Majdanek

On Tuesday morning, I awoke to a feeling all-too-familiar to those fresh from undergrad (as well as most of the general population): I had slept later than intended, and was on the brink of running late. Despite my cell phone alarm—like 90% of the time mechanisms in Europe—being set to military time, I had managed to confuse AM and PM. I attributed my mistake to previous evening’s encounter with my good friend żubrówka vodka, and threw back the duvet. My feet landed on a cold, and unfamiliar tiled floor; instead of “home” in Poznań, I found myself in Kielce Poland spending a few days with my friend Leanne, a fellow Fulbright English Teaching Assistant. I had arrived the previous afternoon, and the following day, we were planning a collaborative lesson for her English Listening and Speaking classes, employing Neil Simon’s classic play The Odd Couple. Though as I scurried about, preparing for another frigid January day in Poland, the plight of Felix Ungar and Oscar Madison was far from my mind. This morning, we were slated for a 7:00 AM departure to Majdanek Concentration Camp near Lublin. Neither Majdanek nor my possible tardiness was any kind of funny—let alone, Neil Simon “ha ha humor.” Though my pre-coffee brain lacked the ability to fully anticipate it, the day that lay before us can only be described as a raw experience.

In the past four months, I have seen Poland in a way that few Americans—or Western Europeans for that matter—have. There is this stigma that once a tourist has seen Kraków, the Wieliczka Salt Mines, and Auschwitz, they’ve seen Poland. However, there’s so much more to this nation than that thirty mile jaunt from Kraków’s city center. Though, I will admit, the majority of that which speak of is not ascetically pleasing. Travel book pictures fail to depict the actuality. Real Poland—as in, where real Polish people live—is often littered with cigarette butts and gray buildings intercepted by random hints of color in the form of everything from poster art, to piles of leaves, to unwanted spray paint. On Monday afternoon, as I wandered through Kielce searching for the local McDonald’s—the city boasts so few “meeting points” that our rendezvous options were ridiculously limited (though I made this more difficult by insisting that the location offer coffee in some way, shape, or form) —the signs of a struggling community were obvious. The city had no spark, only a gentle grayness that seemed to signal quiet pride in its own ability to existence. In 2010, Kielce is not meant to thrive; instead, just being must suffice.

Returning to Tuesday, Leanne and I arrived in the front lobby of her dormitory with three minutes to spare. We were met by Barclay, a Fulbright history professor also living in Kielce, and his “Fulbright Shepard” Włodzi (better known in the Fulbright circle as the Włodzinator—though, I don’t think he is supposed to know this). We loaded into the Włodzinator’s car, and began the 2.5 hour drive northeast to Lublin.

What we discussed during that drive is of no great importance. There’s really not much to say at 7:00 AM in route to a death camp. We arrived in Lublin, and found the temperature teetering on double digits. Polish winters have a reputation for being harsh, and I am told that this year’s is particularly brutal. Since the arrival of the New Year, the temperature has yet to climb above freezing. At the camp, we were met by Robert, another Fulbright professor (affectionately known to Leanne and I as “Lublin Bob”) and a young man roughly my own age, Wojciek, who had spent several summers working as a Majdanek tour guide. Wojciek’s father is Robert’s university colleague, and he had graciously agreed to spend the day navigating us though this relic of Polish history.

In the spring of 2008, I toured Auschwitz with a student group, and was left with a hauntingly surreal experience. In comparison, Majdanek is completely different. This camp sits directly on the edge of Lublin—one can stand in the doorway of the prisoner barracks and stare into the city. Civilization, just down the road from a true hell on earth. Due to its location on the Ukrainian boarder, the camp itself is almost completely original (with the exception of a few barracks that required reconstruction). The Soviet army moved across the border so quickly that the Nazis didn’t have the opportunity to destroy their massacre factory. The crematory, the gas chambers, the stone castle built by prisoners as an “art project” are all original.

As Wojciek led us on a snow-covered path through the camp’s gates, he explained that this road had once been paved with head stones taken from a nearby Jewish Cemetery. Just another reminder for the prisoners that, to their captors, they were nothing more than stones underfoot. The brilliance of Nazi cruelty is mind-boggling: a walk paved with tomb stones, crouching chambers which enabled one to neither properly stand nor sit, forcing prisoners to shower in ice cold water in the midst of a Central European January. Who thinks of these things? And more importantly, what kind of person does it take to execute these ideas? We walked, pondering, debating, and discussing…all the while, the blood began to retreat from my feet.

There comes a point where one just doesn’t complain. I was adequately dressed—shoes, thick socks, scarf, gloves, the whole winter works—and I was in pain. My feet had become numb clumps of flesh, and my stomach began to growl. Somewhere in the rush of getting ready, I had bypassed Leanne’s cereal stash, and found myself without breakfast, running on a meager cup of McDonald’s coffee purchased along the way. But I kept my mouth shut and plodded on. Wojciek led us into a rickety barrack which housed a fraction of the 800,000 pairs of shoes discovered upon Majdanek’s liberation. (The shoes displayed at Auschwitz are also a part of this collection.) Now, they line the walls, slowly dissolving into piles of unrecognizable old leather. Each pair once belonged to someone—someone who was inevitably forced to walk these freezing temperatures without them…if they made it past the guards and the gas chambers.

We followed Wojciek to the crematory, a seemingly innocent structure from the outside. The remnants of the supervisor’s office were situated in the corner, just across from the ovens. This man had literally lived here among the burning bodies, heating the water for his tea on the ovens that reduced human beings to ash. As we walked on, Wojciek pointed out a ditch near the edge of the camp where nearly 2,000 people were mowed down with machine guns to make room for the next wave of prisoners. It was all in a day’s work for the Nazi soldiers.

Our tour concluded at a huge mausoleum, a flat, stone disk resembling a space ship which juts up from the earth. Following the stairs to the top, one is met with a huge pile of dirt, ash, and rock—what is left of the thousands that were murdered inside these gates. Though, it must be understood that this is merely a fraction of the crematory destruction; the majority of the ash was used as fertilizer in Nazi farms.

By the end of our tour, everyone was sufficiently numb—emotionally and physically. Lublin Bob had pre-picked a restaurant in the city, and we met for lunch and conversation. Though for a good twenty minutes, I sat silently, cuddling with my cup of coffee. We had spent a meager 2.5 hours in the cold, and I was exhausted. How an individual could go on day after day in those conditions, surviving on a meager ration of 300 calories is beyond the capabilities of my imagination. In this obscure place where so many suffered, died, and more importantly, found the strength to endure, my problems (such as my inability to set an alarm clock) are trivial, as is my pansy-like stamina for Central European winters.

At the end of the day, there wasn’t really much to say. We thanked Robert and Wojciek for their hospitality and the Włodzinator for the ride. This excursion to Poland’s Far East doesn’t change the course of history; it only stands to broaden our appreciation for that which this nation and its people have overcome.

Several photos courtesy of Fulbrighter Leanne and her camera that is better than mine.