A bit of a heavyweight . . .

[penmage]

Yo. So this is my first time writing one of these entries, and being that I don't THINK I can write entries in retro, I'll just write up in here all the stuffs that's been happening for the last while. I'm in Israel for the year, which is almost up, but never fear - I'm coming back again next year :)! Over the weekend, I was at my cousin's house, and he showed me pictures of his trip to Poland over spring break. At first I really wanted to see them, but as I looked at them, I felt the familiar twist in my stomach, a familiar ache - familiar because I had felt it all through my own trip to Poland. I went to Poland over spring break with a program called Heritage, that takes Jewish teens to Poland for a week, and goes to villages and places where our great grandparents might have lived - and goes to concentration camps. I cannot possibly express what that trip was like, but it's been bubbling around inside me for over a month already, so I'll try.
I can honestly asy that I've never hated a place more in my life. The longer I was there, ther longer I wanted to get out, get far away, get back to Israel. It started out being exciting - a new country, and all - but when we went to Majdanek, a concentration camp, all and any excitement fled. It's a real concentration camp. Totally preserved - same buildings, same everything. I walked in a gas chamber and saw the blue-green stains on the wall made by gas that killed people - killed Jews. I walked in a room where people died - people were murdered. Sefira, our guide, told us a bunch of facts, then suggested that we wander around by ourselves a bit. So I did. I started going through some of the wooden barracks, and grew more and more irritated - because they had ben made into museums. They were filled with facts and pictures and artifacts - and I kept thinking - why do they have to put this in the place where people died? I could see this in the Holocause museum in Washington or something! I was getting more and more annoyed and upset by the innapropriotness of it all - when I walked into another barracks. First I thought it was empty, but then - when I looked closer - I realized that the room was filled with rows and rows of mesh boxes of shoes. Shoes and shoes and shoes. Even thinking about it now, I shudder. They were old, old yellowed shoes, children's shoes, lady's shoes, men shoes - all sorts of shoes. So many shoes lining the room. Towards the back of the room it got very dark - as I walked through the room towards the back, I have never been so scared in my life - I swear I thought that I was never going to come out of that blackness. I couldn't stop crying - I was terrifyed and it hit me, suddenly. All these shoes belonged to people, people who had been murdered on the ground I was standing on. That was only the start. We saw mass graves - plces where the ground is sunken in because the bodies have decomposed - crematoriums, used to convert the corpses to ash for easy disposal for the Nazis. I cannot describe the horrors I saw, and i was seeing it all second hand. When we ewnt to Aushwitz on Thursday, I had something like a nervous breakdwon - it looks like a mueseum, with tour guides and a gift shop, at last the first part does. When we reached the crematorium, I thought to myself - no, I don;t want to go in - I've seen too many crematoriums. And them I felt like laughing at the absurdity of it. That I should be able to make such a statement. I've seen too many crematoriums. Why should I even have seen one? Why should I know what a crematorium is? Why should such atricoities have been allowed to be committed?!?!? We could'nt thing of anything at the end but get me out of here, get me away from this. We couldn't focus, couldn't think at all. It was supposedly one of the coldest weeks in Poland ever - we were numbed, mind body and soul, and I kept wondering how the Jews had survived such weather in a single thin layer when my fingers were frozen with 3 pairs of gloves. I cannot descirbe to you how much I despise Poland. When I got back, and a week later heard about a "dream vacation in Poland" advertied on the radio, I felt sick. I will never, ever look at Poland in any sort of positive light. And now that I'm back, now that I've seen it and I'll be forever haunted by the hundreds of thousands of shoes, by the dark, dark end of that room that makes me clench up inside to think about it, by the blue-green gas stains and crematorium chimmenys, I feel the need, the nessecity, the drive to tell people, I guess. Make sure it NEVER happens again, at least in my own small way.

Yow. I actually didn;t mean for my first entry to be such a heavyweight - it;s good to finally say that stuff, though.
Well. More (more relevant stuff) later.

Comments

[ex-proverb.livejournal.com]

That sounds harrowing and I could easily see myself feeling the same way you did. Did they force you to go to every one or did you have the choice?

I've seen videos on WWII concentration camps, but nothing in person. I wouldn't want to. Not that I take that history lightly, but it's too gruesome. Jews weren't the only ones persecuted in that era.

[penmage.livejournal.com]

It was a choice. During spring break they ran this program called Heritage that took us around - busses, tours, food, the whole deal. It was actually a very cool experiance - we also went and saw things of Jewish heritage that we'd never otherwise see, old synagogues and such - and our whole tour group got really close - but it was indeed very harrowing.