The Upcoming Trip

Post Date

Thu, 05/16/2013 - 05:00

Categories

City Blogs

I have had an occasional interest, but no great and burning desire, to visit Poland to see the cities where my parents lived before the war. I am not sure why. Perhaps the images in my mind from the stories I have been told and pictures that I have seen is sufficient. Perhaps I realize that with the exception of the re-enactment in the movie "Schindler's List" (for my father's Cracow) and the PBS documentary "The Lodz Ghetto" (my mother's city), I will never be able to see and experience the cities as my parents knew them.
I have seen the films of Auschwitz, the death camp where my mother was incarcerated, and I am not sure whether I want to (or need to) visit the museum that stands there now.
So I have many thoughts about our up-coming trip to Prague. We are going with a small group and the trip is dedicated to glass and music, more-specifically, music that has been uncovered from the Terezin concentration camp outside of Prague. Music and glass go straight to my heart and have the capability to tear at my emotions.
If it were not for the unique combination of glass and music, I am not sure whether I would have overcome my disillusion about going back (funny, I am not really “going back” am I?) to Eastern Europe. Perhaps this trip will answer some of my questions and pave the way for the overdue trips to Cracow and Lodz.

Comments

Fred Klein

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Just this week I overheard 3 German accented women saying they do not want to read any more about "The Camps".

Corey Bearak

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Knowledge and its pursuit provide a simple rationale

Erik Scheibe

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I can understand the trepidation, but it seems like a fascinating opportunity. I imagine you will be glad you did this at some point in time.

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Ben, My family (on all sides) was safely ensconced in the US; my father was a soldier/spy. We of course know people who survived the Nazis; both of my wife's parents both got out of Holland and to safety in Buenos Aires in the middle of the war (long and interesting story).

After seeing "Sophie's Choice", I can never watch Holocaust movies anymore. Just too upsetting, and I'm a sixth generation American with some Protestant roots on my father's side (my grandmother was a Lutheran, and my ancestor from whom I get my last name was as well).

Prague is supposed to be a beautiful city; we'll go there next year. We're doing London and Berlin in August with the kids. I'm amazed that my wife agreed to go to Berlin! She wouldn't even ride in a German car for many years!

Rona Gura

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Enjoy it. And write a blog about your thoughts and feelings when you return!!

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Despite the emotions, the trip will be very meaningful for you. Confronting and learning from the past are worthwhile journeys.
Odey Raviv

Vincent Serro

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The world always keeps moving on. You can never go back to the place your family knew, but you can get a better appreciation of what it must have been like. You should take advantage of the opportunity to go.

Tessa Marquis

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I am first Generation also, from Stuttgart Germany. Although my father was never in a camp, he was heavily traumatized, and it is now my inheritance. I, also, will not go see Holocaust movies or go to the Camps. Nor would I go to the Killing Fields of Cambodia.

My dear friend Sidney Glucksmann was born in Poland and then was a slave laborer in three camps from age 12 to 18: Grosse-Rosen, Auschwitz, and then Dachau. I hear all the stories first hand and even though I cannot say that it will never happen again, I tell him "It can never happen again TO YOU". He is now 87. He goes to schools in Connecticut to tell his story. And, I let him tell them to me.