| There’s dirt on my shoes. After a full week of walking through Poland, this should not be that surprising. These shoes are a lilac purple with a few accents of brighter royal purple on the sides. Such a light shade of purple that when they are dirty, you can notice. Up until the last few days, they still looked brand new- the soles and sides still so white and the heel crisp and clean. We walked the streets of Warsaw: through what remains of the Jewish Ghetto from World War II, through the Museum of Polin, through the parks, in the grass and wild flower patches on every street in the city. Man, did we walk. Yet through all that, my shoes still looked fine. I suppose that is what most of the people said about the Jews of that time: they still looked fine…..in the beginning. As our journey brought us to the edge of Warsaw, to the place just beyond the city limits where the Germans tried to hide the Death Camp of Treblinka, we walked the dusty path through the woods. We walked through the forrest, listening to the birds sing glorious songs as we trudged along what is left of the railroad that was used to bring the Jews by cattle car here. But still, my shoes stayed clean. Maybe because the path was filled with stones- stones that the Jewish people had to walk on with shoes worn thin, in the snow, the cold, the rain, the heat….Even with my steady new shoes, it was not an easy trek. I can imagine it seemed almost impossible to the 800,000 souls that walked this same path. Most of them knew where they were headed, to an end that seemed impossible to avoid. 17,000 stones laid out in front of me for my shoes to climb around, representing 17,000 communities of people whipped away. Whiped away and erased like they had never existed. Their homes moved into by neighbors wanting more space; their pictures and belongings being claimed by others as their own; their names almost completely disappearing from memory. And yet, my shoes were still clean… It wasn’t until Majdanek that the dust settled on my soles and in my soul. The walk again filled with jagged stones but also filled with this dust and dirt. Stepping inside this camp felt different, it sounded different. Gone were the song birds to be replaced only by the ominous crows. A murder of crows if you will, in a place of murder. Because that is what truly happened here: murder. Words matter so much, as our guides continually reminded us this week. Extermination is what you do to bugs, rodents, and pests; it is not what you do to people. When you get rid of people, it is murder. During our walk into Majdanek, we were not alone in the camp (honestly, we were never alone at any of these sites) and had other visitors alongside us. Among the other visitors was a Mother with her two sons, all speaking French. One of the sons has Downs Syndrome. That family, that sweet boy who only wanted to play games on the phone while hiding from the sun under his Mom’s umbrella, would have been among those murdered. He would have been sorted immediately and his Mom would have walked the dusty road, holding his hand, to the “shower” that would have been their last. I looked down at my shoes when I saw them. I saw the dust starting to collect and thought about how just a week prior, I had used these same shoes to walk my Special Olympic friends through the most beautiful week of Camp. I had used these same shoes to lead children with Down’s syndrome, Autism, and Cerebral Palsy in games of pickleball, kickball, and even a water balloon fight. Yet, they did not carry the dust from that week; there were no marks left that indicated all the love and joy that had been shared between the high school kids and my Special Olympians. Now, there were only marks from Majdanek. As we walked through Majdanek, the dirt and dust got worse as the sun bore down on us. The more we explored, the more it seemed to cover my entire being. We saw the rooms where the Jewish people were exposed to Cyclon B and left to suffocate. And then, we saw the ovens. The chimney standing tall on the hillside telling the neighbors through it’s clouds of smoke when the bodies of the innocent were being destroyed. The mechanisms are still there that were used in 1943; the steel stretchers that slide in and out of the ovens that required other Jewish people to operate them. To me, the most disgusting part of it all, was the cement tub in the adjacent room. The tub that the Commander of the camp would bathe in on the coldest of winter nights because by the ovens was the only place where hot water could be found. By the ovens where the bodies of the innocent Jewish were disposed of, the Commander regularly bathed so he could have hot water. Let that sink in for a moment. The clouds of smoke, the smells, the ashes covering the floors and walls (and now my shoes) did not deter that “man,” from taking a hot bath. In the evening, I tried to get some of the dirt off my shoes. I didn’t scrub too hard, knowing that our next destination was Auschwitz and I was sure to collect more dirt on my soles and soul. Our time in Auschwitz coincided with a heat wave across Poland, because of course it did. As we walked through Auschwitz I, we saw what remains of the barracks and blocks. We walked through “Canada,” the destination of all the belongings of Jewish people that had been confiscated upon their arrival. I found the name funny: Canada because it was considered a country of the rich and there all the riches of the Jews had been stored and picked through. The room of shoes tugged at my heart strings, with mostly blackened shoes and a few pairs of fancy red shoes standing out among the rest. It is hard to tell if the shoes were blackened from time, from work, or from the dirt they had to walk through to get here. Even the red shoes weren’t fully clean. When we arrived at Birkenau, the sun was at it’s hottest and highest point in the sky. There were no clouds, no shade, and no relief. Though I struggled, I imagined that the people that resided here in the 1940’s had gone through weather just like this, in conditions much worse that I had it. I knew I would be leaving this place at the end of the day and that my visit was just that- a visit. We walked alongside the railway where there have been so many pictures and images taken and seen by the populous now. It was as if I had been there already because of the images and recordings I had seen prior to coming. The wild flowers and patches of clover growing alongside the rails fascinated me. All across this terrible place there is now life that makes it almost beautiful. Tree lined walk ways with bees pollinating all of the flowers that I know would have been used to make teas, poltices, soups, or even just eaten raw. The resiliency of the people that survived this terrible place can not ever be understated. When we saw the barracks and the latrines, it was gut wrenching to think these stables that had been designed for horses were ultimated used for people. The heat of the summer made them almost suffocating inside and I imagine the cold of the winter made them like ice boxes. No wonder there had to be a head count at bed and then again upon waking. And the dirt…it has this color to it that isn’t quite like anything else. I know why but am unwilling to actually say the reason aloud. The same for Majdanek. The dirt and dust isn’t only from the earth and that part terrifies me. I know my shoes will never be fully clean the way they had been before Majdanek and Auschwitz; and I know my soul won’t be either. It makes me think more about the cliche we tell young children when they fall get dirty: “God made dirt, and dirt don’t hurt.” I’m not so sure about that any more. This dirt hurts….more than I am sure God ever could have forseen. |
