Off-the-Shelf Books: Journeying back to the Holocaust

If you could go on the trip of a lifetime, where would you go? Probably not to the forests of Poland, searching for mass graves, or to Auschwitz, to see tiny shoes of children who were murdered by the Nazis. But that's exactly what I was doing earlier this week.

I took part in a two-night, three-day journey to Lodz and Krakow, along with around 40 other people, including three Rabbis. The trip was run by J-Roots, a Jewish organisation that creates a unique learning experience - and this was certainly traumatic, thought-provoking, humbling and unforgettable.

All of my great grandparents came to England in the early 20th century and, in fact, one of them was even born here. So I had no close relatives in Europe when the Nazis invaded. Yet being Jewish, and growing up with stories of Holocaust survivors, listening to their first-hand accounts, meant that the Holocaust always felt personal. In another dimension, it could have been MY great grandparents and grandparents there, which meant my parents and I would never have been born.

We were particularly honoured to travel with a Holocaust survivor. Mala Tribich MBE is 89 years old. She was born in Piotrków Trybunalski in Poland. When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, Mala and her family fled eastwards. When they returned, they had to move into the ghetto that was established in her hometown, the first in Poland. Her mother and eight-year-old sister were murdered in the local forest. When the ghetto was liquidated, Mala became a slave labourer at the age of 12. She was separated from her father and brother and was sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp with her 5-year-old cousin, Ann. From there, she was transported in a cattle truck to Bergen-Belsen where conditions were appalling. She contracted typhus and was very ill when the camp was liberated. The only other member of her close family to survive was her brother, Ben Helfgott.

Mala is an amazing woman. She doesn't look her age and has the energy of a 30 year old, walking faster than most other people in our group. She was an inspiration to all of us on this trip.

I'm now going to give you an account of Day One.

If any factual background is incorrect, I apologise in advance as I'm writing this quickly. I took notes and photos during my visit and I'm using those in order. I also apologise for any typos! Some of the descriptions will be graphic (even more so, in later posts), but I'm not apologising.

Dabie

We left Stansted airport early on Sunday morning and arrived at Lodz airport.

The first place we visited was a village called Dabie near Chelmno. Dabie used to be a hive of Jewish life with around 1000 Jews living there. We searched for hidden clues to the Jews who once called Dabie their home, before they were rounded up and sent to their deaths.

We were shown an apartment block. Its windows have an archway at the top - usually a sign of a synagogue (Polish buildings usually have rectangular windows).

We were led inside and up narrow stairs into the dark attic, with the torch apps on our phones lighting our way as we stumbled over badly-boarded flooring (with holes and dips in the middle) sprinkled with sawdust. In this tiny attic space, at the far end, we found this Hebrew writing on the wall. These words feature in our own synagogue in England. But these are faded, part of the wording missing, destroyed by bullets - you can see the damage clearly, including bullet holes close up. Something terrible happened here... We sang Jewish songs and clapped along, to bring back some Judaism into this former synagogue.

Chelmno

Our next visit was to Chelmno. I found this to be one of the most difficult parts of the whole trip.

Chelmno was the first death camp of the Nazi's Final Solution, which was operational in December 1941 before the Wannsee Conference. Gassings took place in experimental gas vans, claiming the lives of over 200,000 Jews.

The Nazis would pump the exhaust back in the van as the Jews travelled towards the forest - the same journey we took on the coach. Once they arrived, the dead (or nearly dead) were dumped into open pits. The first victims of the massacre came from Dabie. Other Jews were transported to the forest and then shot there. 'One bullet, One Jew' - though occasionally 'One bullet, Two Jews' where a baby was held against its mother's chest. Locals helped to dig graves, serve vodka to the SS soldiers, find the Jews to round up... Local boys would take gold off the corpses - if they couldn't remove the rings, they would cut off the fingers instead. Then the bodies were burnt - cremated - and the bones smashed.

We were there to find these bone fragments. It was daylight when we arrived and we walked around in a daze, searching in the grassy areas, shifting the mud and grass with our shoes or our fingers.

These are bone fragments of the Jews who were murdered here. People have found teeth and even jawbones still remaining in the soil after all these decades. They look like bits of stone, but you realise they're not. We wandered mainly in silence, concentrating on the task, respecting those who were murdered in this place - just because they were born Jewish.

We gathered all of the bones together and gave them the Jewish burial they deserved.

We walked back to the main road in the darkness, highly emotional, again with just torches to light up our way. We - a group of 40+ Jews - were free to walk away when 200,000 Jews could not.

Radegast station

Then we visited Radegast station - for yet another experience that I will never forget.

Tens of thousands of Jews were transported from this station to death camps, including Auschwitz. It is now a memorial and museum. We were there after dark, so the museum was closed.

Around fifty of us stood in a cattle cart in the dark.

We nearly filled it, with its low ceiling, wooden walls with cattle rings and barbed wire on the windows. We kept the door open to give us a little light, but could just imagine being shut inside - not just with another 50 people, but with 200 people, maybe more. If there was space above the heads of the prisoners, babies would have been shoved inside on top of them. We were in there for maybe 15 minutes, but they would have been in there for days. Men, women, children, babies ... with no sanitation (maybe a bucket), no food or water. People dying around them, so hard to breathe, the stink...

The photos below used flash so that you could see the details. But there was nothing to see in the darkness, just the faces of those around you. When I tried to take a photo of the room without flash, nothing showed up.