Krakow: A Difficult Reflection of a Dark Past

Anna, James, myself, Dani, and Maddy in Krakow's Old Town Square

I am so privileged to have had the opportunity to travel to Poland this past weekend. I am so happy that my program took us to Krakow this past weekend, because I honestly don't think I would have made it there if it weren't for them taking us there.
My weekend in Krakow was valuable for so many reasons. We spent our first day there being toured around the city by an adorable women with such a cool accent (she said everything in the progressive tense, "now we are walking to the next spot,"). She was extremely knowledgeable of the history of Krakow and knew exactly what would interest us the most. We toured the Wewel Castle, the old town (with the oldest medieval market square in Europe), Kazimierz, and the Jewish Ghetto, ending at Oscar Schindler's factory. And we spent the next morning further exploring these sites, wandering through the markets, and eating some great food (I had the best perogies).

Sukiennice, the "Cloth Hall" Main Square Market dating to the Renaissance

It was so cool to be in Poland because it is culturally (and geographically) further east than the Czech Republic. Our first day in Krakow it just seemed that everything from the clouds to the buildings were gray. As the weather got nicer, it was clear that the sky wasn't always so gray. But irregardless, it was awesome to experience a new Eastern European culture and get a feel for what the east is like. I also really appreciated seeing the historical sites of Krakow first-hand because I have been learning about the history of this city in the World War II period since I was in high school. (The movie Schiendler's List was a part of my high school curriculum, so my History teacher, Mr. Cannon, in high school used the movie as a foundation to teach us about the Holocaust.)

Kazimierz Main Square

"We remember above all that the Holocaust did not start with a concentration camp. It started with a brick through the shop window of a Jewish business, the desecration of a synagogue, the shout of racist abuse on the street."

Tony Blair, Former British Prime Minister 

Last week, in order to prepare for the trip, the program had a screening of Schindler's List. Although I had seen it once before, the movie hit me much harder emotionally this time around. I don't know why it was more difficult to stomach this time around, it could be my maturity level; maybe it is because I work with kids almost every day back at home and the display of such hatred towards such innocent little people was even harder to bare when I work with so many kids; maybe I have a better understanding of social justice now that I have worked in nonprofit for a few years; maybe I'm just more open to baring the emotional pain of the darkest parts of history, more empathetic. I don't know. But it was hard to watch. Spielberg did an incredible job at portraying the painful, disgusting, completely nonsensical filth that was the Holocaust. And part of visiting Poland and living in Central/Eastern Europe is grappling with the history. It would be horrible to come here for a semester and not honor the lives of the millions murdered in this atrocious crime against humanity. So in order to fully honor those lives lost and comprehend the past, we visited Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The gate at Auschwitz I
Arbeit macht  frei- "Work makes free"

"Let us remember that we are on the site of the most gigantic cemetery in the world, a cemetery where there are no graves, no stones, but where the ashes of more than one million people lie."

Waldemar Dabrowski, Former 

Polish Culture Minister 

The day at Auschwitz was a difficult one, but a valuable one and one I will never forget. Walking freely around a camp where so many people were exterminated, literally over 1 million people systematically murdered (in gas chambers or forced labor) on the grounds that I walked, is certainly not something one forgets easily. To think that I was wandering slowly over the land where so many innocent human beings were shot or hung, died of starvation or experimented on, was an inexplicable experience. I knew upon entering Auschwitz that I didn't have to worry about being shot by an SS guard as part of his target practice, that I wouldn't be hung as an example because another prisoner escaped, that in a few hours I would be leaving through the gates I entered, a luxury that over one million people who passed through the camp never had.

It is so hard to conceptualize that these senseless murders actually happened-that people really had to endure this torture. How anyone, at any time in history, could walk into the gas chamber and believe that this death machine was not an atrocity is beyond me. But the important thing to remember is that they did. Six million Jews and a number of other victims (Roma, political prisoners, Poles...) were systematically destroyed, entire lives stolen, in the Holocaust. Our tour guided ended our tour with a quote by philosopher George Santayana, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." It is extremely important to remember what happened during the Holocaust. It is even more important to never forget those who perished at the hands of the Nazis. 

Birkenau Concentration Camp and Death Camp

Birkenau Concentration Camp and Death Camp

Genocide still exists today. Since the Holocaust we have seen millions of lives taken in the name of "racial cleansing" in many regions of the world. We must, as a human race, learn how to take these horrible mistakes of the past and actually learn from them. As we strolled back from the memorial at Birkenau, placed between the two of the destroyed gas chambers (of four at Birkenau), the sun was setting behind us. The moon was rising in front of us, and a gloomy low fog settling over us, as we walked back towards the entrance- a walk that over a million people sentenced to death at that very place were never privileged enough to make. The scene was a natural beauty, a God sent gift. For me, it was a strong juxtaposition. Humanity has the capacity to do unthinkable evils, there were thousands of people, fathers and mothers, friends and relatives, involved in the atrocity of the Holocaust; but humanity also has the capacity to love, to save lives, to give, to resist evil. I believe that humans are fundamentally good, that we are naturally flawed imperfect creatures with the capacity to do unthinkable atrocities, but that we are equally capable of doing good and that there is a universal moral code that drives us to do so. In the end, it all comes down to what we find our purpose in, where we find our truth. The Nazis found their truth in absolute power, in death, in quasi religious antisemitism, and I pray that we never allow anyone who finds their truth in such things to come to power again. But, if more people found their truth in good, in love, the world might be a different place. I believe it still can be, it will never be perfect, but it can always be better.

"It's here, where absolute evil was perpetrated, that the will must resurface for a fraternal world, a world based on respect of man and his dignity."
Simone Veil, Auschwitz survivor and former French Health Minister