How good it is to be home after a wonderful journey! I returned Tuesday night from 18 days in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Russia. I went because my family was from Lithuania, to walk where my teachers lived, and to bear witness to the destruction of Eastern European Jews. Peeking behind the Iron Curtain also called me. I traveled with fourteen non-Jews; this amazed me. I thought only Jews wanted to go to this part of the world. They were a sensitive group that respected my experience, asked questions, and at the end were grateful to be given a Jewish perspective on Eastern Europe.
Rather than subject you to my many photographs, here are a few impressions I wrote along the way. If you have questions, please call.
Auschwitz-Birkenau. Two million visit a year and I wonder why. Many languages around me. Can seeing the killing factory break open hearts?
> I need to cover my head. No kippot in any gift shop. How can a place where 1.3 million died not have kippot? I settle on a purple floral scarf. I am now a babushka, the Polish name for the kerchiefs grandmothers wear and the nickname for grandmother.
The throngs are overwhelming; most are respectful and curious, however, if a bit detached. Few Jews this morning. I feel numb and herded, infected by the poison that will never leave here. I’m tired from the long walks and afraid of getting lost. The group I’m with doesn’t make eye contact, disconnected from one another. Perhaps it has to do with the vastness of the place, the long distances between structures, that swallows and dehumanizes you.
Nature pursues its own course. The camp is almost bucolic. Vast verdant lawns with weeping willows touching its blades, pretty wooden lookout towers in the world's largest crematorium. Tulips planted by prisoners around the ovens to deceive them into calmness.
Spirit of place, even when museumized, causes shift. With all the books and all the reconstructions that described the camps, this is the first time I feel it and I’m frightened. This is the first time I understand what human beings can do. Only here do I tremble not only from the past but for the future.
Where was God? God is the miracle that we weren't destroyed not just in numbers but in spirit. The Jewish people still live. We’re hardwired to hope.
I heard a young Indian ask the guide after the tour why the Jews. My friend Erna Toback says, “Why anyone?"
There is a Yiddish expression: “The living have to live.” Afterwards, I went to the magnificent medieval square in the Old Town where I watched a man dip string in soapy water and make huge clouds of giant bubbles chased by both children and adults. An old woman with hair the color of a fire engine cooed to a hundred pigeons from her feet up to the ones kissing her lips. This too is humanity.
The next day I visited Jewish Krakow and here I felt joy. What delighted me were several sukkot built by a revived community. A JCC here! And bronze sculptures of Jan Karski and Janusz Korczak. May their memory bless the future.
On to Warsaw. Destroyed by the war, Warsaw was rebuilt eerily exactly as it was, as if nothing had happened. It was a little like a facelift that blurs reality. But the boundaries of the enormous ghetto will remain forever, and so will the 250 year old cemetery containing the bodies of what was once the largest Jewish population in the world. There was no way to find my great great grandfather’s grave: it was for his generation that remained in Europe and sent their children to a better life, knowing they would never see them again, that I came to this place of memory and identity. There were stones that listed entire families murdered between 1941-44. Stones on top of stones, many erased entirely in a cemetery damaged by war. me to this place of memory and identity. As I've read, the Holy One was in this place and I didn't know it.
In Vilnius we "visited" the Museum of Genocide. They took us to the room where they shot prisoners and showed a film with six murders in the room. Blood everywhere, buckets of water poured after each one. The Gestapo killed every Jew there from 1941-44; the Russians sent a lucky few to Siberia where, if they didn't freeze or starve, might survive.
That night was Simhat Torah. I went to the Choral Synagogue, the only one left of 100 shuls before the war. Beautiful Moorish domed sanctuary from 1903. I went upstairs and took a prayer book in Russian and Hebrew. About fifty people, many children, gathered above and below. I felt at home with my people. As the evening progressed and the alcohol increased, the dancing grew more spirited. Dancing and eating were segregated between men and women, just as prayer. There were many kinds of drinks-scotch, bitters, even Red Bull--each type in a different shaped glass and arranged prettily on trays. There was also a generous variety of meat. I met a young woman studying to become a Jew. While she didn't want to tell me why, she volunteered that she wants to make Aliyah one day. She told me the community has no rabbi and young families see no future there. She helped me get a taxi home.
It is Fall. The rich forests of golden maples remember all who lie under them, of the Jews almost erased in Lithuania. Jews were once 40 percent of Vilna. 95 percent were killed. While my fellow travelers may be charmed by native costumes and customs, I’m not. The ghettos, death camps, and cemeteries have made me aware of my Jewishness especially among my group. I find myself wondering what my lovely Lithuanian guide’s parents did during the war.
We have lunch in Kovno, about an hour from Vilnius. My mother’s family was from Kovno and my father’s from Vilna. They surely didn’t know how geographically close their families were! I wish I could tell them.
In preparation for Eastern Europe, the novels I read described a world of grey. I packed black clothes with scarves that could be too bright in such a world. Imagine my surprise at seeing miles of emerald lawns and forests of birch, fir, and oaks. Even the abundant rain couldn't diminish the beauty. And the cities sing with color. Krakow is a medieval jewel, Riga has more art nouveau buildings, all brilliantly painted, than anywhere in the world,
It's easy to forget in the pleasure of such surroundings recent history. We met a woman in Latvia who was sent to Siberia with her mother at 13. She spent six years there and returned without her mother. A familythat had its farm nationalized hosted us for lunch. They spoke of how everyone was afraid to reveal themselves when you never knew who was KGB ,including your baby sitter.
It wasn't just the Jews. Six million, 20 million by Stalin--does it matter how many when the intention is genocide? How many know what Stalin did to the Baltic states? How many care? If not now, when? What does it mean to be a Jew if it doesn't expand empathy?
Estonia never had more than 5000 Jews because it was forbidden to live outside the Pale. It was easy to make the country judenrein, Jew free. The remarkable thing is that we not only returned but increased the numbers from before the Soviets and Nazis, the only European country to do so. There is a beautiful new synagogue here in Tallinn, built in 2007 to be not only a home for its Jews but a beautiful addition to the city. I ate schnitzel in its restaurant, heard children playing by its school, and saw its light-filled sanctuary. I wrote the rabbi that I’d like to attend Shabbat services and he wrote back that he was in Israel but that he’d let someone know. When I climbed to the women’s gallery, I met a young woman who had attended the Jewish school next door as a child. Her father was a non-observant Jew but she had renewed commitment to being a practicing Jew.
Years ago, a physicist from Los Alamos told me her story. Her parents were Georgian, professionals that were regularly extorted for money from the Russian mafia. In their attempts to escape, they were murdered while she was in America raising money to bring them here. After a long depression, she decided that she needed a spiritual path and wanted to become a Jew. She explained that her grandmother was a Jew, and most importantly, they don’t give up. May it always be Your Will.
Peace and Love,
Rabbi Malka Drucker