Mejdanek

On the way to Lublin, Yocheved sees a monument, “there’s Majdanek!” A picture. Let’s go. But I don’t want to visit. We visit.

Mejdanek, 10 foot pole emotional protection.

I guard myself. Teenage anger/rage suppressed for a long time. Mejdanek ghost town was scrubbed clean. No sweat, tears or blood suffused the wooden barracks and walls. The pristine camp is dissonant with my mental/emotional images/thoughts. An artist installation: bare lightbulbed ovals above a bed of pebbles in a dark space. Ambient multiple voices. No Jewish voices, no cries. Powerful but limited feel for me.  I’m not the audience for this truth of Polish heroes. Dan’s comment , “not enough about the villains” including the complicit and complacent. I’m not the audience. And I’m still 10 foot touching. I take no photos of clean horror-history, more history than horror. I step past barbed fencing to a flowing grass meditation field w ambient chirping. Not my truth.

Extracting something precious or scrubbing clean

Re Medjanek 8-26-14:

“If you take forth the precious from the vile, it shall be as my mouth” (Yirmiyah, 15:19).

Izhbitza: “If one clarifies the deficiency within him, to bring out of it something precious, then 'you will be my mouth,' for that which comes forth from his mouth will be filled with words of Torah.”

The art installation was striking. Great photo op, better video with ambient voices speaking many languages at once. Also scrubbed clean.  No yiddish, no plaintive cries. No feeling. These are not our prayers, beggings, lamentations.   No kaddish to elevate the dead. Leaving, there is a sign. The installation is called “peace” or “prayer for peace.” Scrubbing clean the pain does not bring forth something precious.

Behind us is a huge ½ dome of ashes. Daniel has found a bottle of crushed thorns from Israel. He’s going to toss them. I don’t want to see ashes; don’t want to experience the pain, anger and loss. And don’t want dishonor the dead with blocked emotions. Yocheved, who lost her grandmom here, and stayed in the van during our visit went with R Hoffman, Dan, Chanan and Daniel. I stayed in the van.

Dan brought the Aish Kodesh in his heart to a monument outside the camp covering a to the ashes. The Aish Kodesh said that the unburnt ashes of the temple sacrifices yearned to connect with heaven. The magrayphah used to sweep the ashes made music heard for miles. Yocheved said kaddish.