Majdanek and Polish Jews

Majdanek

This weekend, I went to Lublin with the majority of other Polish Fulbrighters for a mid-year meeting.  Look for a post sometime tomorrow probably about the other adventures we had.  I really wanted to focus today on some of the feelings I had over the weekend about visiting concentration camps and the Holocaust in general.  Especially because I finally realized the extent of the hatred towards Jews.  It wasn't just about mass murder, there was a concerted effort to literally wipe any trace of the Jewish culture off the map.

On Saturday morning, we went to Majdanek.  This is a concentration camp located next to the city of Lublin.  It operated from 1941-1944 as both a location for execution and work camp, with a specialty in shoe repair.  In 1944, the Soviets liberated the concentration camp and because it happened quickly, surprising the occupying Nazis, the Majdanek is greatly preserved compared to other camps.

Mass showers upon arrival to the camp

In this camp, the Nazis were unable to wipe out the vast array of their crimes.  The barracks, gas chamber, crematorium, and ashes of murder victims are well preserved.  This adds to the surreal feeling as you walk through the places where Germans brutally starved, beat, literally enslaved an entire population.    Historians estimate about 80,000 Jews and various political prisoners lost their lives in this one camp.

In comparison to Auschwitz, which I've visited twice, Majdanek seemed more cruel and barren.  Perhaps because it is not as commercialized and touristy.  From the camp you could actually see Lublin.  On the walls of the gas chambers, you see the blue remnants of Zyklon B, originally a pesticide but used for mass murder in most concentration camps.And perhaps most chilling was the mausoleum containing ashes of thousands of victims that the Nazis didn't have time to use as fertilizer for their gardens. 

The hole where Zyklon B was dropped into the gas chamber

View of Lublin from Majdanek

It wasn't until Sunday during our tour of Lublin that things started to really sink in.  We visited a place called Theater NN, the NN standing for anonymous.  Originally, it was built as a normal theater until one day a woman came in and told a story of growing up in the apartment the theater inhabited.  Her story and the story of all the other Jews in Lublin had been wiped out out the city's history.

Theater NN now documents through extensive research and oral histories the Jewish legacy in Lublin.  Every building in the old Jewish neighborhood has a binder with information about former residents, pictures, stories people remember.  And another room houses similar information about people who lived in the Jewish neighborhood.  It's a truly incredible undertaking by the museum and very well presented.

The concentration camps represent only one aspect of the Holocaust, mass murder.  They remind us of the great tragedies that were inflicted on people.  What I hadn't really comprehended until this weekend is that the Holocaust wiped out an entire culture.  Millions of Polish Jews died, but the Nazis also destroyed any trace of their existence.

In Lublin, the former Jewish neighborhood is now occupied by a park and parking lot.  There's no reminder that it used to be the center of a different culture.  Before WWII, Jews accounted for 1/3 of Lublin's population.  Today, there aren't enough Jews in Lublin to have proper Jewish religious ceremonies.    

Lublin before WWII, the areas north and west of the castle was the Jewish neighborhood and doesn't exist anymore.

Tombstone in Hebrew

We also visited an old Jewish cemetery.  Again, the cemetery was decimated by the Nazis so there are few tomb stones still intact and the ones still standing are in bad condition. 

This is the legacy of the Holocaust.  It's important to remember the dead, but also to imagine how different Poland would look with the continued contribution of a subculture that was almost completely eliminated.

In the end, seeing these things first had just pisses me off.  The lack of compassion and humanity it takes to strip men, women and children and make them parade around regardless of weather.  The idea that a piece of bread made with sawdust and watery coffee is substance.  The expectation of continued work in inhumane conditions with the penalty of death if you fail.

And yet, all these atrocities were perpetuated by normal people.  At Majdanek, we saw a video with pictures of the SS officers that worked in the camp.  They didn't look any different from the pictures of the Jewish prisoners being admitted to the camp, aside from a uniform and light hair.