Today was an insanely busy day. We travelled to the only standing Yeshiva (prayer school) left in Warsaw, then we travelled to Lublin to visit Majdanek, the best preserved & second largest camp in the world. There are too many stories and not enough words to express what we are feeling right now, so we are changing the format of the diary slightly. We will be combining our thoughts and journal entries until we have the time to properly address them. Anything that either of us feels is important enough to make a singular statement on will address this in the poetry/prose/sketches section of this site.
Emmanuel:
In Majdanek, we witnessed the product of perhaps the greatest evil. One cannot be prepared for the truly abhorrent reality of Majdanek. It is a reality that jumps out at you, that slaps you in the face when you encounter it. Indeed, despite everything I had read, despite all of my preparation, I was overwhelmed by what I witnessed; by the numbing touch of death that still today pervades the air in this place; by the cold, calculated symmetry and obstinance of the Nazi death machine.
If ever there was a more horrific human construct than that of this relentless machine, it is unknown to me. In my mind, Majdanek exists as a symbol of the nefarious and sinister potential of the human spirit.
We will let the pictures speak for themselves, as the words are coming to us with great difficulty right now...
We danced and celebrated the common tread that binds
us- our judasim- in the courtyard of the last standing yeshiva in Lublin.
A broken tombstone: the words engraved on its surface tell the tale of an entire world, and the scars by which it is marred remains as the evil legacy of the Nazis.
Yoni R. peers into the past
A monument erected at "Majdanek Museum"
The barbed wire prevents the free from entering, and the captives from being free.
Deny this.
The smokestacks of the crematorium.
70 tons of human ashes- less than half a handful represents a human being.
A baby-sized human oven in the crematoriums.
James S. reflects on top of a mound that was once a mass grave.
Sketches, Poems, Prose
By March Participants from around the World
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