As I sit on the bus staring at the outskirts of Kielce and heading towards Krakow, my heavy heart feels slightly complete. Last night, we were honored to be able to hear testimony from Howard Chandler, a Holocaust and Auschwicz survivor firsthand. As he told his personal testament, I hung onto every word. It was truly a highlight of the trip for me. Today, we got to experience the town where he and his family were so brutally taken from, of Staharowice. It was here that we got to be welcomed from the mayor, visit a memorial in the market square across from his childhood home, in honor of the lives taken tragically expunged here.
We also were able to visit a Jewish cemetery here, where mass graves were located, noted from the dozens of broken tombstones.
The hardest part of today’s experience was visiting Strzlinka—the same slave labor camp where Howard, his father and brother were taken to. Hearing personal testimony of Nazi soldiers forcing Jews to run stairs and if they didn’t do it well enough or fast enough, they were forced to run the perimeter of a large pit dug here. BANG. They were shot and pushed into the pit. Hearing the pit be covered over by German soldiers, still heaving from live bodies and stained with blood, unsettled me. This sacred place was memorialized and called Memory of Memory. It was chilling and ironic to hear gunfire from the gun range next door.
As we prepare for Auschwicz tomorrow, I sit with my thoughts wondering about the fear of women and children, non working men, the elderly, disabled, and homosexuals. What were their last thoughts? How did the working men who were spared to work camps or those who survived cope with the loss of loved ones or even return to the place they once called home?
As an educator, I sit with myself processing all of this and toying with ideas of how I could possibly share this experience and feeling of this to my students. I hope the next few days bring me more clarity on this.