Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Madjanek....

There are almost no words to describe what it means to visit a death camp. I've been contemplating what exactly I would put in this blog and I've come up empty. There does come a point when you search and search for words that can describe what you need to say and cant find a single word that really fits.  And with a language that is as rich as ours I shouldn't be having this difficulty but there it is....
Our guide, the amazing and incomparable Zvi Sperber, said one thing about Madjanek that sums it up better than anything I could have come up with.
As we stood at the entrance of this vast - and I mean freaking enormous - camp, with bunkers lined up for as far as they eye can see with a large smokestack at the far end of the camp, I was speechless.  And what he said as we stepped into the entrance of the camp was that we were about to enter The Empire of Evil.
And there are no more words. 
Just tears.


Our group...


Just a glimpse of the barracks lined up...there were only a fraction of barracks left in the museum (if you can call it that...) but there were hundreds if not more covering an enormous area. Now those empty fields were covered with green grass but during the war the entire area was mud, mud and more mud.  A survivor who had gone back to Madjanek said that had there been grass, every blade would have been eaten by the jewish prisoners...

Showerheads in the disinfecting bunker

Zyklon B cannisters that were found by the allies after they liberated the camp...

A bunker filled to capacity with shoes.  You can't possibly imagine (try, but you can't until you've seen this with your own eyes) how many shoes there are.  All kinds - dress shoes, children's shoes, men's shoes, white shoes, red shoes and black boots.  I walked in, lasted about 45 seconds max and walked straight out.  This hit me so hard and I just couldn't take it. I sat outside and talked with Leslie, the most amazing survivor that came on this trip with us.  He is a man with a constant smile, a zest for life, a storyteller par excellence filled with the kind of energy that belied his age and finally, the best possible revenge that we have in the face of that evil.

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