Trip to Eastern Europe
Dateline: 07/31/98Though I knew my trip to Eastern Europe would be emotional, I was unprepared for what I found. I have wanted to travel to Europe for years. And when the opportunity finally arrived to actually be able to go, I then had to decide what I most wanted to see in Europe, thus decide where I wanted to visit. The decision was difficult. Since I have never been to Europe before, London, Paris, and Rome all held a sincere fascination. Planning an itinerary to visit everything, became a trip with all travel and no experiencing. Of course, with my interest in studying the Holocaust, Eastern Europe was also a tugging idea. But my husband, as I'm sure most people, was weary of spending his entire vacation visiting death camps.
After looking at brochure after brochure, we discovered a Jewish Heritage Tour by Isram Travel. By this time, we had already decided that we were going to need a trip that covered only a few locations, because we didn't want to spend our whole trip on a bus. The Jewish Heritage Tour visited four Eastern European cities and was a mixture of Holocaust related sites (such as Theresienstadt and Auschwitz) and Jewish heritage and cultural sites (such as the Alt-Neu Synagogue and Warsaw's new Jewish Community Center). With a compromise reached, my husband and I started on our journey on Sunday, July 12.
Though our flight left Newark, New Jersey on Sunday at 5:30 p.m. and only lasted a short seven hours, we arrived in Prague on Monday at 6:30 a.m. Our group consisted of 22 people in all, most were couples. After passport control, we were soon on our bus, but missing one person. While standing in line for the passport control, one person in our group realized that her passport had expired just weeks before. Though she wasn't allowed through and it took a day's hassle to get a new passport issued, she soon joined our group that evening. A lesson to be learned: remember to check the date on your passport before you leave for your trip!
At the "welcome dinner" that had been arranged for our first night in Europe, everyone in our group introduced themselves and made a brief comment as to why they had come on this trip. Many had felt an urge to visit what had once been the home of their mothers or fathers. Many others had overcome obstacles of negativity to a trip that would inevitably be emotionally taxing in order to come and see where so many had perished. Were they trying to find some sort of explanation as to how and why this happened? A very few did not want to be there, but came as a favor to their spouses. We had a wide variety of people. Though each came with a different past and a different agenda, all were soon to transform and grow as the trip progressed.
Prague
Prague is such a beautiful city. Since our hotel was right along the Vltava River and we were just steps away from the Jewish Quarter, we had a wonderful location for exploring. As we walked, I noticed the wonderful cobblestones which could be found everywhere. The narrow streets of the Jewish Quarter were bordered by sidewalks filled with people and overlooked by three and four-story, old buildings.
The streets were filled with visitors and Jewish culture could be found around every corner, from the early home of Franz Kafka to the Hebrew clock on the Jewish Town Hall.
In general, I found Prague a wonderful city with beautiful buildings, nice people, and a remaining Jewish community (though, of course, much smaller than it had once been). After four days in Prague, we were off to our second city, Warsaw.
Warsaw & Krakow
Compared with our stay in Prague (dare I say relaxing?), Poland was shocking. As soon as the plane touched ground, the mood in our group changed dramatically. Some felt anger at the Poles for their action and inaction during the Holocaust. Many others felt that all of Poland was a Jewish cemetery. Our local tour guide for Poland did not seem to help matters. We were taken on a bus tour of the city and we kept hearing about Poland's history, but there were no Jews. What once had been a thriving Jewish home of 3 million, now was inhabited by only 10,000 Jews. Since 75 percent of Warsaw had been destroyed during the war, the tour guide could only point to modern buildings and tell us which synagogue had stood where. Our first impression of Poland was that there was nothing left.The day after we arrived in Poland, my husband and I joined two others from our group for a day trip to a small town a few miles from Sobibor. Though I saw many synagogues, camps, etc. on my trip, I want to share this day trip with you for I believe it represents a lot of my findings and feelings about Poland.
The four of us had hired a local guide and driver to take us to the small town and to the Sobibor death camp for $200. When he came to pick us up at about 8 in the morning he told us that he hadn't known about Sobibor, that it was an extra distance, that he wasn't sure he would do that without extra money, etc. We stood firm that our original agreement included Sobibor, but throughout the trip, he kept trying to get us to not go with additional excuses, such as "there's nothing much there" and "it's about to close for the day."
It took us approximately three and a half hours to reach the small town of Wlodawa. Having traveled in a very small car (with no seatbelts in the back), along narrow two-lane roads, and lots of passing, the four of us were ecstatic to reach our destination so that we could finally stretch out our legs.
Before the war, two-thirds of Wlodawa's inhabitants had been Jewish. Now, with a population of just under 10,000, not a single Jew lives in the town. The synagogue, established in 1764, still stands. The beautiful exterior and interior were renovated by the Polish government in the 1960's.
When entering the synagogue, I was immediately struck by the brilliantly colored Holy ark (aron hakodesh), with the predominant colors of blue and gold.
Though the beauty and the size of the synagogue represented a very strong Jewish community, this is all that was left. The synagogue is now a museum. It holds menorahs, pieces of gravestones, pictures, a torah, and the founding marker.
As we looked around the museum, we talked (using our guide as an interpreter) to the woman who was taking care of the synagogue. She seemed to know little about the history of the Jews in her town and she also asked us many questions as to the use of the artifacts that were on display.
Typical of most of the museum/synagogues that we visited, and there were many, items that would still be in use are locked behind glass for visitors who have no idea of their meaning. After synagogue after synagogue, I began to wonder, how many torahs can you stand seeing in glass cases?
But the synagogue in Wlodawa is not just a museum of Jewish history, it doubles as a museum for the town. In the women's section upstairs, there is an exhibit of Polish military history.
The rest of the day continued with our trip to the Sobibor death camp (yes, we did finally get to go), which is a whole story in itself which I will save for another time.
What I found in Poland was a country still under the oppression of Communism. Though private shops are opening, thus the yoke of Communism is lifting, the people still do not smile, the buildings are still covered with soot from the polluting factories, and the restructuring has still yet to have commenced.
I cannot tell you how many times we said the Kaddish in Poland. Every cemetery, every camp, every ghetto, even every synagogue seemed to warrant saying the prayer for the dead, for each was a symbol not of what once was, but of what is no more.
Budapest
In Budapest, the schedule called for a calming and slowing of pace. But our group did not want to do that. Unfortunately, the guides did not realize what we wanted or were unwilling to fulfill our wishes, for we spent only one day exploring and experiencing in Budapest, versus the three days we were there.On our way to the Dohany Synagogue, the second largest in the world, our local tour guide (who was Jewish) was giving us information about the city, Hungarian history, and the sites. Within this talk, she spoke about the Gypsies. She said that there were a few, perhaps one percent, who were good musicians and artists and the other 99 percent were pick-pockets. She added, that these traits were "in their blood." Within minutes, we were within a synagogue/museum again looking at Jewish religious symbols behind glass. The same tour guide stated that she was glad people came to visit this museum, because this was the only way a Holocaust could never happen again.
Pardon me? Did she not just proclaim the same social Darwinistic hogwash against the Gypsies (Roma) that the Nazis used to eradicate the Jews? How can stereotypes be "in their blood"? Though of course I have known it for a long time, racism is not dead.
It was at this time that I really realized what I had seen at all the museums, cemeteries, synagogues, and camps. These were not to be just symbols of Jewish persecution, for they are certainly those also, but are to represent the extreme of all racism. Though many of us proclaim, "Never forget" what happened in the past, we must also never let this happen to any people in the future.
All photographs Copyright Jennifer Rosenberg, 1998
