Friday morning we bussed from Lodz to Treblinka to commemorate the 850,000 people who were murdered there between July 1942 and October 1943. Along with Sobibor and Belzec, Treblinka was one of the Aktion Reinhard extermination camps set up by the SS in the area of Poland that was not annexed to Germany proper after the invasion in September 1939. Occupied, but not annexed.
Around 25 German and Austrian bosses and 120 mostly Ukranian guards murdered 850,000 (800,000 Jews) in 16 months. They used diesel engine exhaust to fill the gas chambers and asphyxiate their victims, hundreds of thousands from Warsaw. Treblinka closed after an inmate revolt in which 600 inmates escaped and the Germans destroyed most of it before the Russians captured the area.
Around the site of the gas chamber and the crematorium the memorial sweeps across the surrounding acreage where the barracks were, individual markers for the communities that were destroyed, and one marker for an individual. That is Janusz Korczak, the teacher who boarded the death train in Warsaw with his students bound for Treblinka.
We then road the bus to Warsaw and in the evening after dinner enjoyed a light-hearted closing ceremony that included singing "Que Sera Sera," a tradition begun by program founder and Holocaust survivor Vladka Meed.
My colleagues on the trip are among the finest people I have ever met.
We said goodbye to our wonderful Polish guide Waclaw Wojciechowski, for whom I really should devote an entire post.
Yesterday was a fly day. The context of our journey makes complaining inappropriate. While the most important leg of this journey remains, I can already say it is great to be back in the United States. After dinner last night Elaine Culbertson, our program director, warned us that there is a bit of an adjustment to life at home after this trip. Having you with me on this blog should help me with that, I think. You know where I've been.
Today and tomorrow morning we debrief at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. I have some more interviews to do for my movie. I hope to be back in South Bend around 6:00 P.M. Monday.
The blog will continue for a while after I get home.
Thank you, Sid, for taking Pat and me with you on your journey. Having been to Yad Vashem and Dachau, this has been particularly moving. I look forward to talking with you after you return to South Bend.
ReplyDeleteMara Boettcher