All the unanswered "whys"

Jul 28, 2006 19:11

As part of my trip in the fall (Sept.12-27th) I'm planning on going to Poland. More specifically, Warsaw and Auschwitz. (The reasons aren't personal, in that any of my family went through the Holocaust; however, the reasons are too intangible at the moment to get into ( Read more... )

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badtyler July 29 2006, 04:23:01 UTC
I think one of the things that scares me most is that seemingly intelligent people honestly believe it never happened. Sometimes I hear someone say, "Why do 'they' keep bringing it up? I'm so tired of hearing about it ( ... )

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coolbyrne July 30 2006, 04:00:47 UTC
I think this will be a very thought-provoking trip for you and I think you are very brave for wanting to go there at all. I really wish more non-Jewish people cared enough to want to know more. Ignorance, even if not neccesarily malicious, is a dangerous thing.We live in such a privileged society! And at risk of undermining the difficulties of being a minority in terms of gender and sexuality, I am still white and I am still Anglo-Saxon. As difficult and frustrating as life can be in North America, let's be honest, yeah? Life's pretty damn good ( ... )

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badtyler July 30 2006, 07:19:23 UTC
day to day monotony

You just reminded me of an interview I once saw with a survivor of the Holocaust.

I can't remember exactly what it was in reference to, but she said something to the effect of:

"When people complain about boring evenings at home, I give thanks that I lived through the horror-- and each boring evening at home is precious to me."

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sravenk July 29 2006, 14:58:50 UTC
I remember reading this book whose title now escapes me, but it was a transcript of interviews from a documentary on the Polish people who lived near the camps and how they justififed what had happened. It really went into that question of how people could let something like this happen in their own back yard. It was really interesting, because the responses ranged from "We didn't know" to "It didn't concern me", the latter of which was only slightly more overtly disturbing than the former ( ... )

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coolbyrne July 29 2006, 21:52:28 UTC
It was really interesting, because the responses ranged from "We didn't know" to "It didn't concern me", the latter of which was only slightly more overtly disturbing than the former.

Yes. The fact of the matter is -and this is something that a lot of people don't take into consideration or realize- it's not like Auschwitz was in the middle of nowhere. It was the name of a town first, the camp second. And for many, the scale of it is uncomprehensible, but AuschwitzII-Birkenau (Camp II) could hold over 150,000 people at a time (highest population at one time- 155,000). The gas chambers (in total square footage of all the chambers in Birkenau) were large enough to hold over 4000 people. 4000. How can anyone get their mind around that ( ... )

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mantaraggio July 30 2006, 01:30:56 UTC
I think you are brave to face that place. When I was in Poland, I just couldn't bear the thought of going. I did not want to deal with that horror in person, I can barely stomach movies about the Holocaust. I told myself that knowing about the Holocaust was enough, that I didn't need to go there, too. I think maybe I was just being a coward.

Not to sound all shallow by giving trip advice, but you should try to check out Krakow and the nearby salt mines. The salt mines have an underground church sculpted entirely of salt, it's pretty amazing to see. Krakow is fun, cheap, small, lots of parks and a castle and little coffee shops, you can see pretty much the whole thing in a day or two. Where else are you going to be going?

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coolbyrne July 30 2006, 03:48:19 UTC
I think you are brave to face that place. I think maybe I was just being a coward.

I think... you can only know for yourself when you are ready for it. You weren't ready, and there's nothing wrong with that. A few years ago, I wouldn't have been ready, either. But I've been searching for something in the last year or so. I don't even know what that is, really, but there's something in me that needs to face this, now, in my life.

I'm flying into Krakow from Dublin. I can take a bus from Krakow to the Auschwitz camp, and Birkenau is a fifteen minute walk from there. From everything I've heard, it's actually Birkenau that's the hardest to digest, because everything in Auschwitz has been restored and is very "museum-like". It is Birkenau that they've left everything as it was (with the exception of some structural updates). The small pond that was near crematorium IV and V is still there- the ashes of thousands of victims were dumped there in order to try and get rid of the evidence of what the Nazis were doing. Visitors ( ... )

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mantaraggio July 30 2006, 14:45:58 UTC
Yeah, Krakow is pretty cool. I mean, it's a small city, and the museum has, like, one painting of note, but there's a castle and rumors of a dragon and the largest town square in the world. Oh, and lots of Polish food, although bizarrely, when I was there, I remember also getting Brazilian and Turkish food. Oh, and McDonalds. My friend and I had this goal of tasting every different McFlurry flavor in Europe. London's Cadbury Egg McFlurry was by far the winner.

When we got off the train, we ended up by the bus depot, and there were all these guys trying to get us to ride in their private cars to the camps and I just thought it was odd how they had turned these memorials of unspeakable horror into a financial opportunity. Sort of like when I see people selling little crystal models of the Twin Towers with holes in the sides and crystal smoke pouring out.

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