Dancing as Resistence
Every time a start a project like a blog, I promise myself that disability is one subject I won’t write about–partly because I don’t want to throw a pity party, and but mainly because I always underestimate the amount I allow disability to interfere with my life, and in my defense, I have allowed it to […]
Majdanek
July 4, 2012 When my feet hit the floor and it caved a little, the creak echoing through the long room, the same creak that so many suffering feet had passed over, a little deeper now that my weight had landed. When I made a sour face at the smell that did not seem […]
How Should We Remember?
Auschewitz, Fri 7/7, I have just seen a place beyond comprehension. It is different from Majdanek, which oppressively crushes emotion out of us. Here, the fear is created in the vastness of the camp and its seemingly never-ending rows of barracks and guard towers. It is a place to think rather than feel. On my […]
Another Brick in the Wall
From Majdanek, 3 days ago, overdue, but here it is finally.) It is difficult to describe what I feel after seeing what I have just seen. Most of my emotions are such that I will probably never understand them. Yet for one brief moment, I felt that I truly understood what I was seeing. The […]
Some Images from Poland
Here are a few images from Poland.
Healing and Holiness
After Majdanek, while I sat, shaken, Kyle Smith–my history teacher from Shady Side–told me something that I don’t think that I’ll forget. I’d commented on how odd, how seemingly wrong, even, it was that there should be flocks of birds flying through the camp, living their lives as though nothing contradictory to life had happened […]
Choose Life: Howard’s Story
Deuteronomy 30:19 proclaims “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.” My father has often quoted this one particular passage of the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible) to me–in his opinion in is the central message of the entirety of Judaism–but I […]
Finding a Relative
Plung is not an exceedingly common surname. In fact, other than my family, I know of only one other Plung individual, and I assume that, somewhere along the line, there is something of a relationship between us. I was shocked, then, when, on a whim and inspired by the past few days, I entered my […]
Majdanek
Words are generally my most steadfast friends and come to me in even the most difficult and unimaginable of situations, but after Majdanek, though I feel so much, I find I have very little to say. No, that’s not quite correct; I do have a lot to say, but these thoughts in my head are […]