Actually, I had decided to skip writing my diary for a day because of an almost tsunami of recommendations to take it easy. After Montenegro and a very tiring journey due to annoying flight connections, I am now in Krakow with more than 130 educators from France, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Austria, Germany, Italy, Belgium, England, Bulgaria, Spain, Israel, Sweden, Lithuania, Germany, a few other countries that I can’t remember right now, and finally: the Netherlands. Thirty participants are from our country. The conference, which today focused on anti-Semitism, will move to Auschwitz-Birkenau tomorrow, Monday. So today was about ‘hearing’ and tomorrow will be about ‘seeing’. Incidentally, I will be calling it a day tomorrow. I will dutifully walk along with the various groups, but I will not be wearing headphones and I do not intend to enter any buildings. I will wait politely outside the doors and when the group comes out, I will dutifully follow them along the path. I had decided, because of the tsunami, to skip a day of writing my diary, but that didn’t work out, because the last speaker today, a Swedish professor of history, did something very interesting and unexpected with his lecture. He showed a photo on a screen of a shopping street with a few trees, a fountain and a number of other things you would find in any shopping street. The professor asked us to indicate what was special about this seemingly ‘ordinary’ photo of an ordinary shopping street. The desired answer was that it showed something that no longer exists: the ghetto of Krakow. Nothing remains of it, it has been razed to the ground and rebuilt, or rather, not rebuilt, but completely demolished. Nothing in this photo reminds us of what it once was, and in reality it is even more dramatic. And then the professor continued: tomorrow you will go to Auschwitz to commemorate the murder by focusing your thoughts on all the indescribable atrocities, on the gas chambers, on the crematoria, the thousands of glasses, mountains of hair… and before he had even finished his sentence, an old-fashioned film was shown. https://youtu.be/v_Ey3MhRD2I
The wonderful life that Krakow enjoyed before the war unfolded before the eyes of the 130 education specialists. The professor called on them not to focus solely on the murders committed in the name of the Endlösung in Auschwitz tomorrow, but to remember all those murdered Jews who had filled the streets of Krakow with such joy and cheerfulness. That is how, the professor urged, we should remember them: alive, full of energy.
As it is now almost midnight on Tuesday morning, 2 December, my energy is almost depleted, and I will continue writing tomorrow, at the airport or on the plane, and if necessary when I arrive home.
It is now ‘tomorrow’ and I am sitting in the lounge at Krakow airport, finishing my diary entry for 2 December. On the bus from our hotel to Auschwitz, I had a long chat with the Dutch people I hadn’t spoken to yesterday and whom I had therefore not yet met. And then: Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II (Birkenau), ending with the memorial ceremony. Unconsciously, I forgot to take the Swedish professor’s wise words to heart. During the commemoration, I only had the brutal murders in mind and not the beautiful images from the film. And that is why I felt it was my duty, as an educator, to make it clear that from now on, Auschwitz is no longer history, but a threat to today and tomorrow! Looking away is unacceptable, then and now. When Kristallnacht took place in 1938 and the world remained silent, the doors to the gas chambers were opened. Wir haben es nicht gewusst, was no excuse then and cannot be an excuse tomorrow. In my closing words before reciting the Kaddish prayer, I remembered Jan Karski (1914-2000). He was a Polish resistance fighter and courier. In 1943, he provided the Allies with hard and irrefutable documentation of what was happening to the Jews. No one listened, not Churchill and not Roosevelt. There was no interest; it was difficult, and people looked the other way, towards the easier option. “From this day forward, you have all become ambassadors of Auschwitz. You must show your students what can happen when eyes are closed, the truth is distorted, and lies become normal. Our time together is not over, it has only just begun.” I felt that my plea had been heard. We have gained new ground troops in the fight against anti-Semitism. I handed out business cards, made contacts, offered help where needed. I hope for more work… despite the tsunami!
