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