Luisa's Poland—Not
the Usual Travel Story
The Holocaust as Palimpsest
n.
pal·imp·sest
Pronunciation
Key (p
l
mp-s
st
)
A manuscript, typically of
papyrus or parchment, which has been written on more than once, with the earlier
writing incompletely erased and often legible.
The earlier writing bleeds through despite layer upon layer of new script…and
like a palimpsest, for many elderly survivors, memories of the Holocaust bleed
through layer upon layer of experiences. A lifetime of layers that should have
obscured the earlier ones. For a survivor the Holocaust is, literally, the
experience of a lifetime. As it had no fixed beginning, neither does it have an
ending. The after-effects of the Holocaust, what psychologists call the post
traumatic stress syndrome, last in some degree throughout the lifetime of
survivors—despite successful coping strategies and mechanisms that enabled them
to lead relatively normal lives.
At this time, the Holocaust “record” is incomplete—the full story cannot be told
without including the experiences that survivors are having in their old age.
And while the literature on the Holocaust is vast, the literature on aging
survivors is slight. If work is not done quickly, completing the record will not
be possible; all of the survivors will be gone. Even those few who miraculously
came through the war alive as infants and children, the very youngest survivors,
are now in their sixties.
It was this understanding that brought me to my current work-in-progress, a
project involving a group of aging women whose stories should be told. When they
first came to America after World War II—teenagers who had been orphaned in the
Holocaust—they lived at The Girls’ Club in Brooklyn. Actually, it was not a club
at all but rather a residence for young women, a large brownstone near Eastern
Parkway.
Lusia, is one of those women. Her life story
touches on many of the key events and issues that exemplify the Holocaust. She
was born in Łódź, Poland, in 1929. In 1940 her family was moved to the ghetto,
where they remained until it was “liquidated” in 1944. Then Lusia, her mother
and an aunt were sent to Auschwitz. Fortunately, it was only for a brief time or
they surely would have perished there. They were relocated to a slave labor camp
in Germany where they worked in the mines and finally, were force-marched to
another notorious concentration camp, Bergen-Belsen. Lusia and her aunt
survived, just barely. When the camp was liberated by the British, “I was just
eyes,” Lusia told me. Liberation came too late for her mother who died in
Lusia’s arms four days later.
I was invited to tell some of Lusia’s story at a conference in Krakow on “Women
in the Holocaust.” Of course, it didn’t make sense to go to Poland and not spend
at least a little more time there. My husband Steve and I had been to some
Holocaust sites: the concentration camp at Vught in Holland, Dachau just outside
of Munich, Thereisenstadt near Prague, and various places in Budapest. But never
Poland, the country in which the largest number of Jews were slaughtered.
Steve decided to accompany me. It’s a well kept secret that Steve—remembered as
one of the best math teachers ever, at New Paltz High School and elsewhere—has a
Master’s degree in history and began his career as a Social Studies teacher. He,
too, was interested in making this trip. Steve would also be my driver—and would
hold my hand.
As it turned out, I needed hand-holding; the image of Lusia, living in the
ghetto during the most tender years of her early adolescence was painful. But it
was important for me to see the city that had been her home, to walk on those
same streets, to stand in the same places she stood. No one should dare to write
about survivors without doing such a trip. As Lusia said, simply, “it is
impossible to imagine.”
Of course, she’s right. What sane person could imagine such things? When you’re
close to it, the feeling is different—more emotional, visceral. But rather than
making the Holocaust more comprehensible, as you get closer you get to its
excesses, the the Nazi goal of annihilating the entire Jewish population of
Europe—“the final Solution to the Jewish question”—becomes less so. At the same
time that you take in some of its reality, your mind rejects the degree of
hatred, the brutality, the sadism. And the obsession—moving millions of people,
mostly Jews, across the entire continent of Europe with the sole purpose of
murdering them.
I came away with many more questions than I arrived with; not the least of which
was, how was it possible for a single person to have survived such horror?
The Holocaust in Poland
Sixty years afterward, the history of World War II still dominates the Polish
landscape: with monuments, battle sites, memorials, museums and, of course, the
camps—labor camps, internment and concentration camps, death camps. If you look
at a map of Poland after the Nazi takeover in 1939, you see that it is spotted
with camps, like the traces of a disfiguring disease.
For a number of complex reasons,
much of the Holocaust was implemented in Poland although Christian Poles, too,
suffered immeasurably from Nazi contempt and from Hitler’s hatred of them.
Poland endured huge casualties in the war as a result of mass killings,
deportations, and imprisonments. Before it focused its attention more closely on
making Europe Judenfrei, that is free of Jews, the Nazi war machine was
fixed upon the Poles. Hitler’s objective was to turn them into an endless supply
of slave labor and at the same time find Lebensraum, living space, in
Western Poland. Germany’s designs on Poland was a new twist to an old idea.
Dominating Poland was not a new
agenda for Germany. Poland’s western border with Germany had been moved many
times before in its history, as German states (before Germany was a unified
country) incurred upon Polish territory: a story mirrored in the east as Poland
was repeatedly overrun there by the Russian Empire. In Warsaw, set amidst the
city’s museums, theatres, universities, churches and cathedrals, are literally
hundreds of memorials to Polish heroes: not only of the recent period, but
throughout Poland’s history of repeated conquests and subjugation by the Swedes,
Saxons, Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires. The country’s most recent, and
brief, twenty-year period of independence following World War I ended with the
German invasion in 1939.
Poland’s subjugation made its
virulent anti-Semitism, rooted in many complex issues, a bit easier to
understand. Unfortunately, victims often look for others to victimize who are
more vulnerable than themselves—others who they can be “better than….” Look at
the history of poor white people and blacks in the American south. But in all
honesty, Jews have to work hard at being sympathetic with Polish victimization.
They have been hardened by the anti-Semitism. It is symbolic of their historic
sense of alienation that Polish-Jews do not call themselves Poles, although
their families may have lived in Poland for many generations.
Anti-Semitism in Poland was a
reality that encouraged Hitler to exacerbate tensions between Poles and Jews so
that they would turn on each other. Poles are very sensitive, today, to the use
of the term “Polish camps,” and remind you, correctly, that they were “Nazi
camps on Polish soil.” But the Nazis had reason to believe that Poles would be
indifferent to the fate of the Jews in Poland, if not willing accomplices and,
in fact, in all of Europe the greatest number of Holocaust victims were Polish
Jews.
It is true that only a small
minority of Poles actively helped the Germans and that many Poles, selflessly
and bravely, tried to save Jewish lives; for example, Jewish children were
hidden in many convents, and there was a Polish organization, Zegota, for
helping Jews. But there was also a silent, hostile majority that allowed an
active anti-Semitic minority to denounce Jews hiding under assumed Polish
identity, to catch hidden Jews, to deliver them to the SS or to kill them
outright. Some Polish underground organizations such as the NSZ existed for the
sole purpose of killing Jews who were hiding in the forest.
In 1945 after the remnants of Polish Jewry were
liberated from the camps, or came out of hiding in the forests, or emerged from
subterranean cellars in Warsaw and other cities, or came down from attics, or
were brought forth from the homes of sympathetic and heroic Christians, some
returned to their homes. Included among them were about two hundred
Jewish
repatriates and survivors in the town of Kielce. But only one year later, on
July 4, 1946, rumors spread that Jews were kidnapping children and
using their blood to make
matzoh, a recurrance of
the venomous medieval myth known as the “blood libel.”
In response
to a father’s fabricated kidnapping report, anti-Jewish protests
began. Jews who fled their homes were attacked by mobs on the street and soon a
full-fledged pogrom
was underway as the entire community became
involved. Not only adults but young children participated in burning the
synagogue and homes of the Jewish people, assisted by the police who lured Jews
out of their homes. Forty Jews were killed in the attack, more than seventy were
injured, and unchecked ransacking lasted all day. There was no help from the
government or the Catholic church despite pleas of assistance
This event
was an example of the anti-Semitism that re-emerged following WWII. Since Jews
were identified as socialists and communists, as they had been in Germany
following the first World War, they were blamed for the takeover by the Soviets.
After the Kielce pogrom there was an atmosphere of panic among
Jews who no longer believed that they could be safe in Poland and were convinced
that they should emigrate.
By the 1950s most of the Jews who had attempted to
resettle in their native homes had left for Israel or elsewhere. Sadly, our
guides informed us, anti-Semitism continues to be problem in Poland today.
Before the war, about three and a
half million Jews lived in Poland. Today, there are no more than fifteen
thousand out of a population of thirty-eight million.
The Four Cities
One week was all the time we had to tour Poland before the four-day conference
in Krakow—impossible to see the many cities and sites that are significant in
Holocaust history. And Poland, particularly by European standards, is a large
country. So we focused on four cities, beginning in Warsaw. From there we went
to Łódź, Lusia’s home town, then to Lublin and finally to Krakow. Each city had
a distinctly different character from the others.
Warsaw
Because almost all of Warsaw had
to be rebuilt after the war, it’s a hybrid of modern apartment houses, office
buildings and skyscrapers that hover over historical structures: the remains of
the ancient city walls, the Royal Castle, the Palace on the Water and a few
restored 19th and early 20th century buildings.
When the Germans were forced to
retreat, with the Soviet army on their heels, Hitler gave the order to destroy
the city. His deep hatred for the Poles only intensified as they refused to
placidly agree to become absorbed into Greater Germany. The last straw was the
Warsaw uprising organized by the Polish Resistance (which came about a year
after the Warsaw ghetto uprising). While the Russian army could have come to the
aid of the Poles, and the allies sought permission from the Russians to assist
them as well, Stalin refused to help. He ordered the army to halt their advance
believing that the Germans and Poles would dissipate each other’s strength,
making it that much easier for them to take over. He was right.
The population of the city was
forced to evacuate. Hitler ordered all the surviving buildings to be numbered in
the order of their importance to Polish culture, and then systematically
dynamited. The result was that at least 84% of Warsaw was destroyed (some
figures are as high as 98%). Warsaw’s old town, the town center, bore the worst
brunt of the damage. See the photo below.
When we took a tram from our
hotel to the Old Town, we saw an astonishing sight: the beautiful Market Square,
which was rebuilt from rubble only fifty years ago. By salvaging the few facades
that remained standing, using drawings, paintings and photos, it was restored,
brick by brick. It looks exactly as it did in the 17th century when
it was first constructed. Literally, Phoenix risen from the ashes.
We were in Warsaw for too short a
time to see all the sights, but we did get to visit the Palace on the Water,
part of a complex of gardens, lakes and canals that was built in the 17th
century and used as the summer home of one of the Grand Marshals of the Polish
Army. We attended a wonderful Chopin recital in one of its recently refurbished
salons.
Łódź
Łódź
is the correct way to spell the city’s name in Polish. And, we learned, there is
a correspondingly correct way to pronounce it. Not Low-dz as we say it in
English but “woo-dge.” This little word has three special sounds. The Ł with a
slash through it is pronounced like our W, the accented ó is pronounced oo, and
the accented ź is pronounced dge as in the word dodge.
Łódź
is very different from Warsaw. And, according to our guide, quite different than
it was before the war although by then it had already declined from its heyday.
In the early 19th century Łódź grew from a sleepy little village into
a prosperous factory town. By 1850 the population was already fifteen thousand
and at the outbreak of WWI it had exploded to more than half a million. Textiles
were its primary industry. Some of the leading industrialists, the wealthiest,
were Jews. They lived in grand palaces alongside their Christian peers. In fact,
the first site we visited was the former palace of one of the industrialists,
Israel Poznanski, now the city’s Historical Museum where an entire floor is
dedicated to Łódź’ favorite and most famous son, Artur Rubenstein.
Situated throughout the city,
some of the factories were self-contained cities in themselves with as many as
ten thousand workers, housing for their families, schools and hospitals. Łódź
reminded me of some 19th century New England mill towns; perhaps it
was modeled after them. And like some of these New England towns today, it was
very sad to see the mega-factory sites, now huge expanses of abandoned
buildings, ghost-towns.
Lublin
Lublin
is only fifty miles from the Ukraine border. At the beginning of the war, before
Hitler invaded Russia, Lublin was the farthest eastern border of the German
occupied territory. It was there, in the Lublin area between the Vistula and Bug
Rivers, that Hitler first planned to resettle the Jews of Europe on a
reservation. One of the reasons he found the area attractive was that it was
swampy and there was a high likelihood of death from diseases.
What a contrast with both Warsaw
and Łódź! Lublin was a beautiful, small and very manageable city. Bright and
light.
Lublin:
This shows the area that had been the Jewish quarter and later the ghetto.
Lublin
was spared major destruction in the war, having suffered only one air raid, and
has retained its historic character. It’s is a very old city that was on one of
the Asian-European trade routes dating back to the 6th century. And
because of its location, Lublin was invaded repeatedly throughout its history
going back to the Mongols, Tartars and Cossacks. During a period of independence
in the 14th century, Lublin was the seat of the Jagellonian dynasty,
under whose rule it became, and still is, one of the most important centers of
academic life in Poland. Before the war, Lublin had Poland’s only college of
Jewish higher education. At that time forty thousand Jews lived in Lublin.
Today there are not even ten Jews left to form a minyan, the required
quorum for prayer.
Krakow
Krakow is Poland’s prime tourist attraction; a city of over a million people
that has become a must-see for those traveling in Central and Eastern Europe.
Krakow was headquarters for the Nazi commandant in Poland and was spared during
the war. It’s not difficult to see why it’s becoming known as the Prague of the
east.
We got lost for the first time on
this trip, in the outskirts finding our way into the city. We did, finally, with
the help of a kind shopkeeper who spoke some English. But we landed smack in the
middle of rush hour at a point in the Kazimierz district where the traffic,
trying to get across the Wisla River, bottlenecks around the Wawel Castle. It’s
really in an inconvenient spot. But since it dates back to the 12th
century, when Krakow was the capital of Poland, they’re not likely to be moving
it any time soon.
Krakow: Wawel Castle across
the Wisla.
In the center of the city is the
Old Town, the remains of the medieval city with a grid of narrow streets that
surrounds the market square (and which is on the UNESCO list of world cultural
heritage sites).
Krakow: Market Square with St.
Mary’s Church
The periphery of Market Square is
lined with churches, a cathedral, restaurants and shops. The center of the
square is dominated by The Cloth Hall, housed in a spectacular Renaissance
building.
The Cloth Hall, Krakow
Today The Cloth Hall is a huge
marketplace for tourist and other items—hand painted wooden eggs, carved wooden
boxes, pottery of all shapes and sizes with traditional patterns, and exquisite
amber objects and jewelry in a variety of colors from greens through the usual
golden tones to light yellows.
The conference I was attending
was held near to the Market Square, at the Jagellonian University, established
by Kazimierz the Great in 1364—and which none other than Copernicus
attended. Perhaps he spent time in the medical college, one the oldest
buildings, where the conference was held.
I thought about Copernicus as I
was looking for the room where I was to give my paper. Copernicus walking these
halls, thinking, brooding—mulling over his little intellectual problem of how
the universe was organized.
*
* *
The second article in this
series, “Lusia’s Poland: The Vanished Ghettos of Warsaw and Łódź,” will be
posted on this website on April 20.
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