The Endless Night in the Killing Fields
On returning from the Holocaust sites of Poland
by Fran Horwich
Last night I returned in the inky blackness of the hour before midnight. My journey had begun three days before, in the cold darkness of the hours before dawn. I have been to the killing fields of Poland, and it is as though I have journeyed through one endless night, without any warmth or light from the sun to ameliorate the experience. It will take time for me to find the right words to express this journey, but in the crucible of time, often the detail evaporates, and what is left is the pure, distilled emotion. I need to put down in limited words I have, my earliest response.
I thought that I knew a lot about the Holocaust. I have read and studied and listened. To know in your mind though, is not the same as to know in your bones. When you experience with all your senses, you know that you have known nothing, and never will.
Over three million Polish Jews perished in the Holocaust; over 90% of the Jewish population. One third of Warsaw’s residents in 1939, for example, was Jewish. There is no corner of Poland saved from the horror, no acre that did not witness the massacre.
We arrived at Treblinka as the evening drew near. There is nothing left of the original Death Camp, it was destroyed by the Germans as they retreated in defeat. Our group processed in silence along the route taken by 900000 Jews on their way to the gas chamber. A huge stone monument stands at the site of the chamber doors. As we turned to look behind us in the gloom, we could see the land strewn with hundreds and hundreds of jagged stones, each a testament to an entire community that perished here. Some bear the name of the town it represents, some are too small for that. The stones reach the horizon and seem to go on beyond that. A myriad of Jewish histories, erased in the fifteen months of the camps existence.
Standing in the early grey of the morning at Majdanek Extermination Camp, I am struck by two things. Firstly, the camp sits on a busy highway, surrounded by a large residential area. It is openly placed; brazenly visible. Secondly, the cold is inescapable. A wind rips through the camp, clawing at any skin exposed to it. I am wrapped in thermal layers, with hat and scarf and gloves; and yet my eyes stream at the perishing cold. I am almost unable to concentrate on my surroundings in the biting wind. This is late March, on the cusp of spring. The temperature is many degrees higher than that of a Polish winter. I cannot imagine how a starved body in thin pyjamas would live, even for one day. The majority of those arriving at Majdanek were murdered immediately in the gas chamber, but those that were saved at the initial Selection, lived out the few weeks of their life expectancy in the direst conditions of cruelty.
On our second night in Poland, we walk to the Buczyna Forest, outside the city of Tarnow. It is known as the Children’s Forest. There we gather around an area fenced with a sky blue railing. We learn that within, are the remains of 800 small Jewish children. The children had been dragged from their screaming parents, brought to the forest, shot in batches and thrown into the pit. Infants, who were too small to be able to walk, were tied into sacks. When the pit was full of the corpses of the children, grenades were tossed in. It must have taken many hours to complete the killing. The screams of the children reverberating around the surrounding town.
The children were murdered here, because the German’s had found that taking them to the extermination camps slowed the process down.
Each of us there had a small piece of paper bearing the details of a child with a name similar to our own. We read aloud their name, their parents’ names and the place of their death. Each child murdered under the age of ten years old. I felt a silent howl rise up within my being that encompassed me entirely. I want to sing them a lullaby; I want to rock each child in my arms. Tears mix with the snow and run in rivers down my cheeks. Not because I am a woman, not because I am a mother, not because I am a Jew. Because I am still human.
By the time we reach Auschwitz I feel as though I can no longer feel. I have unconsciously anesthetised myself, in an attempt to stop the pain. We experience the devastating size of the place; this destruction-line death factory. We see the inhumane living conditions, the piles of children’s shoes and hairbrushes and suitcases. We pass by the block where the human experiments took place on twins, on dwarves, on pregnant women.
I look around though, at the people there on guided tours. Schoolchildren and pensioners on a day trip. What are you learning? What are you taking home from this?
Last night when I arrived home, I was compelled to get into a hot bath and scrub and scrub and scrub.
This morning, waking to a steel grey Manchester dawn, I know the question that will be repeated – What have you learned from this? How do we learn the lessons of history? How do we stop this happening again?
There is only one lesson to learn from the Killing Fields, and that is that man has an infinite capacity for evil, and once the evil is given free reign, it is impossible to turn it back. It takes the slightest touch of the blade to the vein, and the hate rushes out and soaks all in its path.
The lesson we really need to address, is how does the process begin? What are the first tentative steps that lead the way to this bitter end? The seeds of Antisemitism are small and almost hard to perceive, but when they are scattered onto fertile land, and nurtured and watered, they grow like weeds unchecked. Those tiny seeds are words like these:
Will the Jews ever stop moaning about the Holocaust?
They run the media you know
Well, you got your own land out of it didn’t you
Rothschild. Rothschild. Rothschild
The numbers don’t add up – it was never as many as six million
There must be a reason why everybody hates them
The Jews killed Christ
The Jews were behind the Twin Towers; the Wall Street Crash, the First World War, the Black Death, the rise of Communism, the rise of Fascism, American Foreign Policy, British Foreign Policy, slavery …………..
Israel is an apartheid state
Zio pigs
There is no Antisemitism now
And the lesson? Do we have the means to stop it? As Jews stand up now to Antisemitism, they are shouted down; told that they are exaggerating, embellishing and lying. We are forbidden from calling out the abuse against us. Perhaps our only hope is that those around us shout the truth with us. Our friends and neighbours; our work colleagues and our Civic Leaders need to stand beside us in the face of a process attempting to repeat itself – that will always attempt to repeat itself. We must engage with them and take them on the long road with us. By helping each other learn, we can lead the way together. Together we are stronger.
Maybe this is the lesson I have learned.
I will need to ask myself the question again tomorrow.
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