I had planned to blog every day, but I hadn’t accounted for the emotions that would hit me when we went to Treblinka and Majdanek. I have been teaching about the Holocaust forf twenty years and I have been to Dachau and Mauthausen. I thought I was ready.
I wasn’t.
I have been struggling to find the words to describe what I saw and felt and both places. Treblinka was empty of buildings, yet the granite stones that memorialize the villages that no longer exist, and the open pit that is the reminder of all the poor souls murdered there make it a truly haunting and haunted place. Majdanek had the physical remains of the buildings and sadly, of the people. Walking through that camp, you can feel the evil and the fear even today.
I have come to the conclusion that I simply can’t put into words what those places made me feel. I know that they changed me and have made me more determined than ever to make sure that my students learn about the people, young and old, who had their lives so brutally taken away, because they were considered different.
If you are wondering about the “hope,” that came when we visited Howard Chandler’s hometown. He had been trying to get them to erect a memorial to the Jews who had been murdered. A whole group of people who had been thriving, active members of the community had been almost completely eradicated, yet there was no evidence they had even lived there. Howard had been trying to get a memorial elected and when we arrived, he and his daughter met with the president (mayor) of the town. They were told that there will be a memorial for the Jews from the village and work will start in September. As we walked through the town with Howard, we were shown where it would be and the spot should ensure that it cannot go unnoticed.
