Last day in Eastern Europe ~ Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Our trip has focused on the past history of Eastern Europe, and the current ways of remembering and interpreting the past.  It exposed us to the revival of Jewish life, and it helped us engage with both Polish and Lithuanian people. By immersing ourselves within the cultures we enjoyed ourselves and had an eye-opening experience.  This was accomplished throughout the trip, even on the very last day.

Lenin shrunk down to size

Our final day started off with a powerful lesson about the Lithuania's experience under the control of foreigners.  First, under Soviet communist control from 1940-41, followed by German control for the following 3 years, and then once again under communist rule until 1991.  Across from our hostel is a building that housed both the Gestapo and the KGB (Soviet secret police).  After Lithuanian independence, the new government established the building as the national “Museum of Genocide Victims.”  

Once inside we learned about the cultural oppression, arrests, deportations, imprisonment, forced labor, and executions during the Soviet occupation.  Going through the well-documented museum--including the prison and torture cells in the basement--was painful and distressing, and we were all emotionally drained by it.   

The only way Frank Zappa ever
reached Lithuania.

What a relief it was to be outside in the free air of 2014 Vilnius!  We had a much needed, mood lifting visit to the Frank Zappa statue where Dylan Lerner presented on why Zappa was an attractive figure of rebellion for Lithuanian youth during Soviet times.

After the presentation we divided into two groups.  Half the group joined Prof. O’Sullivan for a visit to the Lithuanian Museum of Contemporary Art.  The art displayed was surprisingly similar to American contemporary art with many surreal paintings and strange creations. 

What does it mean?  What does it mean?

One room contained furniture, portraits, and paintings, but everything was duplicated, causing us to question our eyes.  Another room was pitch black, except for the light shining from the vintage film projectors lined up against the wall, creating the unique sound of spinning film canisters.  This kind of contemporary art challenges our views of reality and normalcy.  Having started the day at the former KGB headquarters, we were pleased to see the progress of a generation of liberated people free to paint and create and break from conformity.

The other half of our group accompanied Prof. Myers to meet two special people.  After first enjoying a delicious lunch at a Hari Krishna vegetarian restaurant, we met the people we were looking for at The Green House, the Jewish Holocaust museum of Lithuania.  

getting the "real" experience of hiding in an attic

The first was a feisty and politically radical elderly woman named Rachel.   She sat us down and told us how her father, a judge in Vilnius, placed her and her mother on a train to central USSR on the day before the German invasion.  Although they faced great hardship, the Lithuanian government-in-exile helped them spend the years during the war in safety.  The fact that they were Jewish was not considered a problem - in fact, Rachel's school classes were in Yiddish.  We asked her what she thought of the KGB Museum of Genocide Victims. 

Rachel in the front center, Sebastian in the back left

Before she was able to answer, the second person we had been looking for appeared, a 20-something Austrian named Sebastian volunteering at The Green House.  “Lithuanians suffered genocide,” they both said, “and it occurred when Jewish Lithuanians were murdered by other Lithuanians.”  While they do not deny the horrible 50-year Soviet oppression of Lithuanians, they object to labeling it genocide.  Most important, they protest the lack of acknowledgement by Lithuanians that they played a major role in slaughtering Lithuanian Jews.  Sebastian compared the situation in Lithuania to his native Austria.  He described the effect on him when the Austrian politician Kurt Waldheim's wartime collaboration with the Nazis was revealed.  Rachel challenged us American citizens to be more skeptical of official and media reports about current events, and she urged us to respond to injustice, even if it makes us unpopular. 

The rest of the day was free for shopping, packing, more eating, and fun.  We had our farewell group dinner at a pizza parlor, and the students presented the professors with tokens of appreciation.  Some of us went out with our new Lithuanian college student friends, but it was generally a quiet and relaxing evening.  Our two weeks together were coming to an end.  The tragic events we studied on this trip resonated deeply with everyone.  It was inspiring to see the rebirth of Poland and Lithuania and the continued vitality of the Jews in those lands. 

We feel fortunate that we had such an amazing and dynamic learning experience.  This trip transformed how we look at the past.  It has helped develop our critical thinking skills, and put us on the path toward being global citizens.  

on our journey together

Trakai, Ponary, and our first exposure to Vilnius ~ Sunday, June 22, 2014

Walking toward the island castle in the mist

Our new bus driver arrived promptly, and we loaded our luggage and headed toward Vilnius in the rain.  Leonardas won our hearts by turning on a Russian music video (after 20 minutes we begged him to turn it off), allowing us to eat in the bus, entertaining us with creative driving maneuvers, and talking animatedly in Russian with Prof. O’Sullivan throughout the trip.  He also agreed to let us spend one hour in the Trakai Castle, while he went and fetched us the famous local main-dish pastries, kibinai.

From here you can see them making kibinai

The Trakai Castle was built on an island in the 14^th century by a Lithuanian grand duke.  It had glorious red stone walls, drawbridges over moats, and turrets.  The Soviets restored it as a gift to Lithuania after World War II, and it is a popular tourist destination.  Some rooms had exhibits of Victorian-style china, coins, and purses, while others contained paintings.  We raced through the rooms and squeezed up the narrow flights of stone stairs.   Our visit to Trakai was over far too soon.  We gathered at the bus stop and welcomed Leonardus and his precious booty, kibinai stuffed with lamb, pork, chicken, or cheese.  

Just outside of Vilnius we stopped at Ponary, or Panierai. 

one of the Jewish memorial stones

Making our way through the rain we went into a little museum and were greeted by an old and eloquent guide who pointed to the museum exhibits and told of the horrendous events that occurred here.  Panierai was a village alongside a rail line, and nearby were large pits built by the Soviets for oil storage.  The Germans used the site for mass murdering 100,000 people here and using the pits as mass graves.  Later they tried to hide their crimes by forcing prisoners to cremate the dead.  About 70,000 of the victims were Jews from Vilnius and the surrounding areas, many who had been imprisoned into the Vilna Ghetto.  The rest were soldiers and civilians who were non-Jewish Lithuanians, Poles, Romani, and Russians.  We stopped at the stone memorials and sculptures honoring the victims.  It was melancholy and beautiful, the forest and grass damp from the misty rain.  A moment of grace occurred when a moose appeared on a path between the trees nearby the students.  Noticing us, it disappeared into the woods.

Back on the bus, it was a short, quiet ride to the capital city.  The hostel was not yet ready for us, so we left our luggage and walked into Old Town Vilnius.  The air was cool and clean, and people were playing games in the midst of the street shut off from the traffic.  We could see that we would enjoy our last four days of our trip in this pretty and lively town.

fried onions, sour cream, and butter on top
of potato dough and a bit of stuffing

That night we had a group dinner featuring the national Lithuanian dish, cepelinai.  It’s sort of like a dumpling, but with moist, thick, bland outside, and inside is a mystery meat (or, in the case of the vegetarian version, a mystery cheese).

Perhaps the 2.9 million Lithuanians love it, but let us just say that for most of us, it was the first and last time cepelinai will pass our lips.

An Užupis wall tile commemorating a poet, writer,
 and diplomat from these parts who refused to identify
himself as either a Lithuanian or a Pole

And, to top off the day, we went to yet another cemetery.  It was in the charming section of Vilnius known as Užupis.  Prof. O’Sullivan’s friend Aurimas took us on a tour of this artsy neighborhood which has declared itself a separate, independent republic.  “Everyone has the right to be unique,” “Everyone has the right to be unhappy,” “Everyone has the right to love and take care of the cat,” and “Everyone has the right to celebrate or not celebrate their birthday” are among the 39 articles of their constitution.







Wire, ceramic, tile, and stone sculptures are placed between the trees, on the buildings, and in the square.  We loved their quirky humor.

Aurimas insisted that the pretty, wooded cemetery established in the 19^th century was not a site to miss. It appeared strangely normal, filled with graves of people who mostly lived and died like they were supposed to.

We returned to the hostel.  Some students stayed up to watch the World Cup, others collapsed onto their clean beds.

Treblinka and driving through the countryside ~ Monday, June 16, 2014

We left Hostel Helvetia and Warsaw in the morning and went off to the northeast region of Poland, the Lake region called Mazury, where we would be spending the next four days (see blog photo above).  It is a beautiful area where Poles and Germans go to vacation.  Our schedule made us confront the huge contrast between natural beauty and horrible historical events.

For the first time, we saw Poland outside of Warsaw. Many of us had no idea that Poland would be so full of green pastures, rolling hills, and lots and lots of cows eating grass. 

Nuclear stork family

The scenery was like out of a dream, complete with giant marshmallows in the fields, which were actually harvested and packed hay that was covered with white plastic to prevent weather damage.  People in this region build huge platforms on their property to encourage migrating storks to nest there.  It is considered good luck.

Inside our own air-conditioned bus, we had our own nests of backpacks, jackets, and music, but even the roads are different than that in America. The highways are typically one lane for each side with no passing lanes or shoulders, so if you’re stuck behind a tractor there’s nothing to do about it except take risks to get ahead. Many of us used the time to catch up on lost sleep, only to wake up from the bus hitting bumps in the road. 

Remnants of Jewish lives

In the middle of forested rural country is the memorial site where the death camp Treblinka once stood.  Now it is a cleared area surrounded by forest, hidden from the world outside so as to hide that it murdered people in secret.  At odds with its horrible past, the place is tranquil and quiet, the sky blue, the sun shining, and birds chirping.  We went through the little museum that showed Treblinka’s history and included a scaled replica of the functioning camp.  The Germans destroyed Treblinka in 1943, so other than documents and memoirs, there were not many artifacts to show its existence: some buttons, spoons, pots, bowls, a star of David tile, surgical equipment.  On display were several broken Jewish tombstones that the Germans had taken from nearby cemeteries and used as the bottom level of the road through Treblinka.  Here they are now being seen by museum visitors, the epitaphs translated, testifying to German desecration and cruelty.

Treblinka’s memorial site has no explanations and signs, so all the elements were open to our own interpretation.  Jagged pillars 6-7 feet high bordered a cobble-stone road like the uneven streets of Old Town.  On the side were big flat stones spaced apart to resemble train tracks. The main site looks like a surreal cemetery: thousands of these rocks appearing like tombstones, many of them inscribed with names of cities, towns, and villages that are arranged in an order we did not understand.  In the midst arises a huge stone sculpture 20-30 feet high.  One side has a menorah (a Jewish candelabra), the other had faces. 

A plaque on the ground in front says, in different languages, Never Again.  In front of the sculpture was a trench filled with a long block of burnt charred wood, rock, and other materials that symbolized Treblinka’s large cremation pits.  Weirdly, during our visit wasps were everywhere, buzzing, low on the ground. For some, this was a haunting reminder of the lives lost, or a sign of disturbed nature.  We could see the signs of respect and grieving left by previous visitors: memorial candles, little stones that Jews place in respect on top of the tombstones, and poems written on stone and clay tablets. Walking through the tombstones was overwhelming and powerful, and no one tried to put it into words.  

Aleisha taking a morning stroll through the garden 

After that, we drove on the winding roads to our lodging, a reconstructed farmhouse called the strange name Folwark Lekuk. There was nothing strange about our delightful rooms, the charming wooden walls and furniture, and the serene lakeside setting, and the stork family living in the nest out front.  

Go Matadors!

As each person dispersed into their rooms, the atmosphere quieted down for only an hour or two until the big of the event of the night took place, The World Cup America vs. Ghana. Our group was divided in its support for the teams. The pressure grew, the tension increased but even so, everyone bonded and conversed through out the night until it was time for bed.

Introduction to Warsaw's Jewish history ~ Friday, June 13, 2014

No day is better than Friday the 13th to have our first full day in Warsaw. Most students awoke with the sunrise at 4 a.m., bright and energetic partly wondering why we were all up so freaking early.  Some went out to explore the neighborhood, to find coffee and croissants, and to gaze at the buildings.  The hostel served breakfast at 7:30: fresh rolls, slices of cheese and meat, tomatoes, cucumbers, butter and jam, OJ, tea and coffee.  By 9 a.m. we assembled outside the hostel to walk together to the bus stop unprepared for the long emotional day ahead of us.

The day’s program took us from hell to heaven!  Our Warsaw guide, Kasia, works as a translator of documents hidden in the Jewish ghetto of Warsaw that are held in the archives of the Jewish Historical Institute, and so lucky for us, we got special access to the Institute’s holdings. 

Kasia

First we watched “912 Days of the Warsaw Ghetto,” which showed original photo footage and maps about the fate of Warsaw’s Jews after Nazi Germany conquered Poland.  About 30% of Warsaw’s population was Jewish, and so the walled region of the city in which the Jews were forced to move was pretty large.  It was very difficult to hear about the terrible deprivation and cruelty, to see the photos of emaciated people and dead bodies, the “deportations” of Jews onto trains that took them to death camps, and the massive destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.  For a film being only 37 minutes long, it felt as if we had all aged ten years. 

Unearthed milk cans

Emotionally numbed, we went into a room of photographs of the Jewish people of Poland when they were alive and well.  The historian Emmanuel Ringelblum, who had lived in the Warsaw Ghetto, had hidden Polish and Yiddish documents and reports from Jews in Warsaw and from other Polish ghettos in three metal milk cans and small metal boxes and buried them underground.  Recovered after the war’s end, the documents give the world a glimpse into the lives of these Jews who were so mercilessly killed.  

Anthony absorbed in study

After such a gut-wrenching experience, what greater relief than to go to a cemetery? We took a bus to the huge Warsaw Jewish burial ground dating back to the 17th century. The area was overgrown with tall trees that surrounded the graves that were covered in vines and moss. 

Where o' where could he be?

Many of the gravestones were toppled over and so eroded that they were impossible to read. Unexpectedly, the cemetery evoked feelings of calm and positive sentiment towards the past. The great grandfather of Adam, a member of our group, is buried there, and although we searched, we eventually concluded that it would take a lifetime to find that stone!

Memorial dead tree at the
Gestapo Pawiak Prison site

In hindsight, it is astonishing to remember the next few activities, so we will just list them here and let you all gasp:

(1) we took a tram to the center of town for lunch, stopping on the way to gawk at the memorial site where the Gestapo imprisoned and tortured Polish dissidents;

(2) we took a bus to the Warsaw Ghetto Fighters Monument;

Warsaw Ghetto Fighters Memorial 

(3) seeking cover from the rain, we went into the unfinished Museum of the History of Polish Jews (nice gift shop!);

(4) we walked through the rain to the remains of the bunker of the Warsaw Ghetto fighters, who blew themselves up rather than submit to the Nazis;

(5) and it was all climaxed by a rainy visit to the Umschagplatz memorial — that’s where the Jews were forcibly loaded into trains.  You get the idea.  Thank goodness it was time to return to our cozy Hostel Helvetia!   

The mood of the day changed with the Sabbath evening service and meal at the Nozyk Synagogue in Warsaw.  The regular Jewish Sabbath joy was elevated by a young boy’s Bar Mitzvah celebrated during the service.  In the men’s section on the first floor, our guys joined hands with the other male congregants and guests to dance, and up in the balcony the women in our group urged them on with pride!  Afterwards, we ate together with the Bar Mitzvah family, the chief rabbi of Poland Rabbi Michael Schudrich, and regular members of the Warsaw community — about 45 people crammed into a small dining room with a 5-course meal.  In addition to the lively conversations, we were treated to the boy’s Bar Mitzvah chanting and his father’s loving and warm speech.  The family was so grateful for our presence: we magnified their happiness, and they were a balm for our spirits.

The long festivities caused us to miss the last bus, and we walked back to the hostel in the cool night air.  It was a very good first day with memories that will last a long time.

There are just no words for this.