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Bernard Berger – Part II Impressions of Poland Israeli & Jewish Perspective

After visiting this oldest part of the camp, our group took a shuttle bus for the 5 minutes or so to go to Auschwitz 2, AKA Birkenau. What can I say? However bad the oldest part of the camp was, and as many times as you see those infamous railway tracks leading under the wooden archway, being there gives you a sensation that literally eats you alive. We descended from the shuttle bus, walked under the archway and to the railway platform where the so numerous passengers of the cattle cars, those that did not die on the journey that is, were offloaded in the most brutal manner possible and passed before Mengele and his assistants who decided on the spot who would live, at least for a while, and who would die immediately, the “Selekztia.” I stood there on that platform where Mengele had stood and just thought the most painful and profound thoughts, and in my mind could imagine a Chazzan singing, almost screaming in the most haunting way that is done on Yom haShoah at the top of his lungs “El Male Rachamim.” We then proceeded to the wooden barracks where so many lived and died in the most crowded and unhygienic manner possible. We have all seen the pictures. But as much as we have seen and know well and at the risk of repeating myself, nothing can prepare you fully for this place.

The group were then taken back in the shuttle to Auschwitz I, however we were advised by the tour guide that if we wanted there was an hourly public bus from outside the main gate back to Kraków, and I decided to take this option; the public bus only cost around €1.50, and I went back on the shuttle and back to Birkenau. I felt the compelling need to leave the tour group and be there on my own, myself and the souls of the hundreds of thousands of Nispim that is and as perverse as it may sound, I went back to that terrible place of Selekztia and stood there silent and erect for at least 30 minutes as if in some small way my presence there as a living, breathing and free Jew could compensate for what had happened, to prove indeed that Hitler had not won and to say again to myself “.Our step beats out the message: we are here!”

I took the public bus back into the city and the next day went to the airport to fly to Warsaw, but the flight was cancelled due to an incurrence of heavy fog in the capital so I decided to leave Warsaw until the next visit and go instead to the ski resort of Zakopane, a good 2.5 hours south of Kraków in the Tatra Mountains that border Slovakia. It was truly a beautiful place with a long main street lined with beautiful vernacular buildings particular to the area, and I even took a cable car ride up to one of the mountain tops from where I could see Slovakia. It was a beautiful trip to a beautiful place, but my heart was not fully in it, for me, to be in Poland, I needed to be in a place at all times where I could honour the memory of the Nispim.

It was over a year later that I had the opportunity to visit Warsaw. By then, Poland was a fully-fledged member of the European Union. Ryanair had the legal right to operate into Poland from any location in the European Union, plus some other non-EU states that had open skies agreements with the EU, such as Norway and Switzerland. The discussions that I had work-wise were not then just academic but about a reality that could happen within a few months subject to the airline being able to obtain the low cost commercial arrangements that it was famous for.

Warsaw was a very different place than Kraków; unlike Kraków it had been completely destroyed at the end of WWII. The Nazis pretty much burned the city in retaliation for the Polish uprising, and the Soviets who were sitting on the opposite bank of the Vistula chose deliberately to sit it out when they could have easily captured the city from the Nazis had they so wished. Stalin had decided that when he was to take Poland, it would be a humiliated, weak and totally-subjugated Poland he wanted to take over and so it suited him well to allow the Nazis to destroy the city.

So unlike Kraków, Warsaw in general was not a place of beauty, it had been reconstructed in a hurry in the manner of most Eastern Block cities with ugly concrete apartment buildings and offices. However some parts of the city had painstakingly been reconstructed using architectural plans and from oil paintings, such as the charming Old Town Square, the neighbouring Warsaw Castle and Barbican, and the pristine Ulica Nowy Świat (New World Street) and these restored places were indeed beautiful. Not far away was something different altogether, the Palace of Culture, a “gift” from Uncle Joe Stalin and modeled on a similar multi story building in Moscow. I am still to this day not sure if I like or loath this building, it is a huge pile of a building, a monstrosity constructed in the heavy Stalinist Gothic style. Some in Poland would like to see it demolished to vanquish from their memories the memories of the harsh Communist rule, yet others see it an important part of the city´s history and identity.

Once I had attended my meetings in the city, I decided to see the places of Jewish interest. There are a few that are noteworthy. (1) The small remaining part of the Warsaw Ghetto wall (2) The collection point of the Jews for deportation to the death camps, the Umshlagplatz and its memorial (3) The Ghetto Fighters´ Monument (4) The remainder of the Ul. Miła bunker of the Ghetto fighters, where many made their final stand and took their own lives as was done at Masada.

I was staying at the famous Hotel Bristol, opened in 1901 and a place full of ambience and who knows what difficult history occurred there, and who passed through its doors. It sits in close proximity to the beautiful red-brick Warsaw Castle and the entrance to the Old Town. The hotel had organised a limousine tour of the places I wanted to see and a driver 100% conversant in English, who knew the history of Jewish Warsaw. The driver greeted me and advised me that the first stop would be the small remaining section of the Warsaw Ghetto wall. The original wall was 17.6 KM long; what is left is but a few metres long, but it still “makes the point” very loud and clear. A plaque was attached to the wall commemorating a visit by one of the Israeli presidents. Unfortunately I do not recall which President it was and can find no reference to it on Google, but it surely was there.

I continued my visit into the Warsaw Ghetto area to the Umschlagplatz. As per Yad Vashem official records, “this was actually the area that separated the Warsaw Ghetto from the Polish part of the city. It was the only official junction where goods could be transferred in and out of the ghetto. When the Germans began mass deportations from the ghetto in July 1942, it was used as the assembly site for the ghetto Jews who were to be deported. These Jews were arrested in the streets of the ghetto and marched to the Umschlagplatz. They were made to sit on the ground in the Umschlagplatz’s courtyard or on the floor inside an empty building on the site, where they waited for the daily train to pull in. When it arrived they were packed in, 100–120 persons to a freight car. SS men, Ukrainian and Baltic troops, and the Polish police were all on hand to ensure that nothing went awry. In 1988 a monument was dedicated at the Umschlagplatz to commemorate the more than 300,000 Warsaw Jews who were deported from there to their deaths.” It showed the Jews marching with their few possessions, in a line, backs bent in meek submission. My mind drifted towards the direction of Israel; a country which did not exist back in 1942 and a country today in which none of my people bends their backs in submission, not now, not ever again.

I continued onto the Ghetto Fighters memorial or officially “Monument to the Ghetto Heroes.” This is in a large square, bordered by a few streets, the most memorable being Ul. Anielewicza, named after the leader of the Ghetto Fighters, Mordechai Anielewicz. The monument was erected in April 1948 and it seems odd that under a Communist regime approval was given to construct it. It is an imposing stone monument with writing in Polish, Yiddish and Hebrew. As the sculptor Rapoport himself explained, the “wall” of the monument was designed to evoke not just the Ghetto walls, but also the Western Wall (Kotel) in Jerusalem. The great stones would thus have “framed the memory of events in Warsaw in the iconographic figure of Judaism’s holiest site”.

 

The western part of the monument shows a bronze group sculpture of insurgents – men, women and children, armed with guns and Molotov cocktails. The central standing figure of this frieze is that of Mordechai Anielewicz (1919 – 8 May 1943) who was the leader of ZOB (English: Jewish Combat Organization), during the uprising between April and May 1943.

 

The eastern part of the monument shows the persecution of Jews at the hands of the Nazi German oppressors. The monument has a three language sign: “Jewish nation to its fighters and martyrs.”

 

The contrast between the western and eastern parts is startling. On the eastern part, the sculpture is similar in theme to that in the Umshlagplatz, that of weak, submissive Ghetto Jews with backs bent in submission, being herded to their deaths; on the western part you see something altogether different. Whilst the Ghetto Uprising lasted only around a month, April 1943 to May 1943, it was the first time that Jews had fought for themselves since the unsuccessful uprising of Shimon Bar Kochba in Jerusalem. The date that Bar Kochba was defeated by the Romans was 136, 1,807 years earlier. A people who had been expelled, massacred, tortured, been the subject of blood libels and inquisitions, who had no home, who had wandered from country to country, who had had their pride and honour trampled upon for almost 2,000 years in both Christian and later Muslim lands finally decided that enough was enough; it they were going to die, it would not be in a meek and submissive way like sheep, but as lions like Bar Kochba, the vanquished spirit of so long ago had been re-kindled for a few brief weeks, the German Army was surprised and indeed in complete disbelief that a few “subhumans (untermensch) ” had held their mighty force at bay, and Jewish honour, that had existed last in the land of Israel in the year 136 had been redeemed in blood and fire. The western statue shows proud and unbended Jews, hands thrust in the air in rage, guns being fired, sprits that would never be broken. Things would never be the same again.

 

My final port of call in the former Warsaw Ghetto was the Miła 18 bunker site, familiar for those of you who have read the book by Leon Uris of the same title. Unfortunately this book was not nearly as famous as the World-renowned Exodus but was no less inspiring.

 

The bunker, the command centre of the ZOB was where the Germans holed up the surviving ghetto fighters, it was their Masada. On 8 May 1943, three weeks after the start of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, when the “bunker” was found out by the Nazis, there were around 300 people inside. The smugglers surrendered, but the ŻOB command, including Mordechai Anielewicz, the leader of the uprising, stood firm. The Nazis threw tear gas into the shelter to force the occupants out. Anielewicz, his girlfriend Mira Fuchrer and many of his staff committed mass suicide by ingesting poison rather than surrender, though a few fighters who did neither managed to get out of a rear exit that they by chance discovered in the midst of the final battle, and later fled from the ghetto through the sewers to the “Aryan side” at Prosta Street on May 10. In total 51 Ghetto Fighters perished in the bunker, the survivors included Anielewicz´ second in command, Itzhak Zuckerman, who after WWII made Aliyah and was one of the founders of the Ghetto Fighters Kibbutz, Kibbutz Lochmei HaGettaot in the Western Galilee, near to Nahariyya. Zuckerman´s granddaughter went on to become the first female fighter pilot in the Hayyal haAvir, what better revenge against Hitler could there be than that? And to the repeat the lines of Veheshamda, “in each and every generation there will be one who will rise up against you to destroy you, but I the Almighty will spare you from their hands?” Two generations from almost certain death in the Ghetto to having a granddaughter who is a lion of the skies, ready to defend her people as did Deborah defend hers against the Canaanite Sisera.

 

I left Warsaw a few days´ later. My next trip to Poland took me to Wrocław, Łódz, and back to Kraków.

I did not have the time to look up anything in Wrocław of Jewish interest. It used prior to WWII to be the German Breslau; after WWII all its German population was forcibly ejected into what was left of Germany, and their place replaced by Poles ejected from the east in what prior to WWII used to be Poland and after it became the Ukrainian SSR of the USSR. Of course Breslau was the home of the famous Rabbi Nachman of Breslau, he who wrote the poignant song “all life is a narrow bridge,” (Kol haOlam koolo, gesher tsar maod). The city, like Kraków has a stunningly beautiful mediaeval main square surrounded by impressive and noble buildings,

 

I then took my first train ride in Poland, onto the country´s third city of Łódz. There are two things to note. Firstly for me, taking a train in Poland has associations different than taking a train in any other country. Yes there were death camps outside of Poland but the bulk of them were in Poland and Jews transported there from all over Europe, as far even as from Greece. So whilst in many ways traveling by train there is like anywhere else in Europe, in another way it is completely different and unsettling. You pass through towns and cities with strong historical Jewish connections where today there only like ghosts, you pass through a heartland with such a strong Jewish history that today is just that, history.

 

Łódz is dissimilar to all other large Polish cities. All the rest have very ancient histories but Łódz is a much newer city, a daughter of the 19^th century industrial revolution like Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, etc. Its signature industry was also the textile industry. The city grew from being a small country town with around 16,000 inhabitants to 344,000 by 1905, and drew a mixed population that by 1925 was 50% ethnic Polish, 34% Jewish and 15% German. It had the second largest Jewish population in Poland after Warsaw. Most of the captains of industry were from the German and Jewish minorities, probably the wealthiest being Israel Poznanski, but the poor workers were drawn from all 3 ethnic groups. The rich lined the main street, the 5 KM long Ul. Pietrokowska with beautiful mansions, vying with each other to have the largest and most impressive. The city, like Warsaw is no beauty, except for this astonishing street, one of the longest main streets in the World, lined with the former palaces of the textile magnates, one more ornate than the previous to make a statement about the importance of their respective owners in general, and with regard to one another.

 

Poznanski´s large factory has now been turned into a very impressive shopping mall, going under the name of Manufaktura, and despite once being a factory its architecture is very impressive. I was taken to and around the city by a gentleman working for the city council, going under the name off Hubert. After I had finished my business with the city council, I had an hour or so to spare and Hubert asked me if I would like to go to a “special museum.” Naturally I enquired as to what this was and Hubert said “well, you have to agree you are comfortable to go first, this is the railway station from which the Nazis deported the Jews to the death camps.” I obviously was happy to accept this kind invitation.

 

Arriving at this former preserved station, one can see the small station buildings with the name of the station clearly indicated in German Gothic script. Outside on the tracks were a few of the notorious cattle cars in which so many people were crowded that they could only stand. They roasted in the summer, froze in the winter, and had no sanitary conditions or water and when the trains arrived at the camp, a good number were dead already as a result of the horrific conditions endured on the journey.

 

I entered one of the cattle cars and in the same manner as I stood at the Selekztia point at Auschwitz, I stood for a similar amount of time erect and in complete silence, surrounded by spirits. I stood in honour, reverence and respect to those of my people whose spirits surrounded me, to swear to their blessed memories that it would never happen again.

 

I left Łódz the next day for a second visit to Kraków, my last memory of this trip was drawing into the main station of that city, Główny, as in the film Schindler´s List, it shows those Jews from the outlying towns and villages close to Kraków arriving by train on the same tracks in that station on their way to the Płaszów Ghetto.

 

Besides the business that I did there, besides the other historical and natural sights that I saw, the Jewish aspect of Poland, once the largest Jewish community in Europe at over 3 Million souls has haunted me during and since each single visit. Yet I am glad that is now part of me, that Poland to me is no longer just a concept but a strong reality.

 

On the flight back from Warsaw to London, I happened by pure coincidence to find myself sitting next to the Chief Rabbi of Poland, Michael Schudrich, an American citizen. He told me about the current community, whom he estimated at around 20,000. He told me that during the Communist era, particularly under Party Secretary Gomulka, who engineered a Jewish emigration as a result of an anti-Semitic campaign, many remaining Jews hid their identities and did not even tell their children that they were Jewish. He also told me that bit by bit he had helped to bring back into the fold a good many such people and that he was continuing in his work and that some indeed had made Aliyah. I have left Poland, but Poland has never left me. It will always be part of me. It is one of the most profound places I have ever been to.

• He currently works in Ireland as an Aviation Specialist.
• Languages – English (native), Hebrew (good) French (basic to intermediate), Italian (basic to intermediate)
• Interests – All developments worldwide in the airline industry, including new route development, alliance formation and growth, fleet acquisition and disposal, tourism development and role of aviation in same, business development and role of aviation in same.
• World politics, history and economics.
• Travel, Gastronomy, and Culture
• Music; Celtic, Israeli, Country & Western.
• Films
• Walking
• Have spoken at many airline conferences about the Ryanair low fare concept and business model in several countries.
• Have given guest lectures at the UK´s premier graduate aviation school, Cranfield University.
• Have made cases to other airlines to invest in TACV based on Cape Verde on the back of the World Bank pressing Cape Verde to privatize its state enterprises in order to obtain more development finance.Bernard Berger – Part II Impressions of Poland Israeli & Jewish Perspective