Krakow: A Thanksgiving Story

Guess what inspires gratitude at Thanksgiving?

A little family trip to Auschwitz.

Everyone should do it.

A curative for whining, complaining and discontent.  A holiday miracle, really.

Now before we delve into the (appropriately) heavy stuff. . .

Krakow, Poland is reputed to be pretty and sophisticated but with just enough Old World ingenue to merit a visit.

And I don't disagree.

Plus, there are these donuts. *sigh* 

You could make a case for a trip based on them alone.

And that little Tripadvisor tip is on house (or the hips) since Rick Steves said *nada* about those devislish deep-fried delicacies.

Spared the Allies' bombs in WWII, the Gothic archicture hints of Byzantine influence - retaining a simple, uncomplicated charm.

One such simple charm was the Starbucks in the North Main Square in Old City.

It was worth visiting twice a day.  At least.

Meanwhile, across from the iconic Renaissance Cloth Hall, a towering Christmas tree framed by St. Mary's Basilica flanks the entrance to the acclaimed Christmas market that beckons with glittering ornaments and Polish culinary delights.

If you consider Polish food to be a culinary delight. If.

Cabbage does not delight not me. Ever.

The famed Wawel Cathedral was a collection of corpses.

Only the most prominent, pious deceased.

Mainly priests and such.

So, if ogling coffins is your thing. You'll want to get there. And pay quiet homage.

My kids don't understand either of those words:

Quiet

or 

Homage

So that went as well expected.

Wawel Cathedral 

Transition Time.

Now to the serious stuff.

 Holocasut survivor Elie Wiesel implores:

"For the dead and the living, we must bear witness."

We must remember so that we will not forget.

"There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest." (Wiesel, Elie)

Grey skies and frigid, drizzly rain created the perfect theater for the unfolding of Auschwitz and Birkenau's ghoulish narrative. 

Through an iron-clad gate of deception "Work will set you free", " Arbeit Macht Frei" we entered this temporal hell.

Old railroad tracks

Rooms filled with discarded shoes, shed clothing, abandoned jewelry, shaved hair.

Sanitized operation rooms for macabre experiments.  

Suffocation prison cells.

Torture chambers.

Extermination showers.

Horrors, unimaginable.

That you might remember lest you forget.

  

To one solemn site we trudged, frozen in mind and body. 
There, over 200,000 Jewish souls had perished, then were cremated. 

Silence.

Vile Nazis had dispensed with their ashes by spreading them around the grass, the very ground upon which we stood.

Silence.

"We are standing upon their unmarked graves," she intoned reverently.

And we were.

"Never Again."

Those are the words engraved on the monument at Dacchau Concentration Camp in Germany.

"For the dead and the living, we must bear witness."

We must remember, so that we will not forget.

"[We must] never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides." (Wiesel, Elie)

Fortunately,  Oscar Schindler did. Take a side, that is.

Initially, this Sudetenland-born businessman was just that.  All business.

And completely pro-German.

But his sympathies were affected when he witnessed the Jewish suffering by the Nazi scrouge.

Schindler resolved, "I hated the brutality, the sadism, and the insanity of Nazism. I just couldn't stand by and see people destroyed. I did what I could, what I had to do, what my conscience told me I must do. That's all there is to it. "

Jerusalem was his chosen final resting place.  This is fitting.

His factory remains to lasting tribute to his heroism. To the heroism of the Polish resistance. To the heroism of the Krakow Jews.

And what of my kids? 
Well, they loved it. Truly.

It was sobering and weighty and provocative.

And not everyday has to be Disney World.

Yes, they were sobered but not scared.

No, they were not disrespectful but surprisingly reverential.

Yes, they were inquisitive and interested and not just because I threatened them.

Of course, I was hesitant to traipse my children through the hallowed brick buildings and weave them through abandoned bunks.

Such a raw exposure to the violent malignancy of sin. 

But, I do not regret our decision to travel the graveled railway where transport trucks deposited prisoners.

I do not regret reading aloud the narratives of the lost- to the living before me.

I pray my kids will not be silent in the face of great evil.

Because you see, I am hoping to raise such Dietrich Bonhoeffers and Corrie Ten Booms and Oscar Schindlers.

I hope they will be  convinced that "not to speak is to speak [and] not to act is to act." 

So, what better landscape for the gospel to shine than through the debris of death in Auschwitz.

For where else lies the hope of nations then in the One to whom every knee will one day bow.

My kids need this reminder. I need this reminder.

Interestingly, often the Nazis used pencil to catalog their prisoners- making them wholly erasable.

Such bittersweet immortality in those faded, indexed cards.  

Never Again.

For the dead and the living, we will bear witness.

May it always be so.

original abandoned railway car at Birkenau