Auschwitz, Not Long Ago, Not Far Away
“What do you think they sell at the gift shop at Auschwitz?” asked a senior from the Northwest Yeshiva High School who was sitting at our Shabbat table the week before going to Poland on the March for the Living.
“Shoes,” Shlomo responded.
With this response, Shlomo erupted in bursts of laughter while the students around the table stared dumbfounded – not knowing exactly how to respond to this Holocaust joke.
This moment flooded back to my mind as I stood in one of the first rooms of the special exhibit at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York called Auschwitz, Not Long Ago, Not Far Away. In contrast to the exhibit at Auschwitz in Poland which has thousands of shoes jumbled in a heap, this exhibit displays one simple red shoe enclosed in a museum case, like a crowned jewel. Behind the shoe is a photo of the shoes at the Auschwitz Museum.
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On the wall nearby, they have an excerpt of a poem titled I Saw a Mountain, by Moshe Schulstein (1974):
We are the shoes,
we are the last witnesses.
We are the shoes
from the grandchildren
and grandfathers,
From Prague, Paris
and Amsterdam,
And because we are only
made of fabric and leather
And not of blood and flesh,
Each one of us avoided
the hellfire.
If you are in New York, I highly recommend visiting the exhibit. It’s artifacts, testimony and historical photos and video will take you on a journey through this dark history. The visitor slowly wends their way through the early history of Nazi Germany, to the beginning of the war on September 1, 1939, the attack on the Soviet Union in June of 1941, to the mass murder by bullets in eastern Poland and the lands of the Soviet Union, to murder by gas. The focus, of course, is on Auschwitz, but Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Majdanek, and Chelmno got honorable mention.
I learned a few new things. For example, I thought that the plan to send all the Jews to the French colony of Madagascar (an African Island), came about in 1940 after Germany conquered France and thus controlled the island. But I learned that this terrific idea originated in 1885! A German nationalist Paul de Lagarde suggested that all eastern European Jews be shipped to Madagascar.
After Germany attacked the Soviet Union, it is well known that they took millions of Soviet soldiers as prisoners. Sam was one of them – captured in June of 1941 after the initial attack. Sam described his short stay in the POW camp in Zembrow as one where they lay on the ground to sleep, were fed very little food and had only small amounts of water to drink. This inhumane treatment of captured Soviet soldiers was repeated in POW camps throughout eastern Poland and the Soviet Union. The exhibit has this photo of Soviet soldiers in a German POW camp – gives a visual to the imagined horrific situation.
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At the end of the war, the Germans destroyed much of Auschwitz/Birkenau, especially the gas chambers and the crematoria. However, in the ruins of the Crematorium 2, a shower head used to gas the victims was found. It is chillingly on display.
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Another artifact that nearly brought me to tears is this Tzitzit – tallit kattan – that was hidden by an Auschwitz inmate and made it out of the camp. It is here to testify to the resilience of the Jewish people.
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Finally, I will share that the location of the Museum is purposeful. As you look out the window, you see New York Harbor and Lady Liberty. It was this statue that welcomed many of the survivors of the Holocaust, including Sam, Esther and Faiga Goldberg on May 28, 1949.
In 5 days – May 28, 2019 – it will be the 70th anniversary of the Goldberg family’s arrival in America. Happy Anniversary!
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