Life Over Death
by Arielle Kolodzinski,
11th grade New York
The first thing I saw this morning
was lichen growing on a tombstone in what was once a thriving Jewish shtetl in
Poland, a true Kehillah Kedoshah, Tykocin. In 1941, all the Jews in the village
they were born in, lived in, laughed in, fell in love in, and built families in
were herded into the town square. The 1,400 or so remaining Jews were then
forced to march into the forest in the second picture on the outskirts of their
community. There, one of the Nazi
Einsatzgruppen shot every one of these people- mothers, fathers,
children, babies- systematically, leaving them to fall backwards into pits,
mass graves they’d just dug for themselves. There they were murdered. In under
48 hours, there was no one left. Tykocin today is a Christian village. There is
not a Jew left to speak for the shtetl which once was.
Still, before there was death, their
was life. The synagogue of Tykocin is still standing. After the fall of
communism, the Polish residents of the town took it upon themselves to restore
it to its former beauty. Under no obligation, they took it upon themselves to
honor and remember what had happened to half the population of their village.
This afternoon, we had the privilege of having a mincha service in the restored
synagogue. We brought Jewish voices back to a place where the Germans tried so
hard to silence them. We finished the service with joyful singing and dancing
the hora. Today, we brought back life into a place overshadowed by darkness.
The Jewish people live. Am Yisrael Chai.
The Houses Across the Street from Auschwitz
There are houses across the street
from Auschwitz. We could see them from inside the camp, from outside the
barracks. From the courtyard where roll call took place. From the bare dirt
ground where Jews were shot if they lost their striped caps, or for no reason
at all. If we can see out, they could see in. Did they know what they were
seeing? How could they not? They were living across the street from hell. Could
they not smell the fire rising from burning flesh? Who were the people who lived
across the street, seemingly an ocean, which widened the gap between the land
of life and the pits of death, from just few meters to thousands of miles?
Mothers, fathers, children- monsters? There were screams and there was silence.
Did they feel that the ground they walked upon was haunted? We walked through
the town of Oswienciem (Auschwitz is the German name for this) and we heard the echoes of death, not the
laughter of the children on roller blades along the river. They were there
yesterday and they were there in 1944. Life went on outside Auschwitz. Just
beyond the gates, Arbeit Macht Frei, the world remained. Day and night- it is
impossible that the day wasn’t aware of the darkness. They saw it. What could
they have done? Did they care? Did they ignore the cattle cars for their own
comfort? Were these people really people? Were they as torn between life and
death as I was walking through their town? They saw humanity at its
indisputable worst every day. They swallowed it and moved on. We can’t move on
nearly 75 years after Auschwitz was liberated, and we never will. Yet they
could close their eyes and move on all along. In the face of death, could you have
simply gone on living?
Note- at the
time Auschwitz I and II were operational, the houses didn’t quite go up to the
camps. However, the idea of their proximity and the inevitability of civilians
facing the reality of the camps stands.
