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.
