Journeying back to the Holocaust - Day 2

If you've read my previous post, you'll know that 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.

For Day One, click here.

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

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.

Mala's story

We were particularly honoured to travel with Mala Tribich MBE, a Holocaust survivor. Straight after breakfast (an early start), we heard Mala's story.

She was born in Piotrków Trybunalski in Poland in 1930. Piotrków was a thriving town with a significant Jewish population. It was the first town in Poland to have a ghetto - in 1939 - a prototype of what was to come. The ghetto was overcrowded with a lack of sanitation.

After 2.5 years, there were rumours of deportation, except of people of working age. Mala's parents and aunt and uncle were introduced to a man who said he would hide two Jewish children - Mala (11) and her cousin Idzia (10). In hiding, the girls missed their parents but it wasn't safe for them to return. Eventually though, Idzia told the family they were staying with that she could go and stay with good friends of her parents. She was taken away and never seen again.

Mala returned to the ghetto, where everyone lived in constant fear. Her mother and sister were rounded up one day and murdered in the local forest. Mala had the responsibility of looking after her 5-year-old cousin, Ann, whose mother was deported to a concentration camp. She was separated from her father and brother and was sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp with Ann.

When they arrived, everything was taken away from them. They had to queue up to give their details, undress, get their heads shaved, have cold showers and were given a striped jacket and skirt. They couldn't recognise each other - they had been stripped of their personality and identity.

At this point, Mala mentioned how important it is to give everyone who was murdered during the Holocaust a name - to give them their identity back (more on this on Day 3).

Their daily food rations were half a slice of bread, a bowl of liquid the guards called soup, another grey-brown liquid (the guards called it coffee) and occasionally a small knob of butter or margarine. Enough to keep someone on the cusp of life.

From there, Mala was transported in a cattle truck to Bergen-Belsen where conditions were appalling. She said the first thing that hit her was the smell and smog. People were skeletons, shuffling around aimlessly. Sometimes someone would be shuffling along then suddenly collapse and die in front of her eyes - there were dead bodies everywhere. At the age of 14, she and her cousin were taken into the children's barracks, along with children of diamond workers from Amsterdam. She contracted typhus and was very ill when the camp was liberated. When the British forces liberated the camp, Mala was drifting in and out of consciousness and saw people running - she couldn't understand how any of her fellow prisoners had the strength to run. The only other member of her close family to survive was her brother, Ben Helfgott - former Olympic weightlifter for Britain.

As I mentioned in my post about Day One, 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.

Lodz cemetery

After Mala's talk, we checked out of the hotel and went by coach to Lodz cemetery. This showed the financial and spiritual wealth of the Lodz Jewish community before the war.

We were shown the cemetery hall where bodies are prepared for burial. Preparation before burial is a very important aspect of Judaism but during the Holocaust this was denied - a basic Jewish and human right.

We saw the Ghetto Field, where people risked their lives to bury the dead from Lodz Ghetto. The plaque says it all: 'The Ghetto Field' - holds the graves of 43,527 Ghetto victims during the years 1940 to 1944. Many victims were executed or brutally slain; others died from disease or starvation.

Yes, you read that right - over 43 thousand people were murdered in just four years, in just one place.

We heard the story of two brothers (10 and 8) who dragged their father's dead body all the way from the ghetto to the cemetery. They buried him with their own hands, digging the soil - two young boys who should have been playing and having fun, burying their own father. And then between them, they dragged over a large boulder to mark the grave so that they could identify the burial site after the war.

Near the entrance of the cemetery, there are six large holes. After the liquidation of the ghetto, Jews were left there to clear up. They were ordered to dig six large pits and then they were locked in a building, but the Nazis fled as the Russian army was approaching and left them there. These Jews all survived and the pits remained empty.

Piotrków

We visited key sites in Mala's life. Her first home and then her home in the ghetto.

The Nazis didn't only want to destroy the Jews, they wanted to destroy Judaism. And the first way to do that is to destroy the synagogues, then the books, then art ... then everything else.

We visited the Great Synagogue in Piotrków, which was devastated by the Nazis during the war. After the war, it was rebuilt and used as a library and it is now being renovated to become a museum. We said prayers there, again bringing Judaism back into the building.

Again, look at the bullet holes:

At this point, I want to mention my thoughts about Poland. These small towns were empty. We stood in the main square in the middle of day and it was fairly deserted, like a ghost town. Many buildings were derelict too. There were hardly any cars on the roads. Every time we passed, or drove through, a forest, we wondered how many Jews had been shot in there, how many mass graves are still waiting to be discovered.

Wolbrom

We tried to visit three mass graves here, but couldn't get to them as trees had fallen down and it was blocked off. But here's the experience I had that evening - in the dark. Click here for a link to the actual memorial.

We walked by candlelight, our feet squelching into the wet leaves and mud underfoot, barely able to see in front of us. We walked in silence in either single file or in pairs. It was pouring with rain, so many candles didn't last the journey. I imagined how it must have felt all those years go, making that same journey, knowing you were walking to your death.

We stopped in a small clearing, among thin tree trunks, glowing silver in the candlelight, dark silhouettes of trees in the background rising about us. All was silent. I shut my eyes and imagined it as it would have been as we said prayers for the dead.

Jews were given a number. They were made to strip naked and lie down in a particular area in a giant pit, on or among bodies of men, women, children and babies, some still hanging on to life. And then the shots rang out. One soldier is pictured sitting on the side, dangling his legs, holding his gun, smoking a cigarette, laughing at the dead (or nearly dead) beneath his feet.

Krakow - The Jewish Heroes Square

Nearly every town square will have a history involving the rounding up of Jews, often the murdering of Jews as well.

In this square, there are 33 memorial chairs of iron and bronze in memory of the Jews murdered in the Krakow ghetto.

One of the buildings on this square used to be a children's hospital. When the Nazis came, they went in shooting.

But that still wasn't enough...

They threw the babies from the nursery on the top floor out of the windows down to the streets below.

And still that wasn't enough...

They played a game - how many babies could they catch on their gun. There are photographs of soldiers holding their guns with two or three babies stuck on top.

Schindler's Factory

Lastly, we visited Schindler's Factory. It was late in the evening so the museum was closed, but we stood outside the gates and we remembered...

We watched Schindler's List during our journeys on Day 2. If you haven't watched it, please do - as it gives a fairly accurate representation of the Holocaust. It's chilling and shocking.

Oskar Schindler was a member of the Nazi party with a factory in Krakow. He is believed to have saved 1200 Jews (some pictured above). Though it's not just 1200 Jews. When we talk about the 6 million Jews who died, we don't just mean 6 million. Each of those 6 million should have lived to have children and grandchildren and so on ...

And that's the end of Day Two.

For Day three, click here.