierogi tonight for dinner (ok ok, they were Mrs. T’s), but still the nostalgia flooded over me, and even without the Tyskie, I decided that I must write. Besides, there is still several days’ worth of stories that have not yet been told. So we begin once again.

On Wednesday (July 18), our group left the hotel early to head to Auschwitz I for a morning filled with workshops. It was a little disconcerting to be sitting in the ‘classrooms’ which are located in the former camp barracks themselves. But then again, I was familiar with these reconverted spaces after having worked with the conservation team the year before on shoe preservation—its department located also inside the camp in a building once utilized by the Nazis.

Our first workshop was with Alicja Białecka, curator of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. She led us in a hands-on project/discussion of individual victims of the camp based on the museum’s archival material. It was fascinating to be reminded of the stories of survival from Auschwitz and how (ironically) prisoners who were in the camp longer were more established and thus had a better chance of survival. Individual stories—like the “Romeo and Juliet” story of Auschwitz involving Edek Galanski and Mala (Malka) Zimetbaum, which details how they fell in love (he, a Polish political prisoner; she, a Jew) and escaped from Auschwitz together, only to be caught, interrogated, and killed—put faces, personalities, and life into the 1.1 million people that died there.

            We then made our way to the Archives, located in Block 24 of the Auschwitz I complex, where we met with Szymon Kowalski, the deputy head of the archives. Although the Auschwitz Museum opened July 2, 1947, the museum archive was not established until 1957 with the main task of collecting and preserving all documentation. During the camp’s existence (from the spring 1940 to January 1945) only 5 percent of the records were kept at Auschwitz to be used in the archives since the SS had destroyed most of the documents in an attempt to erase their war crimes, resistance prisoners had tried to save as much documentation as possible (hiding them, sending them outside the camp, etc.) and after the Soviets, after they had liberated Auschwitz, took back a good amount of documentation (including the prisoner death records) back to Moscow. Unfortunately, the documents sent to the USSR were not available to historians or family members until Communism fell in 1989. In 1991 and 1992, the Russians returned the death record album back to the Auschwitz State Museum which provided 68,000 death certificates of Auschwitz prisoners (although many, if not most, of the ‘causes of death’ were Nazi lies). Today, the archives department receives 10,000 requests worldwide each year, people requesting information on their family.

Auschwitz I (just beyond the infamous 'Arbeit Macht Frei' gate and to the left is Block 24 where the Archives are located)

A street view of Oświęcim. 

"Antisemitism is a sin against God and humanity" --JPII

Suzanne, Sari, and Shelby walking in Oświęcim.

Leaving the camp complex, and re-entering the town of Oświęcim (a short, 5 minute drive away) that day, truly made me think about the relationship between town and camp, since sadly the two—Auschwitz, the camp and Oświęcim, the town, are conflated. The question is rightfully asked how a society who witnessed directly the deaths of millions could continue to live without mourning the loss of their fellow Jewish citizens. Although there is no excuse for the anti-Semitism, pogroms, and expulsions that occurred in Poland after the war, it is imperative to comprehend the role the communist government played in separating “Nazi camp” from “innocent (and victimized) Polish town.” In the 1990s, some Poles argued for both the town and the camp to remain ‘Oświęcim’ which specifically connotes Polish suffering (whereas ‘Auschwitz’ connotes Jewish suffering). Polish society in general “still sees the war as a central event embodying national heroism, pride, and victimhood,” and those who are not ready to work toward reconciliation often fall into an older generation of Poles who lived and suffered significantly during the war—Poles who feel that their suffering is both being forgotten and rewritten by recovering and propagating strictly Jewish suffering.  

Yet as we know, and as many, many Poles now are also championing, the memory of the Holocaust in Poland should not focus solely on suffering; it should also center on the rediscovery of Jewish contributions to Polish social life, Polish history, and Polish culture. The point of remembering the Jewish Holocaust is to “bring a sense of community—between camp and town—not rivalry about who really ‘suffered more.’” Only after the fall of communism, was a more truthful portrayal of past suffering obtained. Sixty years had passed before towns (especially those near neighboring camps) began admitting collective guilt and/or complicity in the Holocaust. The town of Oświęcim was no different.  Finally in the past 15 years, Oświęcim confessed relation to the Holocaust sites in its town and is currently attempting to reconstruct its pre-war Jewish history.

Thus this blog entry is not meant to be conclusive; instead it is meant to elucidate the various controversial issues at stake, and that a black and white picture of guilt and “normal” life in Oświęcim should not be painted.  Instead, it is imperative to walk away with the knowledge that the Holocaust did not just suddenly happen, but was a process where ordinary citizens in the towns had choices. And yes, while camps can still be treated as “terror zones,” these zones were also very much part of the community who helped send people to these camps or (fearing their own livelihood) stood by and watched it happened.

Thus the picture of the town must be one that is evolving. May the outside Jewish (and world) community no longer see Oświęcim as an intolerant and insensitive graveyard, and may the citizens of Oświęcim recognize the sacral nature of their town in Jewish history, and by living in this community, do everything they can to respect the victims of the Holocaust and the wishes of those who are remembering the victims’ lives and honoring their memory.

Birkenau (A long entry for a long day)

The morning we went to Birkenau (the extermination camp) was by the far the coldest day of the trip thus far. It was also rainy and windy, and while one can’t complain in such a sacral place of suffering (where thousands died of cold alone), it was so cold and wet, and I had difficulty concentrating on our guide’s 3 ½ hour tour as I tried desperately to warm my fingers from the Renaud’s disease.

View of Birkenau barracks from guard tower

Crematorium ruins at Birkenau. (There were 5 crematoria in total during the camp's history)

On the way back to town, our drivers stopped at the Judenrampe which is located a half kilometer or so from Birkenau, which was where all of the transports arriving in Auschwitz stopped until 1944, and prisoners would have to walk into the camp grounds on foot. (When one remembers those iconic images of Jews arriving in the cattle cars inside of Birkenau with the guard building in the background, those are during 1944, specifically with the transports of hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews). Today the location of the Judenrampe has a memorial cattle car on the train tracks, where visitors coming to pay tribute have written notes and prayers, placed under small stones within the various nooks and crannies of the cattle car. That is at least what I remember from last year’s Amizade visit. This year I sat in the van, mostly because I was so cold, and stared instead at the lone yellow house located right across the street—its front door looking right at the site, a child’s play set gracing the front lawn, toys spread on the grass, and a dog house. The shared thought that crossed through all of our minds: “How could someone live so close to where such horrors occurred?” as I imagined the children playing with the toys in the front yard. Then again, that house was there before the ramp, before the Holocaust and one has to think about normalcy and the need to go on living and to raise a family…

The little yellow house next door to the Judenrampe memorial (taken from van window, hence the poor shot).

My question though, is what do you tell your children about the large cattle car across the street? How do you explain the people coming to mourn, pray, and remember basically in your front yard? Does living so close to such a site, desensitize children to other such sites in Poland and throughout Central Europe? Or maybe it’s for the best, if done carefully and right, to be able to teach respect yet move on and live in places or near sites that in the past housed tragedy?

These are questions I have had for some time. In July of 2011, when I spent seven days in Oświęcim, I first realized that the camp is indeed separate from the town but also very present in the community psyche, even if not by choice. On a tour of Auschwitz II-Birkenau led by Wojtek Smoleń, the son of famed Auschwitz survivor (and former director of the museum) Kazimierz Smoleń who recently passed away this year, I asked Wojtek what it was like to grow up in ‘Auschwitz.’ He said that everyone knew the facts, yet the town was also all they knew; the choice to be born in Oświęcim was obviously not theirs, thus to not continue living normally because of the near proximity of the death camp was never a question among him and his friends. They would frequent the restaurants and bars, and even a club off the main street Generała Jarosława Dąbrowskiego.

The local population also lives in the buildings the Nazis built to house their wives and families. Even Auschwitz camp commandant Rudolf Höss’s home became a private Polish residence after he was killed. Should these buildings have been destroyed and new homes rebuilt (albeit still on the same site) so the present population could live “free” of Nazi crimes? The question sounds silly; if yes, seemingly all of Poland would have to be demolished and rebuilt. So the answer is no; former Holocaust buildings and sites remain in public use, yet even 70 years after the Holocaust, this balance between ‘normal’ living and respect for the past (and more importantly for the dead) has yet to reach equilibrium.

In addition to the ongoing debate between daily living and respecting the past, a very intriguing and important (oh and heated) discussion also arose over how our guide handled the tour of both Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau which took up the majority of our group discussion that evening.  We were concerned how Mirosław (who has been giving tours of the camps since 1991) told his narrative which (when I asked him, he reponded) has remained relatively unchanged since his inception as a guide. Well we all know that the past 20 years has brought great changes to Holocaust historiography and to the history of Auschwitz in particular. Yet our guide’s story was very one-sided and it was difficult to ask questions and even harder to disagree. Another disappointing aspect was that both tours (of Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau) went all the way to the end of our allotted tour time which left no time for personal thought or reflection or a chance to wander by oneself and take in the sight without the continuous narration of Mirosław’s voice.

Needless to say, after a morning spent in Birkenau and afternoon discussing the experience, we needed a break. After several attempts of asking for a pizza “To go” from the one other food establishment we frequented after Max Café, called Pizza Hit (maybe an attempt at ‘Pizza Hut’?), Chris, Sari, Suzanne, Zach, and I headed back to the AJC to watch the Polish language film “Border Street” about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943, quite the serious subject although the mistranslated English subtitles had us laughing.

Spending a Week in Oświęcim

On Monday morning (July 16), after a quick breakfast provided in the communal kitchen of Hotel Pierrot (where I realized that the eggs and milk were not refrigerated, but oddly enough several bottles of nail polish were), we headed to the Auschwitz Jewish Center for our official welcome by the organization sponsoring our fellowships. Maciek led our group in a hands-on workshop and a tour of the synagogue (which was the first synagogue to be reclaimed by the Jewish community after Communism), the museum, the learning center, and of course Tomek’s garden. Despite the pouring rain, we then proceeded outside the Center for a tour of the town—our umbrellas forming a colorful canopy as we moved through once-rich Jewish Oświęcim. An especially significant stop for me was the Jewish cemetery where I worked in July 2011 with the Amizade group cleaning the grounds. Sadly much, if not most, of our work from last summer was overgrown, but it was still incredible to be standing in the same spot I stood the year before—when I had no idea about graduate school at Georgetown, when I had never heard of the Auschwitz Jewish Center fellowship, and when I hadn’t met all of the amazing people who were currently with me.

Touring in the rain

The Oświęcim Jewish cemetery

The Oświęcim synagogue (left) and the Auschwitz Jewish Center (right)

I learned several important facts over the course of the morning. After the Holocaust there were only 200 Oświęcim Jews who survived, most who survived in the USSR. Many proceeded to move away during the post-Holocaust years, and the last Jew of Oświęcim, Szymon Klüger, died in 2001. Today there are no Jews living in the town.  Yet Jewish heritage continues in Oświęcim through the local efforts such as the Auschwitz Jewish Center which is very involved in presenting the history of the town to visitors and locals alike. I was particularly fascinated by how various organizations, schools, and local leaders throughout Poland are taking it upon themselves to educate their towns’ children about the Jews and the inseparability of Jewish and Polish history since the 15^th century, to truthfully disseminate about what happened during (and after) the Holocaust, and to encourage participation in Jewish cultural activities, festivals, and preservation efforts of Jewish sites. Thus the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Poles who lived through World War II know much more about the former Jewish communities in their towns and surrounding areas than their parents’ generation (who grew up under Communism) and can be the teachers at home.

            In the afternoon, we made our first trek to Auschwitz I (the labor camp), where we had a guided tour by Mirosław Obstarczyk, who has been giving tours of the Auschwitz complex for 21 years. Mirosław was quite knowledgeable. He was also equally stubborn in not budging from his viewpoints, even when questioned by young scholars who had more recently completed research in the field.  Nevertheless, the tour remained informative despite feeling utterly out of place as we were herded in an out of buildings, between large tourist groups, mothers with strollers, and teenagers posing for the camera. Maybe the pouring rain (especially as we stood between Blocks 10 and 11 and stared at the Death Wall where the majority of executions in Auschwitz occurred), constant throughout the tour, was appropriate.

Staring at the Death Wall, at Auschwitz I

Inside Block 11

The electric fence and the guard tower

After our visit to Auschwitz, I sought some release from the thoughts, questions, and emotions that were racing through my head. I needed to run. Vaguely remembering seeing the location of Auschwitz III (Buna-Monowitz) on the map during our tour, I decided to try to run until I reached the location of this former factory where political prisoners performed forced labor for the Nazis, and 30,000 of them died.  It was actually relatively easy to reach the memorial, although I did receive several stares as I ran down the quiet streets of Oświęcim (running “for fun” or to work out is not a past time for Poles, and especially not for Polish women. Hence the invisible label of “foreigner” was also running with me).

In the evening we watched the short, albeit powerful, 1961 film clip Ambulans by Janusz Morgenstern. The film, made only 15 years after the war’s end, is full of symbolism yet the message is clear: Holocaust victims knew they were going to their deaths. But what could be (should have been) done? The foreshadowing was almost unbearable. If you have 9 minutes to spare, I highly encourage it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc1d1eDcUlk

At last: Oświęcim

Where I am writing from now is by far the most uninteresting location of the entire blogging saga. I am sitting, crammed between commuters and juggling a backpack and laptop on the D6 bus heading from Georgetown University across DC during Friday rush hour. Why blog now you ask? Well, I just finished my first week of the new semester and my head is already swimming. Strangely, returning to the memories of the summer reminds me of the greater purpose beyond grad school and is quite therapeutic.

On Sunday evening (July 15), after a long day on the road, we reached the town of Oświęcim (German: Auschwitz). This is where we would be staying for the next week and where the Auschwitz Jewish Center is located. After our group had taken over the Hotel Pierrot and settled in, we headed to the neighboring Max Café, the only place in Oświęcim still open around 8pm on a Sunday night. Although we had the handy Maciek at our table to translate, our server was least impressed with our loud and laughing group of English-speakers. We should have warned them then, for over the next 7days in Oświęcim, we all trickled in and out of “Max’s” whether for lunch, coffee, dinner, beer, and icecream. While very accommodating, my guess is the serving staff wondered when the Auschwitz Jewish Center folk would be leaving ;). But alas, it was only the beginning.

To begin with, I feel a little background of the town is necessary. Oświęcim has an 800 year history. Yet to the average person, this history has sadly been condensed to 1939-1945, and the Polish name for the town, Oświęcim, has been usurped by its Germanized counterpart: Auschwitz.  As the singularly most recognized name of the Holocaust, Auschwitz equates the Nazi extermination camp; less known is that ‘Auschwitz’ is simply the Germanized spelling for a community of 40,000 people today. Ironically, the name ‘Auschwitz’ has also replaced the rich Jewish history of the town.  Jews first settled in Oświęcim (Yiddish: Oshpitsin) during the 15th century, and 7,000 Jews (more than half of the population) lived there by the beginning of World War II and were and integral (if not main) part of the town’s traditions and economy. Most of Oświęcim’s Jews were killed in the Holocaust and today no Jews live there.

In recent years, public officials have tried vigorously to separate Oświęcim, the town (with all its history, cultural heritage and traditions), from Auschwitz, the camp. Yet to what extent should they be separate entities? Should the town (representative of hundreds of Polish towns) also be scrutinized for its role in the Holocaust or should its story, as historian Simon Bronner aptly described, continue to “escape public notice”? In 2000, Fred Schwartz, founder of the Auschwitz Jewish Center, reported that a “major issue is how to preserve the sanctity of the camps along with the requirements of a significant population trying to live respectable lives and feeling that they are bearing the burden of a past that they did not take part in.”  Although I would say that the most heated discussions of the above-mentioned debate are over, issues still remain over Jewish and Polish memory of what happened, the presence of crosses at Auschwitz, and the ways in which outside (most likely uninformed) visitors negatively view Oświęcim, to name a few. As representatives of the Auschwitz Jewish Center we had a lot to learn and discuss over the next several days.

View of  Oświęcim from my balcony window (to the left).

View to the right of balcony.