It is hard to imagine leaving Egypt for the Wilderness...
...and it turns out we've left Vienna for Poland?
And then our first stop is Auschwitz!
Auschwitz-Birkenau thoughts--impossible to be more comprehensive here--it's overwhelmingly sad:
I [Debbie] had not realized that the Poles established the museum/memorial at Auschwitz-Birkenau shortly after the end of the war. It's all much bigger than I imagined it and though the original stenches are long gone, near the crematoria at Birkenau, there was some sort of fowl odor.
One of the displays includes a huge amount of human hair--really a lot. It made me mindful of my haircut on May 21 for our Social Action Mitzvah day. How those crude haircuts of the prisoners were undignified, ugly and degrading. I want to make mention of that at TAS when as I give my hair to Locks of Love to help a child regain dignity of losing hair to illness.
We visited under a gray sky, with rain and chill wind blowing. That people survived at all seems miraculous.
Overall, we had no complaints about the site/memorial presentation. It seemed very well organized. Not surprisingly, there were several reminders that Poles died there first, that Poles also had numbers tattooed on their arms (maybe even more than Jews), that Poles fought against the Nazis from the beginning and even some in Oswiecim.
It occurred to me [Debbie] that as the prisoners were repeatedly deprived of every possession and material comfort, they were left, pretty much, with only their essential spirit/tzelem elohim...was that enough? enough for what?
I [Mark] have often said in the past five to ten years that, however irreverent it may seem, (like Picasso (sp?) and his "blue period"?) "I've had my 'holocaust period'." More recently I've said that every Jewish teenager should have a week of Sho'a Nightmares. I had a night of them a week earlier in Villach. Nonetheless, upon entering the gates at Birkenau I was overcome, my body halted, I felt chocked up, overwhelmed by the enormity of what had occurred here.
