The focus of this blog will radically shift direction for the duration of nearly a month (September 24 to October 18) while I travel throughout Central Europe. I fly into Warsaw on September 25 and I hope to visit not only Poland, but Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, and Hungary as well. It is a balance between trying not to spread myself too thin and trying to see a lot, because this is a part of the world whose history has always fascinated me.
I became interested in history through studying the Holocaust, primarily on my own. The systematic extermination of the Jews, unprecedented in history in terms of its scope and the determination and efficiency of the perpetrators, has always haunted me. My primary interest has been the perpetrators, including Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich, Eichmann, and Höss, to name some of the most notorious, as well as lower-ranking, anonymous individuals, chronicled so well in the work of the historian Christopher Browning. The question of how men could remorselessly kill countless women and children, and then return home and live normal family lives, has always appalled me, yet at the same time it has drawn me into the study of this dark period, and of other periods (such as the Soviet).
While my focus has been on the murderers, it is time to shift gears and honor the murdered. The colorful scenery of the Jews of Warsaw, Chelm, and the shtetls of Central/Eastern Europe is never to be seen again. It only exists now in sepia-toned photographs, the writings the Jews left, and in the memories of elderly Jews who will not be with us for much longer. For centuries, the Jews lived a (relatively) comfortable existence in Poland, whose king Casimir the Great, in the 14th century, welcomed them as they escaped persecution after the Black Death. It is therefore all too painfully ironic that that same place, Poland, is now the graveyard of the European Jews.
I did not choose these countries for the food, the beer, or the vistas, although I look forward to all three of these delights. It is my purpose to take a trip through the heart of darkness, and to ponder some of the heaviest thoughts that could trouble a mind; to visit those cemeteries of European Jewry: Birkenau, Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, and Majdanek. This is a trip of the utmost important to me, something that I have felt compelled to do for several years. I look forward to completing it and to sharing it with you all.
I became interested in history through studying the Holocaust, primarily on my own. The systematic extermination of the Jews, unprecedented in history in terms of its scope and the determination and efficiency of the perpetrators, has always haunted me. My primary interest has been the perpetrators, including Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich, Eichmann, and Höss, to name some of the most notorious, as well as lower-ranking, anonymous individuals, chronicled so well in the work of the historian Christopher Browning. The question of how men could remorselessly kill countless women and children, and then return home and live normal family lives, has always appalled me, yet at the same time it has drawn me into the study of this dark period, and of other periods (such as the Soviet).
While my focus has been on the murderers, it is time to shift gears and honor the murdered. The colorful scenery of the Jews of Warsaw, Chelm, and the shtetls of Central/Eastern Europe is never to be seen again. It only exists now in sepia-toned photographs, the writings the Jews left, and in the memories of elderly Jews who will not be with us for much longer. For centuries, the Jews lived a (relatively) comfortable existence in Poland, whose king Casimir the Great, in the 14th century, welcomed them as they escaped persecution after the Black Death. It is therefore all too painfully ironic that that same place, Poland, is now the graveyard of the European Jews.
I did not choose these countries for the food, the beer, or the vistas, although I look forward to all three of these delights. It is my purpose to take a trip through the heart of darkness, and to ponder some of the heaviest thoughts that could trouble a mind; to visit those cemeteries of European Jewry: Birkenau, Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, and Majdanek. This is a trip of the utmost important to me, something that I have felt compelled to do for several years. I look forward to completing it and to sharing it with you all.
