Warsaw excursions

“And from your lips she drew a Hallelujah” – Rufus Waiwright lyrics

On our second day in Warsaw we spent a lot of time walking around the largest Ghetto in European history, in which the Nazis closed up 30% of the city’s populations into 2.4% of the city’s area. At it’s peak, the Ghetto contained 500,000 people, and by June 1943 the entire area was leveled in the suppression of the Ghetto uprising. We walked around the (very) few physical remains of the Ghetto and followed, quite literally, the steps that Jews would have taken then to be transported to Treblinka. Towards the end of the day, we also visited the place that commemorates the command bunker of the Ghetto fighters as well as the main monument to their struggle (a sculpture by Nathan Rappaport). In total, we heard a lot about the Ghetto Uprising of 1943.

Along the way, we also visited the orphanage of Janusz Korchak, a renowned educator and pediatrician of his time who sacrificed his own life to lend dignity to the deaths of the 200 children under his care. His orphanage was forced into the Ghetto and he followed his children there even though he was offered an exemption. Most importantly, when his children were deported to Treblika in 1943, he once again refused to be saved, and accompanied his children to their imminent death. There are no medals for actions like this (although yes, thankfully, sometimes there are monuments), but what could we worse than abandoning children in the hour of heir suffering? I have to admit I got incredibly emotional at this monument. We all give up so easily on things that are difficult, forgetting that some people have had the inner fortitude to step forward into certain death for the sake of lending humanity and dignity to others.

In the late afternoon we visited with American Ambassador Asche (the second longest US Ambassador to Poland). We sat in the garden of his beautiful home and spoke to him about Polish relations with the US, Israel, etc. What a strange, but great opportunity!

The second day ended with one of the most powerful experiences we’ve had thus far. We had dinner with a Righteous Gentile named Yadviga. Her family took in several Jews during the war and helped feed and maintain others. One of them became her violin teacher, sparking a love for music that turned her and her brothers into professional musicians, in part to honor Avraham’s death. A neighbor reported on her family and Yadviga’s father was arrested (never to be seen again), her mother was killed later on, and she and her brothers were left to grow up together with kind neighbors. Yadviga is considered a Righteous Gentile not only because of the acts of her family, but because of her own decisions as a child to help her family, to lie when stopped by police offers who suspected she was carrying food to hidden Jews, etc. I will not trivialize the experience of listening to her testimony, which is why I have opted to simply retell it as simply as possible, without coloring this account with any of my own reactions.

Among other things, today further solidified something that I have believed in fervently for several years now: you may have great goals, you may achieve great things, you may face your objectives and strive for them with great conviction, but if you are not kind to the people that surround you, your general contributions become somewhat mediocre. If we forget, ignore, dismiss, or simply fail to consider the simplest ways in which we can do good in our immediate environment, how can we really hope for the weight of our actions to be that which we intended? This is part of the reason why I never understand why people don’t seek out ways to volunteer, or are lazy about donating blood…the small things not only matter, they also stand as a powerful testament to the way you view our individual responsibility and the selfishness with which you regard your own position. By excusing ourselves from such a responsibility, we are oversimplifying our lives and ignoring the power of the individual.