Not to be Forgotten

History has a way of repeating itself. There is always a person or a group that abuses power, always a people’s revolution, always a religion that gets involved with politics, there’s always war, and there’s always peace. Every single country I have been to has elements of each of these, some more recent than others. All the museums and tours to date describe a time in the past that seemed out of reach until I saw Auschwitz and Hiroshima.
Auschwitz is a 5 hour drive outside of Prague across the Poland border. I booked a tour with Wittman Tours, a Jewish based organization in the Czech Republic. I was the only person on the tour along with my guide and our driver. It was a very rainy drive to Poland which sounds bad but it was really appropriate to see this place when it was dark, wet, and cold. There are two sites to visit, neighboring each other. The first site is the large death camp that at one time could house up to 90,000 victims. It was the site of multiple gas chambers, barracks and the infamous train tracks that brought people to their fate.

As far as you can see are the camps borders. It is enormous.

The Nazi’s on the brink of defeat, destroyed a large part of this camp to get rid of the evidence as best as possible. The gas chamber exteriors are demolished but since they were underground, you can still see the structure one floor below.

There are pits surrounding each gas chamber which hold the ashes of the deceased.

A scary thing about this entire operation was how efficient the Nazis were with the massacres. Coming off the train was a decision point and if one didn’t look healthy enough for laborious work, death was immediate although the victims were under false pretenses that they were to “bathe.” The gas chambers looked like houses with chimneys on the outside. In the first room, hooks with numbers were supplied in order to play along with the shower lie. Then the gas chamber was packed with people ready to shower in a room that had shower heads and drains, but of course what really happened once the door was locked and the lights were shut off was the poisonous crystals dropped from small holes in the ceiling that killed the entire room in a horrible manner in about 40 minutes. All together, 1.5 million innocent people were murdered at the time Auschwitz was in operation.

There are lots of stories, facts, and pictures throughout the camp. There are also memorials and statues to remind you to take moments of silence. I also saw tours of young Israeli teenagers who visit this site as a program prior to entering the military. One really touching room was a display of photos that prisoners, most likely from one of the last trains of people sent to the camp, were forced to abandon as they registered.

The whole thing is sad and depressing. There is tons more, but the whole blog is not supposed to be a repeat history lesson. It got quite real when I was walking through the second Auschwitz site where the museum is and you see piles of people’s belongings. Toothbrushes, combs, suitcases, belts, and shoes, things I have in my own bag. That was incredibly poignant, there was a connection there because these victims were just like me and you.

There was some hope that I was left with that day. While I was being showed the female barracks, I noticed a small gathering of people in the same barrack. Questions were being asked such as, “do you remember,” “where were you” etc. and I realized a survivor of Auschwitz was actually right there in front of me. She was there with her immediate family and she was trying to pinpoint the exact bunk in the barrack she slept in. She said she was close to one of the windows in the barrack because she remembered seeing her mother and sister some time after she had been at the camp, walking down the path to the chambers right out of the train. I was just amazed that there was a survivor right in front of me. My guide, who is also an independent film maker, caught quite a bit of this on film. She said she has never seen a survivor making their own personal journey before. They have served as guides and sometimes accompany the large groups of Israeli students but a survivor returning to Auschwitz on their own terms, is very rare. So it was a blessing for me to see this woman and get a glimpse of her past and know she survived this terrible place and has lived a new life since then. It was really incredible.

Hiroshima saw another side of this terrible war, and this felt even more personal, being that my country is responsible for the destruction that occurred here on August 6, 1945. Early in the morning, a U.S. B-29 dropped the worlds first atomic bomb. This instantly killed around 75,000 people and demolished the area in a 2km radius from the hypocenter. Within the next few months, 65,000 more died from the after effects such as radiation exposure and burns and countless more to this day suffer today from lasting effects.

I visited the very beautiful Peace Memorial Park on my first day in Hiroshima. The remnants of one of the original buildings very close to the hypocenter has been preserved and is a protected world site.

There is also a students memorial because many Japanese and Korean students were mobilized as a result of the war and were in this area when the atomic bomb dropped.

The part that was emotional was seeing the children’s monument which has a statue of Sadako Sashaki and a paper crane. This young girl acquired Leukemia after the bomb’s radiation effect and thought by the time she created 1,000 paper cranes she would have recovered. She passed before reaching that milestone and her classmates finished the task for her. To this day, schools from around the world have sent paper cranes to this site and they are displayed here. When I was there, a group of school kids were singing in front of the monument and it was beautiful and emotional.

The eternal peace flame which will not be extinguished until the last nuclear weapon on earth is destroyed.

The Memorial Hall is really well done. There are survivor testimonies you can read, listen to and watch. You see a 360 degree view of the destruction in a dimly lit hall. A beautiful tribute is a fountain that has the shape a clock face at 8:15am, when time stopped and the world changed.

It’s my opinion that it is crucial to see these places in person, to be reminded of the capacity of harm humans can inflict on one another. Being there doesn’t merely remind you of a history lesson you once had. Being in the presence, and there are so many examples and locations around the world, draws a personal connection in the hope that these events will never be forgotten- or repeated.

What’s Hup Holland?!

Or “What’s Hemp Holland” if you know what I mean….I don’t know how to recap Amsterdam folks. Those of you following know I’m a little behind on synching the writing with where i’m actually at. Thats because this place threw me off, im just now recovering. I just got into Paris yesterday, but per the title, its going to be an attempt to blog about the Amsterdam experience.
We woke up early in London and took a couple of trains to get to a different airport then the one we arrived in, Luton. The airport is small and there were a few hicccups in understanding the meaning of “carry on” which caused Mike to lose contact solution and deoderant, but we made the very quick hour flight to Amsterdam without a problem. We took a train into town and walked to our hostel which according to the description, “overlooks the Red Light District.” Let your mind wander to what you think this mean in terms of the environment…Now multiply it by 10. It is all you can think of and 10 times more. Let me break it down:
CoffeeShops: Every other storefront is a coffeeshop, you can go and order coffee and marijuana like my mom goes to Starbucks and gets a scone. I knew it was acceptable in Amsterdam but I wasn’t expecting it to be so prominent.
Red Light Neighborhood: Composed of the streets where ladies make their living by practicing “the oldest profession in the world.”. Ladies are behind a glass door with a red light illuminating their young faces. Im just walking down the street, beautifully backdropped with canals and boats, but I can’t help but feel like i’m supposed to window shop or something. They’re waving, they’re smiling, they’re negotiating business with customers right in front of me. I wasn’t into the witnessing of negotiations, it took it past an interesting attraction to a car crash you can’t turn away from. I heard that out of the women working there, only a small percentage are from Holland. Many come from other countries to be a “madame” on the most famous district of the world, to be on the “Yankees” roster of all call girls, a team with switch hitters and all.
Waffle and Chips Stands: They are on every street corner, and are really tasty. The waffle with chocolate was my favorite

MPC ordered some “chips”

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A must see site was Anne Franks home. It was a very solemn but meaningful experience. It’s more than just looking in the secret annex that they hid in from the Nazi’s for over two years. The museum has done a great job of leading the visitor through the history of the family from the initial fear the Frank family felt and their desire to leave to the US, to their decision to go into hiding, to their eventual seizure and displacement to concentration camps where all except for the father met their fate. There is no picture taking inside the museum, it’s just a must see. The quotes from Anne Franks diary are written on the walls as you progress through the house. I read the book some time in the 6th grade or so but as an adult I appreciate the maturity and expression in her writing even more. At the end, there is a video interview of her father. There is a particular poignant quote from her father, Otto Frank where he makes a remark on camera, describing how despite the close relationship that he and Anne had with one another, after reading her diary after the war, “What her feelings were, I only could tell from the diary, and my conclusion is…..that most parents don’t really know their children…” Her actually diary is the climax of the tour, I was inspired to read it again, I encourage you to look into it as well. The exhibit was like I mentioned, solemn, but you leave with some hope for the future.

It was time for dinner at this point after lots and lots of walking around the Dam. It’s super cold in Amsterdam by the away….
Nothing like some cured Haring to get started:

Then I had pea soup which was delish and a pork cutlet with mashed potatoes which I devoured, and boiled carrots with cabbage which Michael ate because he’ll eat anything. Also, it was my first beer in Amsterdam, a Heineken of course. It’s now my new favorite beer. There is nothing like a fresh Heineken on tap from Holland, I don’t know if it’s the water or what but it was amazing and the first of many in this 44 hour trip.
Notice I don’t have any pictures of this meal. That’s because my camera decided to die and not return from the dead after I snapped a picture of the pea soup….the movie mode works, the panorama mode works, the regular photo mode does not work. It’s ironic that the camera decided to die in Amsterdam as in, “What happens in Amsterdam, stays in Amsterdam, Dummy!”
We had a really really funny experience at a McDonalds right after. The tears were rolling, we were hunched over laughing kind of experience but for that story, just ask one of us when we get back, its the kind to tell in person. We only wanted a Rolo McFlurry for goodness sakes!
It’s late, almost 11, but it was time to rally for our night out. We walked around (refer to red light district above) then ducked into a hells angel bar because of its glowing Heineken sign. That’s where we met Jonathan.
Jonathan and his wife were on holiday and it was pretty much their last night in Amsterdam. His lovely wife was not feeling like a late night party so he decided to have a beer on his own to the half hearted support of his wife. We sat next to him and struck up some conversation over a few glasses of Heineken. Jonathan is in the technology field. He met his wife in Thailand when they were on the same tour. They did some long distance courting since she is from Canada and he is from England, and then he moved to Canada and the rest is history. He used to have some fun in his day, so when Mike and I thought we would try another place, he asked to come with. He figured his wife was already telepathically, giving him the look of disapproval, so why not have some more fun. Made sense to us, so he joined in.
We went into this other little bar that had a DJ playing some cool house music, drank more Heineken, danced around, and the three of us had a good time. Its cool to see a European in their element. There is a specific dance move that i can imitate in person, but it was like the music was forcing Jonathan to dance, he couldn’t stop. It was awesome. Then we went to another spot called the Bulldog which was still opened at 2:30 in the morning and had…you guessed it, more Heineken. Here is our picture at the end of the night:

Don’t let Mike’s glass fool you, Jonathan and I had lapped him at this point. Ok so we walk to the hostel together, say our goodbyes, exchange email and blog info and called it a night. Phew…

And for those who don’t understand what Hup Holland means, which may be most of you except Heleen and B, it’s a chant that the folks from the Netherlands use to cheer on their soccer team. Day 2 tomorrow, and I’ll be writing about the country side and a meet up with a table full of Nicaraguan people!
Justine (tired)