Wednesday 2.18, Krakow, Lublin

We wake up at 6:00 Am, have a very quick breakfast, and get on the bus by 7:30. We have two bus drivers today to manage the 10+ hour round trip to Lublin. On the bus everybody is typically silly and in good sprits. There is a Bon Jovi “Livin on a Prayer” sing along, an unfortunate 45 minute wait for a toilet at a gas station, and a good deal of napping. When we arrive at Majdanek, the mood changes quickly.
Whereas Auschwitz and Birkenau were either systematically dismantled by retreating Nazis or destroyed by advancing Allied forces, Majdanek is essentially as it was when the Nazis left it. The Russians advanced on the camp quickly, and the Nazis essentially picked up and left. As a result, the camp is completely in tact. Auschwitz was like a grim museum; Birkenau was like a stark graveyard. I don’t have a good word to describe Majdanek.
The first thing we saw upon our arrival was a Russian-built open-air memorial for those murdered in the camp. It is a roof covering a pit the size of a 25-meter swimming pool filled with a pile of ashes from the crematorium. Fragments of bone are readily visible in the pile. From there we walk to the site of mass graves. In 1943, tens of thousands of prisoners were murdered here. They were forced to dig a hole, and lie down in the bottom, where they were shot. After that another group was forced to lie on top of them, and were then shot. This went on for almost a full day, until the mass graves were full, leaving mounds above the normal ground level when the dirt was replaced. Beyond the cruel depravity of this act, there is another dimension as well. Houses and businesses in Lublin are only about 200 meters away from these graves. What did the people of Lublin hear? When interviewed after the war, townspeople often stated that they had no idea what was going on. Considering that the only fence surrounding the camp is barbed wire, and the closeness to the town, that seems unlikely. How often do we ignore injustice and brutality in our world, and more so, in our own backyard? Are we turning a deaf ear as the townspeople of Lublin seemed to do?
From the mass grave, we move into the crematorium. A Jewish tour group from France is also in the crematorium, where they hold a prayer service. We wait in the room by the entrance until the finish. As they walk out of the crematorium, with tears streaming down their faces, we walk in. We are much closer to the ovens here. Some of them still have coal and ashes in them. We spend a long time in this room, trying to make sense of it all. We gather ourselves and visit Majdanek’s gas chambers. In one room, you can see the blue stains left by Zyclon B gas and fingernail scratches on the walls.
Majdanek also has warehouses full of artifacts. We walk through one literally brimming with shoes. Supposedly, when Russian troops first opened the door after taking Majdanek, shoes just poured out from behind a door nearly bursting. We then travel to our final stop; an exhibit deducted to the children of Majdanek. The haunting sounds of a Polish children’s lullaby play as we follow the paths of four children brought to the camp, three of whom survived, one of whom was killed. It is an incredibly touching exhibit that resonates powerfully with our group.
We leave the camp with one of the designers of the exhibit who is a member of a local Jewish group from Lublin. His group is committed to maintaining the Jewish community in the town and remembering the victims of the Holocaust. He gives us a tour of his town, and leaves us to have dinner at a local restaurant. We reboard the bus, and take our five-hour bus ride back to Krakow. As the group’s mood re-equilibrates towards a less somber one, I wonder. What can we take from today? This was the emotional equivalent of being bunched in the stomach. There were images and artifacts at Majdanek that almost no on e can be prepared to see until they are there. Does this mean that we will be different people? Will we be ready to stand up against the evils of the world? Has viewing this camp made us all less likely to succumb to group pressures that are unjust? I hope so.