Where in the World are the Varvels Today?: Krakow, Poland

Work Will Set You Free

Back in 1993, the movie “Schindler’s List” came out. My history teacher offered extra credit to watch it, and I missed the field trip due to a cross country meet or an orchestra rehearsal. At any rate, I went with a buddy of mine to Cherry Creek Mall to see it. After the movie we stumbled through the mall, staring at the three thousand dollar watches, the ten thousand dollar coats, and jewelry so pricy they had no price tags. The dichotomy was stark.

The next day after school, to make up for the missed class I watched celluloid via VHS of the original discoveries of the concentration camps. Due to my misunderstanding, instead of watching only ten minutes, I watched hours of the silent black and white videos. I suppose ever since then, the images have been ingrained.

This past weekend Honey and I visited Auschwitz/ Berkenau.

What can one person comprehend about the suffering of another?

I’ve taught Eli Weisel’s autobiography “Night.”

Vonnegot describes the Everyman’s perspective, “If I'd been born in Germany, I suppose I would have been a Nazi, bopping Jews and gypsies and Poles around, leaving boots sticking out of snowbanks, warming myself with my secretly virtuous insides.”

Philip Meyer wrote about Milgram’s experiments about obeying authority.

But this place, where every conceivable horror and torture, as well as every moment of strength of character in the face of ultimate painful death occurred, puts a certain silence to my own words.

Those stories of conspiracies are true.

The Slavs were written into the Final Solution as well, next to Jews and Gypsies. General Tito fought them, near Jajace (see an earlier blog). On the road about an hour outside Sarajevo there is a destroyed railroad, blasted rails intact, where Tito won the day in a much outnumbered battle. Think “Dirty Dozen.” Despite a law saying that the killing of a Nazi required the killing of Communists on a 50-100 to 1 ratio, people supported Tito, and a high of some 5,000 Slavs being murdered in one day, Partisans flocked to Tito. The Russian losses were staggering- treated even worse than the other prisoners in many cases, if you can imagine that.

But what were my thoughts on visiting Auschwitz? I told a friend that for a week I kept waking up at night, not because of nightmares, but because I could tell my subconscious was full and needed a break from trying to grasp everything. A subconscious coffee break at 2am. The contrast between all other experiences in my life, and the knowledge of walking down those streets, standing in those rooms,

Silent cement floors and

Silent darkness pooled in

Four-man cells and

Empty Cyclone B canisters--

The rustling of hair, the

Settling of pots

Tumbling in rusty enamel disuse--

Creaking piles of shoes

Leather splattered with mud

Or excrement or blood

Laces stolen and reused

Or resold or

Dropped into the vastness of the fields--

Fog shrouded, frost-tipped

Fields stubbled with rubble chimneys--

Swampy canals feeding the

Vistula and Sola rivers--

The wires hum gently

Electrified no longer

Tuned by

Bitter gales--

Rusty rails

The arms of a plundered empire

Terminate here--

I wish--

But the earth is already covered

With a million’s million wishes

Made long before I arrived—

I can still smell the foul air

Inside the remaining barracks

That started as horse sheds.

40 kilos of glasses

I’m reading “The Bormann Brotherhood: A New Investigation of the Escape and Survival of Nazi War Criminals,” which is about 25 years out of date. Don’t read it before bed. Out of date, sure, but frightening, especially with the internet to check for new facts and pictures.

Berkenau

On to: Other Sights to see in Krakow.

On a lighter note, and one nearly incompatable, but for brevity's sake, we loved Krakow. The food was world class, and the hotel where we stayed was great.

Krakow itself is a great town. I would suggest it as a destination for anyone. Very walkable, great food and architecture, and extremely nice people. The salt mines were a fun excursion as well. They are from the 1400s; actually from prehistory if you want the first mining experiences. My favorite job was the guy who crawled through the shafts and tunnels wearing wet clothes and holding a torch looking for methane pockets. It was deemed safer to “blow” gas out. Now that would be exciting. The workers often carved statues out of the rock salt, which are works of art, and really lend a touch of beauty in an odd setting. For those who don't like closed spaces, this would have been no problem. The tunnels are large, the rooms bigger than many cave systems I've been in, well lit, well traveled, and lots of fun. They even had horses down in the mines at some point.