Memories of Poland

 On my trip to Poland brought up many emotions.  The visual impact it left on me was one of desolation.  One of the remembrances most painful were the shoes.  In one barrack they lined the floor reaching 3 to 4 feet high.  In another they were stacked up to the ceiling held in my metal cages.  In yet another was a mountain of all kinds of shoes thrown together haphazardly- red, shiny, the shoes of a laborer, white nurse’s shoes, wing tips…

The one I picked up must have belonged to a child of three or four.  The heels were slightly worn.  Overall, it was a lovely pair of shoes, the sort that little ones would wear before going on an exciting excursion.

A vision: My little ones.  I think of the boundless lone I hold for them.  When they are frightened, I quietly reassure them that the night will pass, and I will be there to protect them.  They my quiver and whine in my arms so I hold them a bit tighter to let them know they are safe. I gently kiss their heads.

To the sacred memory of the one and one half million children who were denied a childhood there are no words.  For the unfathomable anguish of the parents who could not hold their little ones when they looked to their mommy and daddy for comfort and protection there are only silent tears.  All the moishelehs and Rachels, the aspiring artist and the dreamer, the joyful and joyless all met the same end.

 

A Tale.

Gisella Perl was a Hungarian physician sent to Auschwitz.  Josef Mengele dictated to D. Perl that any pregnant woman was to be reported to him at once.  He told her, “They will be sent to a better camp where they will receive nutritional supplements.”  Dr. Perl discovered these women were being used for Mengele’s sadistic medical experiments.  She took action. Night after night Gisella Perl performed abortions on the filthy floor with her bare hands.

 

Decades later, Dr. Perl shared her story.  “Hundreds of times I did this.  No one can ever know what it means to destroy these babies.  But I must do it or both mother and child will be cruelly treated by Mengele.”

 

 

As I sat on the cold boards I thought of the unborn and the victims as I turned over the shoes in my hands. The leather was still supple, the shoelaces intact.  It was hard to breathe.  Who could possibly conjure the hopes and dreams of these children. Who can begin to describe the loss of so many children?

 

Another fragment

Adam Czerniakow was the head of the Judenrat in the Warsaw Ghetto.  I visited his grave in the Warsaw cemetery.  In an entry from his diary on June 14, 1942, he wrote, “I command that the children be brought…. These eight-year-old citizens conversed with me like adults.  I’m ashamed to admit that it’s been so ling since I cried so…. Cursed are those among us who can eat and drink and forget these children.”  Finally, Czerniakow took his own life rather than oversee the murder of the children.