Berlin

Berlin from here

After flying through the early morning hours from Tel Aviv, we landed in Berlin Sunday, July 11. Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday were full of people to meet and places to go.

Sunday evening, Program Coordinator Stephen Feinberg gave us a quick tour and history lesson of some of the important locales of Nazi operations in central Berlin.

Oddly, on the day we arrived, a huge outdoor tent housing a Berlin fashion show covered the site of the famous book burning of May 1933. We managed to make our way to the memorial to that event, however, a well-lit, starkly white underground bookcase that holds no books.

That event, by the way, was generated not by the Nazi government, but by the German Student Association as a way of attacking what they called, "un-German spirit." They saw it as patriotic, an expression of love and devotion for their nation.

My favorite part of the Pledge of Allegiance we observe at school is the ending, "with liberty and justice for all." For all. The Nazi definition of "nation" did not include "all." Also, the German pledge was to Adolph Hitler as the embodiment of "German-ness" and did not locate the nation "under God." I know the inclusion of "God" in our pledge is controversial, but for me, as a suggestion that the "nation" is subservient to an ideal, and not the other way around, it works.

I've already included video and comments here on the Gruenewald train depot and Wannsee, but I want to add what I can on our visit to Bergen-Belsen, the former Gestapo Headquarters known as the "Topography of Terror," and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.

Jerusalem

From home

The window of my room in Jerusalem

From July 7 to July 10 we were in Israel, mostly Jerusalem. The bag that contained my computer arrived on July 9 from Frankfort, via Lufthansa, so I did not exactly hit the ground running on my plan to post video and text to my blog so I could share my experience with you.

Some of the video I am going over only now, and I intend to share segments from Israel, Berlin, and Lublin with you. It's fun to discover some of the things I had already forgotten. One of them is a segment of around 30 seconds recorded through my open hotel window during a long, hot, and un-air conditioned night in Zamosc. It's an outdoor performance of "Let the Sunshine In" from Hair, with a Polish accent.

My final product will be to put all of these segments together into one extended video that I intend to share with my trip mates. It's a labor of love: for my colleagues, guides and directors; for the program; and, of course, for the spirit of the survivors and the memory of the departed.

I turned 57 years old today. Judy is surprising me with dinner at a secret location this evening. My mother's health took a turn for the worse while I was gone; I visited her yesterday and attended an assessment meeting with my sister, Linda, and the staff of the rehabilitation center where she is being treated. Her strength is faltering.

Next week, I will be filling in for Tony Krabill at WVPE, during All Things Considered. The local host of Morning Edition, Michael Linville, and I talked about the trip yesterday and he suggested that some sort of interview might be in order. I will let you know about that.

Jim Messina and I spoke on the phone yesterday. He suggested that a recording of any interview would be a great thing to send along to our colleagues. I agree. I told Jim that I thought briefly Wednesday, while at the grocery store, that I saw Program Director Elaine Culbertson in one of the aisles ahead of me. Then, when I got home, a quick glimpse of our letter carrier fooled me into thinking that our mailman is, in fact, colleague Nick Hart.

I wait for myself to arrive.

Landing

.............I am home.

This post runs the risk of being incoherent. My thoughts are too new to coalesce.

Everything changed for me at Auschwitz.

As Agnes, our guide, told us that, "The hair had value; the Lives had no value," I walked into a room filled to overflowing with protheses ....

"Never- will I forget this night, the first night in the camp, it will remain with me as being the longest night in my life. Never- will I forget the smoke. Never- will I forget the small faces of the children before my eyes, whose bodies rose up like coils of smoke, into the blue heavens. Never- will I forget the flames, that consumed my faith forever. Never- will I forget the silence in the night, that took my lust for life away- for all eternity. Never- will I forget the moment that killed my God, and my soul and my dreams- which took on the face of the depraved. Never- will I forget even if I am sentenced to live as long as God: Never!!“ ~Elie Wiesel

..protheses ....

It has occurred to me that my breakdown happened at the place where we were not allowed to take pictures.

Without thinking my body seized and I bolted from the room...no, I can not look at that. My brain became my shield...like the impulse that grabs my arm when my finger touches the stove.

The image I ran from, however, is the image that I will never forget. I had a picture. No camera needed.

The hair had value, the people did not.

Protheses.

I had my picture.

My brain told my body that I had to leave. I snapped a picture.

My video project had had the effect of separating me from the direct experience.At Auschwitz I was not afforded that luxury. It's ironic because I generally don't take pictures much. On this trip I was constantly looking at our experience through the shield of a camera. Until someone told me I couldn't do that here.

Hair had value...lives did not. A room filled to overflowing with protheses.

That's where I was. That's what I shared with my colleagues and with my guides: Elaine Culbertson, Stephen Feinberg, Margret Atkinson, Armando Banchs, Mary Ann Bolinger, Linda Christensen, Susan Davis, Erin DeHart, Rebecca Elmore, Nick Hart, Brian Hurd, Laron Johnson, Rosa Lamb, Debra Maller-Natoli, Carrie McCarthy, Megan McCuiston, James Messina, Stephanie Murdock, LaVonne Napier, Cassie Nodine, Mitch Polay, Lynn Ringle, Brad Sims, Teresa Starkey, Maribel Villalva, Brian Woodward, and Waclaw Wojciechowski.

Now I am home.

Treblinka

Returning home

Travel has been the largest part of the last two days.

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.