This is a mentally, physically, and emotionally challenging trip and I am having trouble processing my thoughts today. So instead I'l share with you the link for the official Classrooms Without Borders blog and a few photos and resources from the trip that have been shared with me by others. Thank you for check in. Members of the group placed stones on the marker for Holocaust survivor Howard Chandler's village Staranowic at the Treblinka memorial. Photo credit Nanci Goldberg. Go to Treblinka by Holocaust survivor Halina Birenbaum Go to Treblinka keep your eyes wide open sharpen your hearing stop your breathing and listen to the voices which emerge from every grain of that earth – Go to Treblinka They are waiting there for you They long to the voice of your life to the sign of your existence, to the pace of your feet to human look understanding and remembering to caress of love over their ashes – Go to Treblinka go by your own free will go by the power of pain over the horror which has happened from the depth of understanding and the aching heart which has not accepted – listen to Them there with all your senses! Go to Treblinka there the green silence, golden or white which embrace Them each season of the year will tell you stories of the stories about life which became forbidden and impossible – Go to Treblinka watch how time has stoped there listen to the standing time, to the dead thundering silence and to the human stones weeping there in silence Go to Treblinka to feel it even for just one second – Go to Treblinka grow a flower by a hot tear, by human breath against one stone – memory of a whole community on earth which is their flesh and ashes. They are waiting there in Treblinka for you to come and listen to Them cry within the silence and in total mute identification, unifying bring Them each time the story of life which continues and of reviving love. Go to Treblinka for generations to generations Do not leave Them alone - Barracks and barbed wire at Majdanek. Photo credit Nanci Goldberg. Sounds of a guilty silence by survivor Halina Birenbaum
She was waiting there she was waiting there for me at the end of the road knowing well that I will be back one of these days feeling again with all my senses my ever young and beautiful Mother she was waiting there near the road to Majdanek across from the barrack called: "Disinfection" at the crematorium's oven door and I came back from afar after forty years in spite of her death she was still standing there just like than, on that separation day: not too tall, black-haired one long curl dangling over her forehead rosy complexioned, wide-eyed from exhaustion her teeth white as pearls which were showing the most wonderful smile Mother's smile attempting to reassure her child at the gas chamber's gate... a plaid broad coat was covering her frame she wrapped my small body in it trying to calm me down at that last moment with a ray of consolation and a human word in this place where there was only one exit: as a chimney smoke! I have arrived here again as a grown woman from a different land far away but at the same time still the same little girl of those days loved and cared by her Mother now entering the gravel path I have felt her presence I started to run toward her breathlessly when suddenly - I have stopped insane from helplessness and from hurting understanding and knowing clearly that I will never have her again because they took her from me forever! Majdanek, now a sleepy deadly kingdom we came together than now I am standing here alone still touching and hugging her in my thoughts drowning my horrible heartache in my tears small and helpless just like then across from the crematorium and the gas chamber extinguished for me much too late free now, but as helpless... I have dropped to the ground where I was standing burying my head in my hands crying aloud uncontrollably lamenting my great loss - without shame trying to hug the shadow of my beloved Mother holding with all my might the illusion wanting to take it home with me overseas even though I would rather stay here with my tears I don't remember how I managed to get back while she was left there alone in that deadly stillness I felt completely numb my body was shaking with convulsive sobs when a museum worker passed me by asking: "Tell me, who was killed here that you are despairing so?" and not getting a reply - he left he was speaking to me in a language of the living but I was still with my Mother's vision her shadow in a vacuum mourning her death here, in Majdanek - and maybe also my own Comments are closed.
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About the Trip
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