THE RETURN FROM AUSCHWITZ
Few feedbacks precisely... The fact that I can demand them, both out of concern for the students' interest (some were upset by the journey and their distress, at least the one they displayed, seemed to me to require a transition to writing - or any other form of restitution - in order to "evacuate" and better control this overflow of emotion), both in order to have some material to conduct an attempt at evaluation of this trip, was poorly perceived by the students who felt assaulted.
In addition to these three texts, two students chose another form of restitution: Bénédicte, a musician, composed and Julie made some sketches, on site, then back home. However, I cannot present them here, not having them at my disposal.
- The texts of:
April 6, 2005
I will tell you my impressions and feelings felt during my 'visit' to Auschwitz. I would like to apologize in advance for the perhaps inappropriate vocabulary in some cases.
Upon entering Birkenau I felt great things. First of all, I felt a weight weighing on the group, there was no more noise and I didn’t feel like talking (yet I am talkative). This place is a place that inspires respect and silence, it’s like that, we cannot explain it. Then I started to observe the buildings and found them 'pretty', they were not sloppy built anyhow as I thought. I tried to understand why and I deduced that it was a trompe-l'oeil, the external appearance was there to hide the horror and inner misery.
The discovery began with a speech by Jules, a former deportee from several camps" and the guide, presenting us what we were walking on, the access ramp to the camp. Jules explained to us that it had been built by the women of the camp already weakened by their detention, while, I quote Jules, "there were plenty of men right next door". He seemed very touched by the fact that the SS had taken women for that, he found it very humiliating I think. Then we crossed a small bridge in the men’s camp, and we visited a sanitary block there, where the guide explained to us that the deportees really didn’t have much time to do their physiological needs it was about a few seconds morning and evening that’s all. The latrines are 80 holes in a concrete step on two rows. Upon leaving this place, we entered a storage block because there are no other words. The beds were inclined so that the deportees would fall, they were on three floors of 5 people with only one blanket, conditions that cannot be endured today. Afterwards we entered the women’s camp and saw a dormitory block where, unlike the men, the beds were made of cement. In one of the 2 similar blocks, we discovered paintings made by a former deportee representing life at the camp. Then we passed to the back of the camp where the remains of the gas chambers and crematoria are located. We passed a stele whose ground was dotted with pieces of human bones, I found that a bit shocking. But the worst was yet to come. We arrived in front of the lakes where the ashes of the burned bodies were thrown into the ovens. These lakes were constantly rejecting the same ash, the ground was covered with a layer of ash, a friend even pointed out to me that the moles made lumps of ash instead of clods of earth. The discovery continued with a visit to a small museum in the block where the deportees were undergoing medical visits. The floor of this building was covered with glass tiles so that it would not be damaged. We saw in a room the machines that were used to disinfect the clothes of the Jews and other deportees. Then we left this place after observing photos of deportees before their deportation, which were displayed on many walls. In front of this building, Jules told us some memories of his deportation, particularly his participation in the death march. This testimony was very moving because Jules’s voice trembled as much as his legs and mine.
I had big shivers for 5 minutes. Then he started crying and many did the same. We went to the memorial where we had a minute of silence. Then towards the bus and Auschwitz. On the bus I was a little disappointed to have been touched only by the words of Jules and the guide who were very touching and essential for this discovery.
Arrived at the site of Auschwitz we ate in 12 minutes, but honestly I wasn’t really hungry. We entered through the main and mythical entrance where it is written roughly on an arch "ARBEIT MACHT FREI" which means in French "work makes free", which is totally false because if one worked as much as the S.S. required, it was very very rare to survive. Then we went to the parade square where the SS gathered, at attention, the deportees sometimes for almost a day, to count them. Then the guide explained to us what happened during the impossible escapes, because when one escapes, 10 people from his family were kidnapped and then killed after some time, when the escapee returned he was stripped bare and then paraded with a sign around his neck "I am back" and hanged afterwards after being beaten. We visited a French exhibition in a block where were exposed many photos and explanations on the deportation. In other blocks, we saw S.S. offices, rooms where the deportees slept on straw, we also saw the cells composed of a latrine. One of the most horrible things I saw in this camp was a 90cm by 90cm cell where up to 4 people were locked up for 4 days without eating and working during the day. Upon seeing this room, I imagined myself inside and this vision horrified me even scared me. We went to a block where we saw 2 tons of hair, the quantity is impressive when you see how much space it takes, there were many braids, because the guide explained to us that in Jewish culture braids were a custom. I imagined my friends getting shaved like that without being able to do anything and I assure you it’s terrifying. In this block there was Zyklon B, the guide told us that the SS had ordered 46 tons of it, this figure scared me because with 1 kilo of this "poison" we could kill 100 people, if the SS had used it from the beginning, the toll would have been more than 4 million dead.
Then, we moved on to the hardest part of the day: the visit of the gas chamber and the 4 ovens. Upon entering the gas chamber, I immediately took a look at the walls to see if it was true that the gassed during their death feeling like they were dying clung to the walls. And well, yes, indeed there were large scratches in the concrete of the walls. The vision of these engravings caught my throat and really scared me, it’s a very strange sensation. In the gas chamber there was a door that led directly into the crematorium. It was composed of 4 ovens 3 meters long. A student asked Jules a question, if I did not hear it, I clearly saw Jules' reaction who collapsed into tears and left this room where too many emotions were arising. These are the tears on the cheeks that we joined Jules outside the camp where we discussed our feelings with the main organizer and the other classes who participated in this discovery.
Discussions cut short for somewhat revolting causes but which end with a song by former deported Ginette who also performed the song of the Marais, a song she learned during her deportation. And once again, many of us were in tears.
Jules and his testimonies are very precious things because they allowed us to see, understand, and feel things that we could never have seen or even imagined without him. Because in Auschwitz, if we don’t have someone who knows or has experienced what happened, we cannot experience as many things as I felt there. Now that we have seen the evidence of this genocide, it is very important to make our comrades, our parents and our friends discover what we saw and to prove to them that the gas chambers, despite what some say existed. This period must never be forgotten, we now have a duty to remember, but honestly I think that these images will forever remain engraved in my head. It is important to talk about what we have seen so that such a massacre never happens again. The 06/04/05 is the day when I opened my eyes to the cruelty and monstrosity that a certain number can inflict on an entire population, for the mere fact that she was born Jewish and even when a certain number among her had abandoned this religion or that they did not even know they were.
I want to thank the guide and Jules without whom this 'visit' would not have been enriching and Mrs. Mallard without whom we could not have discovered this place that everyone should have seen but after some study work on the Shoah.
APRIL 6, 2005...
I leave at 3 o'clock, tired of having watched until then in total impatience; this recurring sentence haunts my mind: "There is nothing to see in Auschwitz," reinforced by this fear of remaining insensitive to the rubble of this massacre. I take my first steps in Birkenau; a place that leaves me speechless when there is so much to say about my knowledge and imagination, which completes my vision of this indefinable space and this succession of horrible images ties my heart. Jules, on these rails that he has crossed in terror, tells us with the strength that remains to him, his past, which we can barely understand in this world where everything is offered to us. So emotion, rage, hatred, suffering, mingle with his speech, without reminiscence, his ineffable memories are read in his eyes, and we, teenagers, adults, simply human beings of the 21st century, united in compassion and pain, understand that in Auschwitz there was everything: life, evil, death... and everyone reacts as they can, a sob, a lowered head, a sidelining or even a semblance of impassibility... And I, deeply tested by this poignant testimony that comes out of the guts, I look at Jules, this deportee, small, a bit lame, funny in appearance, and I let my mind conceive what it never wanted to conceive: my mother, my sister, my father, shaved, violated, crowded in these gas chambers, transported to crematory ovens that will reduce their bodies to 'dust' on which others will walk, as we ourselves have unconsciously done. Then, in the face of this incontestable reality, which has overcome our previous doubts, which some try to deny, which is indifferent to others, the experience of sharing and humanity has erased all our differences and brought together beings linked by an emotional shock...
Together, we received a beautiful lesson of humanity that will remain engraved forever and that will have marked the tiniest part of a generation, waiting for much more...
History/Memory, two terms that we have confronted to today assemble them in a simple journey.
" I am the past, you are the future ", such was Jules' last word, aware of being one of the few traces of this tragedy and proud to pass on to us the torch, which we will hold with passion for him, for those who have died, for us, and for those who will be born...
Wednesday, April 13, a week later...
These are hundreds of black and white images, each more disturbing than the last, that Auschwitz evoked in my head on Tuesday, April 5, 2005. Auschwitz was for me only photos 'without colors' that bore witness in my mind to the unreal. It is in this state of mind that I left for Poland, on Wednesday, April 6, 2005.
After three hours of bus, as well as three hours of plane, we arrived tired at Auschwitz. Then after a strange silence, I saw him... Uncertainty invaded me and I could not believe that I was at the threshold of the largest death camp, which decimated one million five hundred thousand Jews. Jews who had no other choice than to have Auschwitz-Birkenau as their cemetery. The acceptance of being there was difficult when a man about eighty years old, Jules, lingered on this ramp, on which more than sixty years ago he jumped from a cattle car to work in a camp where he had been sent. One after the other, his words became cries of humanity that each of us wanted to push. How could men, because that was the worst, have been able to commit the inconceivable?... That’s what Ginette, Jules and the others wondered about many years ago now, but this question persists in their heads like an obsessive spectrum.
Two people, "survivors" of the Final Solution, two people who seemed so immense to me despite their small size, two people who gave us a message that in turn we will have to convey.
The visit to the camp was long. We had before us the greatest industry of death, a factory to kill, which gave birth in me a feeling of powerlessness. For years, a handful of men held in their hands the destiny of humanity, a power that almost eradicated the words tolerance and respect for our vocabulary, words that are the basis of our freedom. Each of us received a beautiful lesson in life that we will never forget, because it was while going up the path, along the railway tracks, which seemed endless to us, where we followed the footsteps of thousands of Jews who were going in the opposite direction, that we will remember all our lives that the stupidity of these men still exists and that at any moment it can take us all away.
So please, don’t forget this little gray dot that is somewhere in Poland that changed the course of time and humanity...
A SOMEWHAT PARTICULAR RESTITUTION...
After many hesitations, I chose to include here some reactions from students that reached me by email, after the end of classes. They reacted quite strongly to one of my letters where I deplored (but it was not the main subject of the message) the lack of feedback after the trip. The expression used, obviously clumsy ("disappointing, but revealing") triggered a sharp emotion in the class. These reactions are finally very revealing...
On June 7, from K., who did not wish to participate in the trip, to whom I had asked if it was possible for him to indicate the reasons in a short text:
I just received your email and will see if I can notify other students in the class. Yet I consider that there is no obligation to write, as there fortunately existed no obligation to participate in this frightful journey and unworthy of the dead. Writing a text after the refusal of this "expedition" or after participation would mean an impoverishment of the author, at least by adopting the direction you would like to give to this writing through your insinuations and comments in class, and would have nothing to do with a project encouraging students to write autonomously, a search for the truth or even pushing students to take a stand (which is necessary); you should not lose a single tear for your avidity for texts - travel stories - that you apparently can’t seem to satisfy. Fortunately, in the capitalist world.
Please don’t make these comments to me anymore.
A few weeks earlier (on April 19), the latter nevertheless wrote:
After having read earlier the sober description of Mr. Clamens, who coldly testifies of his visit, I return to the project of writing a few lines about the extermination camp as a place for receiving students. Without considerable effort, it is impossible to write something, as emotional as it may be; I am thinking of writing a small refutation of this school trip, which I consider a crime against humanity.
There is already in these words a clear, determined position; what interests me first of all is your impression of the place, after this trip:
Is Auschwitz important to you as a museum and place to visit?
From E., on June 11:
A good part of the 1L received your email which more or less surprised us, which is why we discussed it at length. I allow myself to play the role of intermediary... I indeed think that your disappointment has been great, I understand because our investment was not regular, that our attention was well below your requirements and it’s difficult to hear but I believe we have seen a lot, and I think we are having trouble holding on to all this,it’s a lot of things that fall on our heads in a minimum of time and, for 17-year-olds filled with illusions, dreams, who need to escape from this often incomprehensible and incomprehensible world, who, consciously or not, want to protect themselves from evil, of reality, and who do not want to constantly immerse themselves in this horror. I assure you that I have seen many question themselves, see life and people differently, interpret behaviors differently, this experience enriched us humanly but also deeply marked us... I do not question your way of teaching, quite the contrary, you have brought us a lot, both at the historical level and at the human level, your support and your knowledge have really been beneficial to our open-mindedness, our knowledge of ourselves and the knowledge of others. That’s why today I admit to you that the assignment was sincere and profound for a large majority of the first L. Many of us experienced it very badly and have difficulty, either to write, or to share what they have written because many were those who wrote but do not want to share it. Moreover, some did not feel the need to resort to writing, some composed, others only talked about it... Reactions must have surprised you and it is possible that some simply did not want to get involved but the fact of using the term 'disappointing but revealing' touched and cooled us well that it is conceivable that your requirements are beyond our abilities to express our feelings...
I extend my sincere thanks to you for this year 2005 which allowed me to see more clearly in my personality, in that of the people around me, in my priorities, my goals, my way of conceiving life,...
I wish you a good vacation hoping to see you again soon...