Weekly Message from Rabbi Alexandra Wright Dear Members and Friends, It seems almost transgressive to write of this journey to Auschwitz. It is, in some ways, an ordinary journey. The coach leaves Krakow, across the smooth flowing River Vistula and into the countryside of southern Poland. We pass by pleasant views - open fields to either side of the road, lined with clumps of trees and then denser wooded areas. The light plays deftly on the still, long grass and there is a delicate beauty in the vermilion petals of poppies and blue cornflowers, scattered in the different shades of green. Soon the houses are fewer - these neat and crisp Polish houses, two or three storeys, with sloping red-tiled roofs and their walls painted in orange, pink, earthy-brown or cream with a stripe of green. It is seven kilometres to Oswiecim, the town that lies near to the two concentration camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau. The day is beautiful, warm and bright, the road a smooth tarmac. Trees on either side - young birch trees with slender white trunks and triangular leaves stand among majestic oaks and firs. As we enter the town, crossing a bridge over converging rail tracks, Jeremy (our Jewish Journeys guide and teacher for the weekend) explains that there is nothing innocuous about this place as the site of Europes largest extermination camp. The Nazis had chosen a site because it is where all the main arteries of transport across Europe converge. We make our way first into the town and Jeremy walks us up some steps to we stand in a small clearing surrounded by trees on one side of a narrow road. This was the site of the Great Synagogue in Oswiecim. There is nothing to mark the site except a board with a faintly coloured photograph showing a massive stone grey building dwarfing the brick buildings opposite. This street, Berek Joselewicz Street, known as Jewish Street, was the heart of Jewish spiritual and communal life in Oswiecim, beginning in the second half of the 16th century... On the night of November 29, 1939, the Nazis set fire to the Great Synagogue and destroyed it. Survivors from Oswiecim recall its magnificent domed ceiling, painted to evoke a blue sky strewn with stars, surrounded by the signs of the zodiac, an elegant white lectern and a grand sanctuary that seated 2,000. Below the words there is a photograph of the site excavated in 2004. Among the artefacts, some of which can be seen in the Jewish Centre on the same street are the synagogues Ner Tamid, candelabra and hundreds of other precious items from the synagogue But more powerful even than these sacred vessels are the exhibitions of photographs here and later on in Auschwitz of those who lived in Oswiecim and those who died in Birkenau. Faces of old men with dark eyes and long, white beards, and women of all ages, wrapped in head scarves, their faces inscrutable, far away, and yet familiar in feature. And children. Later on, seeking shade under the trees to one side of the remains of the crematoria of Birkenau blown up by the Nazis before they left, we read these words from Elie Wiesel, How does one mourn for six million people who died? How many candles does one light? How many prayers does one recite? Do we know how to remember the victims, their solitude, their helplessness? They left us without a trace, and we are their trace. Shabbat Shalom, Alexandra Wright
Posted on: Fri, 20 Jun 2014 17:03:08 +0000
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