Day 3 - Poland - Allie

I always was told that I was coming to Poland to see first hand the only physical remnants of the tragedy of the Holocaust. But after going to Majdanek, the first concentration camp we went to, I was extremely confused by this. Instead of seeing all the evidence and feeling the intensity of such powerful emotions that are the supposed reasons one goes to Poland, I contrastingly felt blind and numb. I looked down to the pebbles that constructed the pathway we walked on, and I couldn’t see the footprints. I looked into the windows of the house the commandant of Majdanek and his family, and I couldn’t see them eating at the dinner table. I looked at the barracks where 500 timid and starving Jews lay for hundreds of sleepless nights, and I couldn’t see their skeleton shaped imprints left on the mattresses. I looked at the mountain of ashes that held the only memories of thousands of faces and souls and personalities and stories, but I couldn’t see any of it. I couldn’t feel sad or furious and I wasn’t filled with tears nor rage - I felt so empty. As I walked from barrack to barrack; one holding millions of shoes covered in dust, one with bunk beds, one transformed into a museum, I could see everything and I read everything. But for the life of me I couldn’t fathom it. We then went into the crematorium. Not one part of my numb body wanted to walk into that place. Not because I was overwhelmed or terrified or sad, but because I knew that when I walked in there I was going to see. For the stories to turn into reality was no longer going to be left to the devices of my imagination but I was going to see the chamber of annihilation and industrialised deaths. That the owners of the shoes that I couldn’t picture and the bodies that lay in the beds that I couldn’t conceive, walked into that room and didn’t walk out. Yet I went in and was shocked by my reaction. I assume that no two people who have entered that room have had the same thoughts and feelings. When the entire IST stood in the crematorium, Ilan made a speech and he spoke about his grandfather who passed away. He told us that while his grandfather was alive he lived for Judaism and immediately I broke into tears. I thought of my grandfather, Peter Goldman, who passed away at the end of 2018. He had an extremely hard childhood which shaped him into the man he was. A man who didn’t know everything about everything but he knew how to love. And he did not love anything more than his family and his Judaism and above all when those two things combined on a Friday night. When he passed away, I remember at his funeral out of all 6 of his grandchildren, everyone cried except me. For the last year I have felt so much guilt for that. But standing in the crematorium, in Majdanek, listening to a man speak of his Grandfather who passed away, who cherished being a Jew, I cried. I cried and felt so many emotions with such vigour. It is not that I feel a weight lifted off my shoulders that now I have cried for my grandfathers passing, I just feel content that he was watching over me and saw that I was thinking of him and remembering him for the man he was and the values he possessed. I know why people come to Poland now. Not because everybody needs to weep and mourn, but because everybody deserves the chance to experience what they themselves will experience in a place that holds so many stories and so much potential to provoke something inside a person, that an ordinary place isn’t capable of. No matter what that might be.