Today we will be going to my dad’s home town and meet with the Mayor and other dignitaries. We are with a group of about 80. It is necessary for my dad and emotional and tiring for the two of us. It is now 5 a.m. and I am ready for the day. We started in Warsaw, traveled to the extermination camp at Treblinka where my dad’s mother, sister and younger brother were murdered in the crematorium upon arrival on October 27 1944. We paid tribute to them their. Then we went to the concentration of Madanek yesterday which is still relatively intact including the crematorium.
Today we are going to my dad’s home town for day, walking the streets with him, meeting with some teachers and students from the town for a dialogue between some of our students and some of theirs, going to pay respects to our descendants at the remaining Jewish cemetery and then onto Krakow. Last night after dinner my dad told his story and as usual, you could hear a pin drop. Today the activities begin formally with the Mayor and others and then I watch as my dad becomes young again as he walks the streets of his hometown and points out where people lived, where he played, and we see his house – the one his grandfather built and is now used as a storefront and a 12 room house still ‘owned’ by the family that took it over during the war after the Jews were expelled. We stand in the central market square and my dad describes the day the Jews were ordered out of their homes and selected for their train ride to death at Treblinka (which of course they did not know) or to work as slave labourers at a nearby munitions factory. My dad retells the events of the day to us as we stand and feel his reality. It is chilling.
Hedy