I never cried the entire time I was in Poland.
I expected to, but I didn’t.
My tears didn’t start until we landed back in the States — after checking into a sterile Marriott Hotel room sandwiched between other nondescript hotels and the JFK airport.
I realized I was overtired.
I realized I was sick with a sinus infection.
But I also realized that my tears would continue for a very long time.
And they have.
Poland to me is like an empty nest household — the remnants of those that were born there and formed there are still visible and palpable, but the people themselves are long gone.
And the messages — ah, the messages — that the persecuted left behind are far more powerful than those doomed victims could have ever imagined. And that’s what started my flood of tears.
Here’s a smattering:
Jurek, aged 16, Auntie Pola, aged 42, and Uncle Azek, aged 50, all died within half a year. When Jurek died, we were in utter despair. When Auntie Pola died, we despaired a bit less, and when Uncle died it just didn’t move us all that much. Quite simply, we grew used to…death.
July 6, 1941 — Renia Knoll
One is left with the tragic dilemma: are we to dole out spoonfuls to everyone, the result being that no one will survive? Or are we to give full measure to a few — with only a handful having enough to survive?
May, 1942 — Emanuel Ringelblum
We are imprisoned within double walls: a wall of brick for our bodies, and a wall of silence for our spirits.
June 25, 1942 — Chaim A. Kaplan
It was agreed that all Jews should be gathered into one place and burnt to death … all were ordered to sing and were chased into the barn. Hooligans beat them up bestially on the way…they were pushed into the barn. Then the barn was doused with kerosene and lit.
Samul Wassersztejn
I remember scrawled on the walls: Away with the Jews, but the Jewish girls stay with us.
Ita Kupfermann
They grabbed Jews by the beards and tore the beards from their skin.
Maria Gehl
One of the nearby streets has already been blocked. The mood is terrible. We’re expecting the worst. We’re in a hurry … Goodbye … what we’ve been unable to shout out to the world, we’ve buried in the ground.
August 3, 4pm — Dawid Graber’s last will
The comments of the survivors of those fragmented families years later still echo the angst. Here is one:
Before my father passed away, he would lead our family’s Passover Seder. There was a part in the Haggadah (the text recited at the Seder) where he was supposed to recline a bit. Every time he got to that part, he would cry. He was thinking of his father leading the Seders in Osiek, Poland when my father was growing up. In 1939, the day before the Seder, my father got information to be in Warsaw the next day to leave for the United States on the ship The Battery. It was the last boat out of Poland. He was not able to say goodbye to any of his family. And by the time The Battery arrived at Ellis Island, the town of Osiek was gone … We never knew anybody on my father’s side of the family … His parents, his sister and brother-in-law, a 2 year-old little niece and a 4 year-old nephew all perished at the hands of the Nazis.
May 31, 2024 — Peggy (Rich) Friedman
Those of us fortunate enough not to have lost relatives in the Holocaust are forcibly impacted by its lingering effects nonetheless:
Many years ago, I took a trip to the Florida Holocaust Museum in St Petersburg, FL. I had seen much in my life related to the Holocaust, so I didn’t expect to shed more than a tear or two.
I toured the museum for a while and came across a cattle car that was used to transport Jews to the concentration camps. While I don’t think it’s permitted now, I did reach out to touch it. When I did, it triggered unexpected, uncontrollable crying that seemed to last forever.
May 31, 2024 — Jack Valerio
It should be noted that Yad Vashem in Jerusalem officially acknowledged the 6500 Poles who risked their lives to save their fellow Jews, and that it is estimated that the Nazis killed at least 1.9 million non-Jewish Polish citizens and POWs during World War Two. Unfortunately, I could find no quotes representing their experiences.
In spite of it all, today, Jewish life — though drastically reduced — goes on in Poland. And, in spite of it all, so does the secular life in Poland too.
Keep Preserving Your Bloom,
Iris Ruth Pastor
