Life Over Death

by Arielle Kolodzinski,     11^th 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.