By Louis Wald , Special to JTNews
Since I was a child, I had had the wish to travel to Poland with my parents, and see their native country with them firsthand. I wanted to know what their life was like, what their homes looked like, where they played as children — to absorb what I could of what their early lives.
My daughter Jessica chose this family history as her senior project, so I pounced on the opportunity to realize a lifelong dream. Our group consisted of my mother, Fanny Wald, and my immediate family — my wife Julie and my children Jessica and Aaron, and me. My father Sid felt he could not make the trip.
Our first tour started in Warsaw. We visited the Warsaw Ghetto, the ghetto museum, and archive center. All that is left of the ghetto are a few memorials, but the museum exhibits gave us a graphic view into life in the ghetto. Being there filled in several gaps in my knowledge of this part of history: I had always wondered why the Jews did not fight back more than they did.
When I stood on the very ground of the Umslagsplatz, the railway station in the ghetto used to load Jews onto cargo trains headed directly to Treblinka, we viewed actual footage of this event. After hearing the guides explain how the Nazis manipulated these people into believing they were being taken to work camps or other places where they could at least survive, I started to get a sense of how impossible it really was.
I kept asking myself, what would I have done? Sadly, I felt I knew the answer.
Another extremely interesting visit was to the large Jewish cemetery in Warsaw. I felt like I had walked into Tevye’s dream in Fiddler on the Roof. If you ever go to Poland, visit this cemetery and you will understand.
We visited the archive center at the museum, and the director worked with my mother to find her name and family on the original lists prepared for the Nazis: Frania Tabczievich, one of the Jews of Bedzin. A very eerie and humbling emotion ran through me. The names on this list told the Nazis whom they had to kill, and most of the people on that list had been murdered. And there it was: my mother’s name, on that list.
Yet here she was, the 4’11” blonde woman who stood next to me as we searched. She had survived. It was one of the moments I had to experience for myself.
This was why I had to go to Poland.
We made another important stop in the town of Kielce, the birthplace of my father. We easily found the address of his childhood home. The building was gone, only an empty lot remained. From what local residents told us, the building looked similar to the one still standing next door. To me, it looked more like an auto repair shop than somebody’s house, yet there it was. I was standing on the same ground that he did as a child, absorbing all I could.
I visualized my father as a child running down the cobblestone streets, playing with his friends, walking to synagogue, coming home for dinner. I burned this place into my memory.
This was why I had to go to Poland.
Our next big stop was my mother’s place of birth: the city of Bedzin. We found her street, and her building. As we piled out of the van, my mother became a 12-year-old girl again. She darted around, pointing out memories and trying hard to reconstruct the way things were for her as a child. She took us to the rear of the building and pointed out where her German housekeeper, who was forced to work for the Nazis, would smuggle in food for them. She took us up to her apartment and she showed us the banister she used to slide down, and the patio where her mother dried their clothes. She took us around the town, pointing out her schools, the synagogue, her first apartment, the parks they played in, where their friends and relatives had lived.
She showed us where she searched for her father the morning after the Nazis rounded up all the men and found dozens of people lying in a park, each with a bullet in the back of their heads, lifting up each one hoping it wasn’t the head of her father. I was able to witness my mother return to a place that was once a source of great joy and good memories, yet also a source of great pain, and watch her move through it again, only this time being in complete control. It helped her immensely to be able to tell us her story on site.
This was why I had to go to Poland.
One of the last places we visited was Auschwitz-Birkenau. Seeing the death camps was not the main reason I wanted to make this trip, but we did take the tour. I’d seen the films, visited the Holocaust museum in Washington, D.C., and read the books. I didn’t expect to be greatly moved, and for the most part I wasn’t — except for one moment.
I was standing at the top of the steps of one of the two crematoria at Birkenau. I was alone, though I could see my mother walking nearby. There I visualized the trains, as they offloaded the hopeful Jews just a few meters away. I imagined the selection process, and the continuous line of my relatives and their friends, stepping onto the very stone where I now stood, just before they descended into the place that would end their lives. I felt myself drift into a sort of trance, absorbing the moment.
Here, at the death camp, I felt the closest connection to all of my murdered relatives, none of whom I could ever have the opportunity meet. As I walked back to the van, I picked up a stone and took it with me, to remind me of that moment.
I have been blessed in countless ways. My head spins when I contrast my life with what my parents endured. I needed to gain the perspective that this trip gave me. If you also have been curious about your origins, go now and take your parents with you, before it’s too late. It is a trip that will change your life.