Go Forth to Where?
This story is inspired by one of our participants on our Temple Emanu-El Women’s Mission to Poland and Israel, Lynn Hirschhorn.
When Lynn’s dad and uncle were liberated by the Red Army, they were told simply, “Go. You are free!” These are words the Jewish people have yearned to hear since our oppression under Pharaoh, in Spain and from the brutal years of 1939-1945.
When the hole was cut by the Russian Army soldiers in the fence of the forced labor camp, the family had no idea what to do. Was this a hoax? Was it safe to leave? Where would they go? How would they get there? How do you take the dust and rubble that littered the streets and towns that were bustling full of life for the past 1000 years in Poland and rebuild and find those you are looking for?
Today we visited Treblinka. It is a haunting place nestled in the middle of the forest about 120 kilometers away from Warsaw. It was a killing factory where close to 1M Jews were systematically murdered in a 14-month period. The Germans razed the site after a small uprising and worry that the Russians would see the atrocities of the infamous place. Only about a dozen people survived Treblinka. Know physical remnant stands from its time.
15 years after the war ended, in 1960, a monument was erected on the hallowed site which is now a cemetery to Eastern European Jewry. The memorial consists of 17,000 stones of sundry shapes and sizes. All uneven. On many stones there are the names of towns of where Jews were sent from to this horrible place. But not every stone. Just the towns that had more than 5,000 Jews within it.
17,000 stones is a vast area. It expands through the forest. When we arrived, Lynn looked for the stone that had the name of Riga, the city where her family came from in Latvia. She wanted to touch this stone and take a picture next to it too. If nothing else, it connected her to her heritage and her family.
When we arrived, and our eyes digested the vast expanse of space and stones and shards strewn throughout the space, Lynn did not know where or how to begin the search for one stone with the words, ‘Riga.’ Would you start in the North? To the right? Bigger stones? Smaller stones?
Lynn could not help but think of her dad and uncles upon their liberation. Where do they go when they crawl out of that hole from the fence? Where do they go to put the pieces of their lives and family back together? How do you find the few that survived, if they did at all? When do you give up on the search? Do you ever?
This week we read the story of Abraham’s journey to Canaan. He was not sure where he was going, who he would meet or how he would settle the land. In life, Lech Lecha – Going Forth – is a metaphor for the searches we make to reconnect.
In a few short hours we will ‘go forth’ from Poland to Israel. We, like Lynn’s ancestry will reconnect with family, though with more ease. We will journey to link past present and future.
Will that quest ever end? I hope certainly hope not.
Shabbat Shalom.
Rabbi David-Seth Kirshner
The Candle Sticks
Written by, Deborah Finkel
Both my mother and my father are Polish survivors of the Holocaust. Since we will be visiting Auschwitz, this is about my mother. Ita Szlamowicz was the youngest of 4 in a traditional Jewish family in Lodz, Poland. The war broke out when she was 16. She was in the Lodz ghetto for 4 years until it was liquidated in August 1944. She worked in a textile factory in the ghetto and often gave her meager food rations to her starving father. In 1942, both her father and her brother died of starvation in the street. In August 1944, my mother was put in a cattle car with her mother, her sister, and her sister’s 4-year old daughter Golda, headed for Auschwitz. When they arrived, the selection took place on the platform, where they were met by shouting guards and angry German shepherds. My mother and her sister were put in a different line than their mother and Golda. Not wanting to be separated from her daughter, my mother’s sister begged the guards to go with her daughter, and they obliged. After my mother’s line of young girls were shaved bald and deloused, my mother asked about the whereabouts of her mother and sister. A more experienced inmate pointed to the smoke of the chimney and told her “that’s where your mother is now.”
No opportunity to mourn or cry, now totally alone and the sole survivor of her family, she endured the hell on earth of Auschwitz. She was 21 years old. Her new name was 50-777. Eventually she was taken to a textile factory in Germany to do forced labor. She made thread from wheat in a factory. Found eating the tiny seeds of the wheat plant, she was beaten over the head with the butt of a rifle by a cruel guard, splitting her scalp to the bone. She often spoke of the line-ups that took place in the morning and in the night that lasted hours during the brutal winter. Sometimes without shoes, her skin stuck to the icy ground and she was forced to run with the others, leaving her skin stuck and her feet bloodied.
One day in May 1945, all the girls were locked in the factory. As the Russian army neared, the Germans still tried to kill all the Jewish prisoners and the girls heard the gunshots outside the locked door. Huddled in a corner, one on top of the other, not wanting to be the next one shot, they heard the lock open and in came a Russian soldier who said ” Kinderlach zennen zei frei” (children you are free). My mother said the screams and cries could have opened up the sky.She spent 4 years in a Displaced Persons camp in Steyr, Austria, where she married my father (also the sole survivor of his large orthodox family), and where my oldest brother was born. In 1949, the new family of 3 left Europe for a new life in America, where they settled in New York. Before they left on the ship in Bremen, Germany, they used half of the money they had ($10) to buy a silver Shabbat candelabra which they used every Friday night for the rest of my mother’s life. I now use it.
My Hero
Written by Lynn Hirschorn
Everyone has an idol, someone they look up to and admire. In my case, it was my father, who we all affectionately called, “Poppy”. He was a quiet, gentle man who was charming, caring and very intelligent. The youngest child of seven, he was a survivor. My father would often say, when discussing the Holocaust, that surviving was merely a matter of luck. While I know in large measure, he believed that, I also know that after listening to his stories over the years, that sometimes you make your own luck.
The day a German Shepard guard dog named Barry, was ordered to kill him, the dog jumped over my father and refused to attack. Lucky you ask? No – night after night, passing the room where Barry was chained, stopping to say a few kind, reassuring words to the dog, that probably caused the dog to refrain from hurting his “friend”. Waiting on line with my mother to board the ship to America, my Poppy knew that my mother’s red throat might keep them from being allowed to leave. Leaving her for a few minutes he returned with a chocolate bar and told her to eat it right before the doctor showed up. Presto, no red throat and they were America bound.
Poppy was very creative and bright. He had studied to be an architect. When he came to America he could not afford to continue his studies and support his family. He had to sacrifice his dreams for his family. I still have a wooden stick he carved with a small penknife as a reminder of how talented and creative he was.
I know the stories confirm to me that Poppy often made his own luck because he believed that it was important to retell what happened so people would know and remember. It was not easy to share these stories but he did and there was no bitterness in his voice. It was from his stories that I learned how loyal and brave he was. He survived with two of his brothers. Arrangements had been made for he three of them to escape. When one of the brothers failed to show up, instead of leaving him behind, Poppy and his other brother went in search of their missing brother. They would find him and, as a result lost their chance to be free. They never once expressed regret, because keeping the family together was the most important thing.
Poppy died at the age of 92, having worked his whole life at the same place, Hadoar, helping to promote the Hebrew language. It seems that the war would finally catch up with Poppy. He had Mesothelioma, which was the result of his contact with asbestos while in a work camp. Even at the end, he was that same quiet, gentle, graceful man, never complaining and appreciating what we were doing to help make him comfortable. His mind was always active and constantly discussing the state of Israel and what was happening around the world, right up until he took his last, labored breath.
It was for these reasons and a thousand more little moments that I recall that made him my idol.
Hitting the Wall
In modern Jewish history, walls have been integral to our identity. Some walls have sequestered us away from the non-Jewish world. Some walls have kept sacred objects protected. In either case, these walls have evolved from stones and mortar to something holy to the touch.
In a matter of days, our women’s mission will have seen three walls each with an extrinsic importance; superficial in its creation yet morphed into something sacred.
The few remnant feet of the Warsaw Ghetto wall is a hallowed space. We stretched out our hands to touch its coarse design with the hopes that through some kinetic act of science we could feel the words of our ancestors and know of their history and challenges.
At Auschwitz, in-between the infamous block 10 and 11 is a wall where political prisoners were hung and shot. The grey wall is pock marked from bullets. Time doesn’t smooth out their damage. It exists as a form of testimony; a more ancient form of DNA to testify to the tragedies of this place. The wall is adorned with wreaths and candles to memorialize those that died there.
In Jerusalem, a 450-year-old partition encircles a 2000-year-old sliver of remaining wall around the Temple Mount. It is known as the Kotel, the Western Wall. Running our fingers across the smooth, braille like texture always seems to offer hope and direction. We yearn to touch it a in a few short days and will kiss a small stone we took from the tracks of Birkenau against this wall. That small act will feel like we are partnering with those who had their lives taken from them and could never taste the redemptive dream of a Jewish state.
All of these walls have their crevices bursting with notes and prayers, as if they have a magical portal to God’s ear that hears our pleas and understands our deepest desires.
In many poetic ways these walls allow us to keep our secrets safe and guard us from the dangers of the world. Within all of them we find sanctity.
When visiting Poland and unpacking a rich Jewish history that was abruptly ended during World War II, we erect and deconstruct walls, simultaneously. We do that internally and externally, in our minds and memories. Walls can protect the sacred and keep us safe from evils. It can also remind us of our borders and our limits. Like the righteous and the wicked of this place, it all depends on how we choose to use those walls that ultimately make the biggest difference.
From Darkness to Light
I have been to Auschwitz 10 times, but this was my first visit in the Autumn. I am of two minds about how it is best to think of Auschwitz. During spring the grass is lush and the trees and flowers are in bloom. The sun shines longer. Autumn though, has withered leaves on the ground and trees becoming naked. A thick fog clouded gates and towers. In my mind’s eye I saw both versions of these bricks of Jewish history; death and rebirth, despair and hope, darkness and light.
Tuesday marked our Temple Emanu-El women’s mission first full day in Poland. We started half a day earlier in Krakow on a tour of the rich Jewish history of more than 600 years. We prayed inside the Rema synagogue and cemetery as well as the Temple which represented the evolution of liberal Judaism to Eastern Europe. The Jewish square has changed over the decades since my eyes first saw this place. Kazmierz has been rebuilt to resemble a Polish community of yesteryear, a place where Jews were a significant part of the population and a central ingredient to the culture and flavor of the land. Most of this place now is Juden-rein, or Jew free. Only tourists – mainly Jews – frequent on stops to this area where Klezmer music resounds off the buildings and the Schindler factory shines from its new façade since the silver screen made it famous. All of these places along with the murder camps have become as critical to our national identity as the Western Wall and Masada.
Around us in the square we heard French, Russian, Polish and Hebrew. But in all of our minds, we heard Yiddish – the language that was currency on the streets for peddlers, teaching in the Yeshivas and even when asking about the welfare of family that disappeared in the ghettos.
This morning, we took the 90-minute bus ride from Krakow to Oswiecim – the Polish city that transformed in name and notoriety to Auschwitz.
Technically, there are 4 Auschwitz Camps: Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II – Birkenau, Auschwitz III – Monowitz and the Auschwitz that burns in all of our memories.
No words on paper nor spoken can ever describe the stories and the textures that make this hallowed and horrible place. How can one fathom 7 tons of human hair for the eyes to see? How does one describe piles of twisted metal of eye-glass frames? How does one speak of tattered prayer shawls (talises) which used to warm shoulders during prayer? How can one describe the stench from piles of leather shoes of all sizes and models – each of which had Jewish feet in them? What is the proper way to explain seeing young boys and girls from Israel draped in Israeli flags marching down tracks which brought their ancestors to death and they return to a homeland full of life? Even after this tenth visit, I find myself at a loss for words. A rabbinic anomaly! However, what becomes obvious for both first and repeat visitors is that being here allows us to bear witness and remind ourselves of our responsibility towards memory and legacy.
Now it is time to digest so, I will close. As our sagacious guide explained, “we leave this place with more knowledge and less understanding.”