Sanok Journal Entry #1

We have arrived safely in Krakow and I have a few minutes before dinner. Everyone is fine, though jet-lag hits us all a little differently.

This year is a little different in that instead of taking a bus to Krakow, we took the local train and it stopped mid-way through the trip, perhaps waiting for a train signal or something and there we were in the middle of an open field with and staring at a rusted- out fence that had barbed wire on top. The association seems to never go away and of course the purpose of the trip makes these psychic associations seem “normal.”

So, we go from just the journey (from the airport to the Center of Krakow) to the purpose of the journey which places – which is often encapsulated in one unspeakable word – and everything becomes placed a completely different context than going from here to there physically – it going from here to there psychically – and all it took to bring this home for me was a simple stop – normal unanticipated but not out of the ordinary stop – a mere pause in the countryside just outside of Krakow and a piece of barbed wire to look at.

Of course, everything here is surreal from a Rabbi’s perspective, even the flight-magazine on the airplane trip from Paris to Krakow on Lot. It is filled with all kinds of interesting places to visit and to vacation in Poland, not the least of which is Krakow and the Jewish Festival which occurs shortly after we leave. The advertisement for this, I think week-long Festival, was right out of Fiddler on the Roof – you’ll recall the scene where the Hasidim enter the tavern to toast Rev Tevye and the Butcher for the shiddach they have made and these Hasidim break into a dance. At the height of their ‘performance’ they balance wine bottles on the head. Well, there was a photograph of a man, who seemed very tall, with a quasi-stremil (hasidic hat) balancing a wine bottle on his head with a huge smile on his face. I recall him having blond hair – a common feature among Hasidim (I have to inject a little humor – please forgive me).

From a Polish perspective, I think I understand that they see all of this – perhaps – as quite normal and it all depends, I suppose, from one’s own experience and purpose. I recall a few years back, we were entertained by a wonderful group of musicians who played Klezmer music. All the notes were perfect, to be sure. But it was lifeless from my point of view. It was beautiful in an aesthetic sort of way, but something in that music was lacking; it did not have the feel – the n’shama – and how could it to be honest – since there are only about 200 Jews in all of Krakow.

So, here, just now in writing this, I have two images. The blond-haired actor playing a Hasid balancing a wine-bottle on his quasi-streiml in a picture promoting a Jewish Festival where there are no more Jews and I – staring at a piece of barb wire and rusted fence in the middle of the countryside – on my way to Krakow with one purpose alongside 12 very dedicated Dartmouth students – and in a few weeks people from all over Poland and perhaps from other parts of the world – to come to Krakow for something quite different.

L’shalom,

Rabbi

Journal Entry #2

I am sorry I am a little bit behind on the journal entries. Yesterday was a travel day through Lancut and I promise that you will hear about a most meaningful experience there as it is the only synagogue left to have survived the war fully intact and where I had the privilege of chanting the Kol Nidre and Shema Koleinu before a small group of people and our students. Today is the journal entry on Auschwitz.

Two days ago I went to Auschwitz for the 10th time. I thought it would be somewhat more routine but once again there were new sensitivities, new experiences that I had not had before. The appearance of Auschwitz never changes. The crematoria are in the very same condition as last year and as always the best proof that those who participated in “this” (perhaps the best word to be used as there are no words really that can actually capture what occurred here). If those people who participated in “this” believed in what they were doing, there would have been no reason to have tried to destroy it.

We have on our journey this year a woman whose ancestry is Native American and a young man from China. Both students were moved, as were everyone. We held our informal service at the Pool of Ashes next to Crematoria II. There are 4 crematoria at Birkenau, the death camp built by them (perhaps the best word for those who participated in this). You see Auschwitz was originally a Polish military camp and when they (perhaps the best for those who particpated in this) came to it, they could its utilitarian function. Polish intelligentisia, soldiers, and Russian prisoners of war, and of course our people, Jewish people, our ancestors, our relatives, were sent there. This was Auschwitz I.

A few years later, when the decision was made to begin extermination, Hoess seized the opportunity (Hoess was the commandment and Himmler was his superior) decided to build a second camp in a small adjacent village which in the native language of them was called Birkenau. It was from time to time referred to as Auschwitz-Birkenau, Birkenau, and sometimes simply Auschwitz II. I believe Auscwhitz II opened in 1942. In 1944, 400,000 Hungarian Jews were exterminated in what I believe a little over 6 month period. Somewhere between 1.1 million and 1.5 million ended their life at the end of the railroad tracks in Birkenau.

At the pool of ashes ceremony, the woman who was Native American spoke of parallels between her people and the Jewish people, though not comparing them. She was quite sensitive to see the distinction between the gradual genocide (see Lumpkin’s definition of genocide and the Geneva Convention on Genocide) and what occurred. It was parallel but not similar. Another spoke of the inappropriateness of even the basic liturgy; how can one say Kaddish at Auschwitz, Psalm 23, El Maleh Rachamim; all dealing with God and God’s love of humanity, of the Jewish people?

I too have difficulty with any liturgy at Auschwitz. My only answer, tentative at best, is that this is what they most likely would have wanted at their funeral, for even a Jewish burial they cannot have as they have been reduced to Ashes. But we do the best we can and in that lies our greatest hope for a better tomorrow. I have this irrational belief that we as humanity cannot move forward unless those things that we have done that are clearly wrong are rectified. Sometimes, we can only know this after something has happened and in some small way, repair as best we can the damage we have caused. Only by having conscious awareness of the past, I believe, can we do right in the future.

Perhaps the best illustration of this was in speaking with a young student on our walk back from the far southeast corner of Auschwitz II where Crematoria IV and V. Right outside Crematoria V, there are actual photographs of naked women being rushed into the gas chamber of V taken by a clanedestine prisoner. There was another photograph of bodies being actually burned right outside of Crematoria V because the rate of slaughter was too great for the creamtoria to keep up. So, in order to dispose of bodies as quickly as was possible, they burned many outside in the open air.

On our walk back to go to Auschwitz I, she was talking about how moved she was to hear the young woman who I referred to above speak and to see so many non-Jewish students on the trip. Her grandmother I believe was at Auschwitz. She had always thought that the genocide of the Jews was mostly a matter of Jewish concern, but to see her colleagues on this trip, her friends, her fellow classmates, on this trip helped her to understand, to appreciate, to most fully realize that this Auschwitz is not only of Jewish concern, but of her friends and people who were with her. It meant a great, great deal to her and I think is part of the hope that makes for me, this work, so very rewarding – to see how humanity can touch humanity – even here.

I am always interested in the guide’s perspective, so here I found myself in deep conversation, asking him all kinds of questions. How many people come here per year? 1,000,000 – close to the same number of Jews who died here. Auschwitz is a place for young people to come and to learn. How do young people respond? Generally, many are not prepared to come here and the teachers sometimes even less so. Many have very short attention spans and will do “foolish things” to draw attention to themselves. But occasionally there are some who truly understand, but even then the tour must be kept short and truncated to accomplish such things.

He then stopped – deep in thought – and told me of a recent tour that he led of young Israelis; among them were two Palestinians and two Christians. The Palestinian students had no idea of what had happened, not even knowing who Adolf Hitler was, so this place you can only imagine what they might have been thinking. He then said something that I won’t soon forget nor my response. He said, “There is no hope for a solution to this problem.” He did not say this to be mean, or that he was pro Israeli or pro Palestinian. He said it in a most sensitive, non-political, fashion, with just a very small hint of sadness, but more as if from a rationale perspective.

My response to him was that we had no right to bequeath this or to teach this to the next generation of young people who will soon assume the reins of leadership of the world. We had no right to say that there is no hope. Hope is the very thing that we must give one another; to everyone. It is that which God, I believe, at the end of our struggles, at the end of the day, wanted us to have amidst the difficulties of our world. We must ensure that this is implanted in our young people, for that above all, will ensure a better tomorrow. It is the truest of seeds.

I am reminded now of a saying from Pirqe Avot, Ethics of our Sages. Rabbi Tarphon once said, “We are not obligated to complete the task, but neither are we free to refrain from doing it.” Such is our journey to Auschwitz-Birkenau and such is our work in the Jewish Cemetery at Sanok, and indeed for all of us.

With Love,

Rabbi

Journal Entry #3

When people throw matzevot in piles and heap like trash, it has the feeling to those of us who come on site as if those who have done such things regard the people whose names appear on them as no more worthy of garbage. Such was my thoughts as I saw a pile of stones in the corner and others in a heap up a hill. These stones were massive in size and weight.

The front part of the cemetery is entirely vacant and clear. There is only a monument to the Jews of Sanok; all of whom save one or two who survived, perished either in the mass grave or at Belzec Concentration Camp (death camp). The one whom we know is Avraham Werner who lives in Israel and who wrote a book that described his experience (Ordeal and Deliverance). He survived when his father sent him to Lvov, while the father, his mother, and brother all were later arrested and then shot in the cemetery that we are in today.

I believe only one or two others survived. The rest in this very beautiful town were sent to Zaslow holding camp and then to Belzec (a death camp) where they were gassed.

We have chose to take these stones and to create a new ‘cemetery’ by hiring a mason and workers to assist us in this endeavor. There were a total of 40 stones (some entirely complete and other fragments) that had to be moved. This was an enormous undertaking, as it involved transporting them at least 60 to 75 yards to a cleared area within the cemetery grounds but clearly where no other graves were. Teams of six to seven students organized themselves as ‘moving team’, lifting the stones that weighed anywhere from 500 to 900 lbs. Meanwhile, the mason with his workers leveled the land and laid out prefabricated concrete blocks that could hold eight stones per row. It took much of the day but the first row was complete and it begin to appear as if a new cemetery or part of the old cemetery was being created.

No longer would these stones be treated as trash. Rather they would now be standing upright and thus telling the world that they ‘remembered’ that this life, as all life is, sacred, important, significant, and never to be forgotten.

As this ‘cemetery’ was taking shape, tears were in my eyes and perhaps in the eyes of others. I don’t know.

Other students had the horrible task, but equally important of clearing a forested area where brambles, tall brushes, covered an entire area where many stones have been revealed. Students have hauled an enormous amount of brush, such that a section of the front portion of the cemetery must have at least 3 full truckloads of this wood, leaves, brambles, and so forth. The distance is probably close to 100 yards. The goal here is to work our way back to two mass graves where it is believed that hundreds of Jews were murdered.

The work of these young students cannot be described and its meaning and significance was not lost on any of us as our day drew to an end and we were to get ready for Shabbat.

Journal Entry #4

It is difficult to believe but that today is Wednesday and our work is complete. When we arrived on site Friday to begin our work, the cemetery had four parts, none of which were cemetery-like and 2 were not accessible at all.

In essence, we created or restored four cemeteries.

The first and perhaps most renovative in the history of our project were the resetting of the stones that were piled like trash in the corner of the lowest point in the cemetery. The ground was drenched from near flooding and of course the water gathered there. About 30 stones and 10 fragments were in this section, all of them hauled by students to a higher, cleared point of the cemetery where once there stood a building for the Hevrah Kadishah (burial society) and maintenance.

Masons had set up rebar and poured foundation for the re-setting of the stones. These matzevot (headstones) and fragments number about forty, and are now as permanently set as is possible. They look beautiful and it looks like a modern cemetery. To complete this work, our students designed a mosaic from the remaining fragments and then, alongside the masons created a wall of stones from these fragments at the back entrance of the cemetery.

These fragments were incomplete and created a wall that in the center has two large columns equidistant from each other. At the top, resting on each of the columns is the top of a monument or even top part of a gate, made of marble that has a Jewish star in the center. This broken piece was found in the cemetery as well and now the cemetery has a complete wall and entrance from both front (the fenced area to the street) and the back (the entrance-way formed by the two columns and the top).

It is a remarkable cemetery, a remarkable structure. I almost forgot – hard to believe. We were missing a piece to complete the wall and we could not find any appropriate fragments that fit, not even the masons. So all of us walked through the backend of the cemeteries where there is a large hill that slopes down towards one of the streets thinking that perhaps someone, when they were rummaging through the cemetery either during or after the 2nd World War and were either removing headstones or tossing them aside, we might find such a stone (we do not remove headstones that are fallen over or appear to be part of any grave or grave-like structure) but rather must be moveable without digging and appear to be nowhere near any other kind of matzevah).

We found such a stone. This is a true story so while it may sound unbelievable (and there are many such stories throughout Project Preservation), it is entirely true. As we were going down one of these hills, someone located such a stone that satisfied the above halakhic requirements. There was writing on the stone. Again, thrown aside, it contained the inscription ”A Young Girl” Sarah bat Yaakov – She lived 7 Years of Life” - she had died (this is from memory) on the 24th of Adar in 1935. At the bottom was the name Sarah Werner. The patronymic of the survivor from Sanok who wrote of his experiences in the book “Ordeal and Deliverance” was named Avraham Werner.

We don’t know whether this is a relative of his, but we will find out soon enough. It fit the wall perfectly.

Students throughout the last day did so much to create this new cemetery; and there should be mention of the following. One woman (these are adults really, not students) worked tirelessly each day carving out the lettering of the stones (she knew Hebrew letters and can read) to make the stones readable. She did this all day and while not physically demanding, the tediousness of it rivaled any archeological dig where the archeologist has unearthed something important and now must be very careful in removing the dirt that covers the remainder.

Any of you who have done this kind of thing knows.

On the last day, as the heavy lifting and clearing neared an end, others joined her in this work and even after there was this sense of completion, you could find so many students doing this kind of very careful digging out of the small dirt and grime that had wedged their way into the letters and they were now cleaning doing this meticulous work with very small cleaning tools- near surgeon like precision; all of this after so many had done such physically demanding work.

When the cemetery was finally completed, all of us were elated (I have more) -some were singing – I know it sounds inappropriate to do such things in a cemetery but the physically demanding nature of the work, the sense of completion, the joy – so paradoxical to being in a cemetery – that young people have in doing accomplishing something is so vital, so important that I felt somewhat guilty telling them to settle just a little as we were still in a cemetery. Perhaps I erred here.

I will conclude this entry but will prepare a separate one as it describes the pathway and clearing of the mass grave.

We concluded with a Kaddish that was led by the young woman who cleaned the stones so meticulously, so beautifully.

The beauty of this cemetery, it should be noted and stressed – all four components – was the result of the remarkable contribution of Steve Glazer who is a member of the UVJC and who specializes in the recovery of local histories through cemetery restoration. His work is truly blessed and as we say in Psalm 90 – May God bless the work of our hands, May God establish the work of our hands firmly. This was said originally as a reference to the completion of the tabernacle according to Midrash. Steve Glazer’s work truly has.

L’shalom,

Rabbi

Journal Entry #5

Dear Everyone,

I promised you one last entry. It seemed somewhat clear at last night’s reflection that despite the beauty of the “new” cemetery, one work stood in even greater importance as our dedication will conclude at this other site.

First, let me describe another “cemetery” that was created. But first, perhaps a definition is in order and the need to rethink what we mean by cemetery in light of genocide. A cemetery traditionally might be a place where people are buried and where their descendants gather at their ‘marker’, ‘headstone,’ or ‘matzevah’ (Hebrew for headstone) and reflect and in some imaginative (mystical way) connect to the deceased. We can call this by any name – grieving, paying respect- but it involves some form of psychological/emotional/spiritual – simply part of what makes us who we are; a reflective a sensitive species that mourn, grieve, and must have some permanent place and structure where this can happen.

But what happens when the descendants are all murdered? There is no one to care for these “souls” – these people – who are buried there. The physical location, I can tell you, becomes overgrown with weeds, brambles, trees, any and all kinds of ugly vegetation that physically erases the physical presence of those who lay buried there. There is little or no possibility of remembering anyone as their descendants are no more as they have been slaughtered through genocide.

So, this small, yet significant act that we do each year in some way takes to heart the memory of one, two, up to forty or fifty such individuals whose names are now read and are now visible to the word – such names as Kramer, Heschel (Yes we uncovered and placed in the new cemetery someone who passed away in 1926 by the name of Abraham Joshua Heschel), Hannah Motel, Rivkah Krantz – are now remembered. So, the “new cemetery” does not have the actual physical body of the deceased, but the memory at least for a moment in time has been restored by those who have adopted “up” these individuals as their own.

Enough of this – another “cemetery” that was revealed was again, as one walks back to the end, the cemetery “begins” but one could not see any of the stones, or burial plots as all was covered. A group of students removed tons of brush to reveal a small section of the cemetery, though many headstones had been tragically removed either during or shortly after the war (a common practice by the Soviet authorities) to be used for “utilitarian” purposes. Now, at least for a moment in time, this area has been restored.

Dayeinu – as if that were not enough – one last perhaps as important as anything. At the near back end of the cemetery there appears to be a man-made mound. Oral histories taken reveal that this is a site of a mass grave where about 600 Jews from Sanok and/or surrounding shtetls or villages were gathered and shot in 1942. It is clear that this mound is unnatural and resembles clearly a mass grave having seen many of them in the Ukraine and its enormous size indicates it is so. Students cleared away all types of overgrown plants, brambles, trees and so forth to create a walk-way that leads to the site. It resembles a trail much akin to something in New England and we spread mulch so that the path was soft. There will be a sign at the front where the path begins indicating what the path leads to. We have also sodded the top of the mass grave.

So, this will be an appeal to raise some funds to help maintain this portion of the cemetery as the people buried here have no identifiable marker, no one knows any of the 600 who are being laid to rest here this morning. The pathway will at some point, if not maintained, will become overgrown and no one will remember what happened to these people. You should all know that students wanted to conclude the memorial dedication this morning not at the most uplifting site, which is the beatiful new cemetery, but rather at this solemn location, deep into a forest of the Jewish Cemetery of Sanok, where we will do what we can to give them the most appropriate funeral and memorial that we can.

L’shalom,

Rabbi