Last Day in Poland

“But love is not a victory march, it’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah” – Rufus Wainwright lyrics

The evening we came back to Warsaw was uneventful except for the fact that I, once again, went to the sauna! Really, I encourage anyone and everyone to go cleanse themselves in those amazing places!

Our last day in Poland entailed a visit to Treblinka, yet another one of the six camps in Poland. Unlike the other two we visited, Treblinka was completely dismantled and destroyed by the Nazis, so there are, quite literally, no remains. The memorial is nestled in a forest and it is easy to let your mind stray to the surrounding nature, the footpaths, the occasional flowers….there is no material truths directly confronting your conscience. And yet, it is precisely here where it should be most difficult to walk away with any sense of lingering hope or renewal because, out of the 800,000 people who were sent here, less than 100 survived. As a result, at least for me, there was a silence there that was different from that of Auschwitz or Majdanek, as if in the air hung the false echoes of the voiceless laments of thousands of lost souls.

I was asked to put together and host our remembrance ceremony at Treblinka. I stood in front of a memorial to commemorate the mass graves where the bodies were burnt; behind me, an Israeli flag held up by two of our students billowed in the wind. It was a sunny, warm, breezy afternoon as we had a moment of silent prayer, sang some songs, listened to some readings, etc, but I could not help feeling an acute disparity between whatever our actions were meant to mark/honor/redeem now and the absurd atrocities that actually occurred on this field. As honored as I have been to be asked to organize and host the ceremonies on every occasion, and as appreciative as I was of all the positive comments about them, I have to admit that this one was difficult for me to do. It seemed trite and senseless in some fundamental way that we, despite our best intentions, could not repair.

We returned from Treblinka to Warsaw to spend the afternoon as we wished (yes, our first taste of real free time!!) and then, in the late evening, say our sad goodbyes to Irving and some of the staff who was staying behind, and head to the airport. Off to Israel we went! I should mention that I had a full-blown fever at this point, so the prospect of a red-eye flight seemed particularly distressing!!