[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 133 (Wednesday, August 9, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12106-S12109]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                         ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS

                                 ______


REMARKS BY HADASSAH LIEBERMAN, A U.S. DELEGATE TO THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY 
              COMMEMORATION OF THE LIBERATION OF AUSCHWITZ

 Mr. DODD. Mr. President, earlier this year, the world 
commemorated the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz 
concentration camp. A delegation of Americans, along with delegations 
from all over the world, attended memorial services at Auschwitz and in 
Birkeneau--services to remember those who had died, not just the 
individuals, but the entire peoples, and the disgust of their torture 
and annihilation.
  But the tragedy of the Holocaust is one we must remember every day, 
not just on the anniversaries of its specific elements. Because the 
survivors of this horror, and their children, live with it every day. 
Soon, they will be gone. We must remember for them. And we, the 
greatest democracy on Earth, must remember for the world. Only if we 
remember, will the Holocaust occur never again.
  So today, Mr. President, I wish to share with my colleagues and the 
American people the remarks of Hadassah Lieberman, who was one of the 
U.S. delegates to the 50th anniversary commemoration. Most of us know 
Hadassah as the wife of our good friend and my fellow Senator from 
Connecticut. But Hadassah is also the daughter of Holocaust survivors. 
Her father escaped; her mother was liberated from Auschwitz. They 
survived to tell the stories. Millions did not.
  Mr. President, no matter how many times one listens to accounts of 
atrocities committed during the Holocaust, the stories remain just as 
awful, just as horrid, as the first time they are heard. I remember the 
outrage I felt, sitting around the dinner table, at stories recounted 
in letters from my father, who served as the executive trial counsel at 
the Nuremberg trials. So we should be grateful to Hadassah for writing 
about her intensely personal feelings as she reflected on her mother's 
stories, the crimes endured by her people, and her triumph in being 
alive 50 years later.
  Indeed, I am glad Hadassah is present to share her experience with 
us, and I ask to have her accounting printed in the Record.
  The material follows:
  Journey to the Planet of Death--A Daughter of Survivors Visits the 
                        Hearth of the Holocaust

                    (By Hadassah Freilich Lieberman)

       It was a Thursday morning, January 19th, and I was at work 
     when the call came from the White House. Would I join the 
     American delegation to the 50th anniversary of the liberation 
     of Auschwitz? The invitation took my breath away, and in a 
     cracked voice I responded, ``If I can go...I have to go.''
       My first thoughts were of my schedule, job, six-year old 
     daughter Hana, and my husband, Joe. The delegation was 
     leaving in just five days. Not much time to prepare for what 
     might be the most important journey of my life, for my 
     mother, Ella Wieder Freilich, is an Auschwitz survivor.
       From childhood, I had heard her intersperse stories of that 
     distant, horrific concentration camp in our everyday American 
     lives. I always listened deeply, although she may have 
     thought from my body language that I was removed. I was 
     always afraid she might cry too much if she continued her 
     dark memories...but the dreadful story would end abruptly and 
     we would continue the usual discourse about meals, or 
     clothes, or schools. The stories were seemingly disconnected, 
     plucked at random from her memory, but I had the feeling 
     there was much more there, left unsaid, in the dark, behind 
     curtains--memories that she could not, and perhaps still 
     cannot, find herself.
       As for my father, Rabbi Samuel Freilich, he was headed for 
     Auschwitz when he organized an escape of 20 men from a forced 
     march of slave laborers. He confronted memories of the 
     Holocaust head on, and wrote a book about it called ``The 
     Coldest Winter.'' But the experience of putting the story on 
     paper seemed to drain him of life, and he died soon after its 
     publication.
       He and my mother survived Auschwitz. Most of their 
     relatives and friends did not.
       Yet when the call came, I had not been thinking about the 
     upcoming anniversary. I don't spend my life contemplating 
     these things all the time, despite (or because of?) the fact 
     I am the daughter of survivors. My very existence is a 
     testimony to survival, and there has always been an 
     undercurrent of striving to be strong and successful in my 
     life (a trait I've seen in many children of survivors). But 
     the specific thought of the Holocaust is not often at the 
     front of my mind. I had never been to any of the camps, and 
     had not planned to go. The only place I did visit was 
     Czechoslovakia, because I wanted to go to places where my 
     family had lived and where I was born. I didn't have a desire 
     to go to the places where my family was sent to die.
       So the invitation took me by surprise. The mundane 
     logistical problems associated with a major trip mixed with 
     the painful memories, made it difficult to decide whether to 
     go. I called my mother, who now lives in Riverdale, New York, 
     and she was very apprehensive. She feared for my safety. Who 
     will go with you? Who will you stand with at the ceremony? 
     Why is it necessary for you to go?
       But in the end I concluded that she is why it was necessary 
     for me to go. She and my father and their relatives and 
     friends. As I said when the call first came: I had to go.
       These were my thoughts along the way:


              Tuesday, January 24: In-flight to Frankfurt

       The last few days, the only preparation time I have, I cry 
     often. I call Auschwitz survivors, friends of my mother, for 
     words of support and connection. For the most part, they 
     remain quiet, saying simply, ``Go in peace. Bring back 
     peace.''
       I am on a Delta flight and I've just finished reading some 
     articles from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial in Washington--
     excruciating material--describing concentration camps in the 
     vicinity of Auschwitz and Birkeneau. I wipe the tears from my 
     eyes, mesmerized by this world of cruelty and torture, 
     realizing I am soon to visit this symbol of all evil.
       The descriptions of the concentration camps are 
     incomprehensible--they are of another world, another place. 
     The screen above me plays out O.J. Simpson's trial, Japan's 
     earthquake. I watch the survivors from Japan and wonder, how 
     can you not feel for these people? How can you not feel for 
     their homelessness, their cold, their devastation...and I 
     don't understand what happened in these camps.
       I find myself looking at a picture of Joe in The Washington 
     Post...sweet darling...The picture make me feel stronger. Now 
     Newt Gingrich on the screen. And Chris Dodd. The world is so 
     intrusive and me...makes it hard to come back...so I drink 
     another glass of wine.
       Before I left, my mother asked me to bring back dirt from 
     Auschwitz. Nearly all of her family was burnt and pulverized 
     into that dirt, that stinking evil earth. . . .do you bring 
     it home? Is this their grave, entire families? Where are they 
     buried? The ovens? The crematoria? The pits? Fifty years 
     later the stench and screams will not be there.
       How evil can people be? Watch the news and you see in small 
     snippets: Chechnya, Bosnia, the Middle East. But the sheer 
     enormity of this evil that I am traveling to witness is 
     incomprehensible. The enormity and the organization of it 
     all. I know there are criminals who do ugly, horrible things 
     every day. But the Holocaust was the product of a whole 
     criminal society, a society of people who were educated, 
     literate, loved music, loved art, loved literature. And look 
     what they did with such efficiency, with so little evidence 
     of guilt.


      wednesday, january 25: frankfurt, germany and warsaw, poland

       A 3-hour layover in the morning in Frankfurt at the new, 
     empty airport. So empty and antiseptic it is somehow scary to 
     me. All the signs are in German. It is my first time in 
     Germany, and I'm feeling guarded inside myself. I speak 
     mostly with a woman from the State Department, telling her 
     about my background, my mother. I pick up the newspaper, the 
     Frankfurter, Allgemeine, Zeitung, and there is a picture of 
     Hitler. It was taken in 1944, and he looked tired, old. It 
     shows him viewing something with a magnifying glass. He knew 
     then his war was failing. But he pushed on with the Final 
     Solution, as furiously as ever. It was 1944 that my mother 
     was herded to the camps. Even as the war effort was 
     faltering, the Nazis pressed on to kill the Jews because it 
     was an ideology, to them, a mission above and beyond the war 
     itself.
       In the afternoon, we fly to Warsaw and are picked up by 
     embassy people there and brought to the Marriott hotel, where 
     delegates from around the world are also arriving. That 
     evening, I go to a reception at the residence of the U.S. 
     Ambassador to Poland, Nicholas Rey, along with some of the 
     other members of our delegation, including: Miles Lerman of 
     the United States Holocaust Memorial Council and his wife 
     Chris, an Auschwitz survivor; Ambassador John Kordek, now 

[[Page S12107]]
     with DePaul University; and Jan Nowak, director of the Polish American 
     Congress. The head of our delegation. Mobel Peace Prize 
     winner Elie Wiesel, and Assistant Secretary of State Richard 
     Holbrooke are to join us the next day.
       We begin to talk about the controversy surrounding the 
     ceremony planned for Friday. Since the Communists left, the 
     Poles have been more open about the Jews in the camps. But 
     Auschwitz was initially for Polish political prisoners. Poles 
     look at Auschwitz as a national shrine and museum. And it 
     seems as though they wanted the commemoration to be more of a 
     generic event, with no special emphasis on Jewish deaths. No 
     praying of the Kaddish. In response, some are planning an 
     alternative service on Thursday at Birkeneau. Preposterous, 
     but true, Elie's words ``not all victims were Jews, but all 
     Jews were victims'' need to be repeated over and over again.
       I am concerned about the controversy but, at the same time, 
     I do not want to lose sight of the larger reason for our 
     being there. I am moved to say that I understand there's 
     controversy around us. But we should not forget how 
     incredible it is that we're all here together, from all over 
     the world, to commemorate something that happened 50 years 
     ago that, at the time, nobody wanted to hear about. We need 
     to talk about the details, but we should not lose sight of 
     the fact that we're here as representatives of our country, 
     bearing witness to what happened to so many people.
       We decide that those of us who wanted to go to alternative 
     service will meet the next morning in a hotel lobby. I have 
     mixed feelings. As a Jew and the daughter of survivors, I 
     want to go to Birkeneau. As a member of the official American 
     delegation, I am worried that it might detract from protocol 
     if I deviate from the schedule, which includes a ceremony at 
     Jagiellonian University in Krakow. But everyone assures me 
     that the American delegation will be sufficiently represented 
     at the university.


       thursday, january 26: warsaw, krakow, birkeneau, auschwitz

       We arrive in Krakow, a city left untouched by bombing. Some 
     say it is a ``small Prague.'' Krakow; over 25% of its 
     population was Jewish and 90% of its Jews were annihilated. 
     Now tours are advertised to show where Spielberg filmed in 
     the Jewish ``ghetto'' area. The Ariel Cafe is booming with 
     Eastern European/Jewish foods and Yiddish music. The 
     synagogue is old--dating back to the 1400's. Stone markers 
     from Jewish cemeteries are preserved as part of the wall.
       I check into the Forum Hotel in the city. Leaders from all 
     over the world are arriving. . . Ambassadors, Presidents, 
     Kings, Prime Ministers. Security measures are being put into 
     place. Metal detectors put together. Dogs were brought in. I 
     find real irony in the contrast: here it is fifty years 
     later, and all the forces of authority are being marshalled 
     for our protection, whereas before they would have come to 
     seep us up.
       All the security precautions also remind me of my mother's 
     concerns for my safety. I don't personally feel threatened, 
     but I begin to realize what she was talking about. I 
     understand we have to be careful, and I know what she felt 
     about my coming here, and how horrible it would be if 
     something happens to me where so much had happened to her. 
     The double-suicide bombing in Israel occurred just days 
     before, reminding us that, for Jews, the world can still be a 
     very dangerous place.
       News of the alternative ceremony has been spreading by 
     word-of-mouth, and interest in it grows. Originally planned 
     by Jewish organizations and Israelis, it takes on a life of 
     its own, and suddenly includes everyone. Not only the 
     American Ambassador and other delegates from the American 
     group, but every delegation from around the world decides to 
     send representatives.
       And so I go to Birkeneau, 50 years after my mother left.
       No one bombed the tracks then. No one ``knew.'' No one 
     seemed to care, or reach out. And now, all the nations of the 
     world are represented as the buses travel to Birkeneau. We 
     travel with the Israeli delegation in front of us, escorted 
     by heavy security. Elie Wiesel, Ambassador and Mrs. Rey, Jan 
     Nowak (who tells me he will go because he must go as a Pole 
     and a Catholic. He was one of the first to alert British 
     leaders to the tragedy of the Holocaust in World War II).
       Our bus pulls into a large parking area and we exit along 
     with hundreds and hundreds of others. We begin to walk in our 
     own groups. I walk with Elie Wiesel, the Ambassador and his 
     wife, and the others over the rocky, muddy ground. I am arm 
     in arm with Sigmund Strochlitz of Birkeneau and Connecticut, 
     a friend of Elie's. He reminds me a little bit of my father.
       Where are we? I look around and there are mobs of people 
     around us walking in stony silence. We were warned about the 
     coldness of the camps. But the weather is warm in Krakow . . 
     . until we walk further into the camps and then the coldness 
     begins to set in--a different kind of coldness, eerie . . . 
     heavy. Suddenly, I realize we are walking near railroad 
     tracks and Sigmund begins to speak. ``This was where the 
     train ran into the camp. The train was able to take people 
     straight to the end--to the crematoria.'' This is Birkeneau, 
     a death camp. An enormously vast space that was devoted to 
     murder. I thought again of what my mother had told me, vague 
     disorganized references to gassings, chimneys, SS, Kappos. 
     Her entire family exterminated . . . sweet nieces and nephews 
     murdered.
       My mother's house was one of the homes the Germans occupied 
     in the 1940's. They put phone lines into the walls and set up 
     headquarters for that Carpathian mountain town of Rachov. 
     They posted notes throughout the small town telling its 
     Jewish inhabitants that they were to report to a local public 
     school. They could take whatever they could carry in their 
     hands.
       They then left for the Hungarian ghetto Mateszalka, where 
     she remembered a German beating her sister's head. They were 
     then told to line up alphabetically to board trains to 
     Koschow. When some of the local people saw them as the trains 
     went by, they shouted ``You'll never return.'' She still 
     remembers the children's screams for food on the four day 
     train ride. They wanted to throw her off the train and a 
     woman who now lives in New Jersey asked them to ``Let her be, 
     she is a beautiful young woman.'' Today my mother says, 
     ``Half of me doesn't want to remember so that I can remain 
     alive.''
       She told me that when they came to Auschwitz, some of the 
     Jews who worked at the trains said in Yiddish ``You are fools 
     to have come here.'' She remembers how they sent her family 
     in different directions; she was sent one way and the rest of 
     the family went the other way. As soon as her mother 
     realized, she sent an older sister for ``Ella.'' ``Find 
     her.'' And when the older sister found Ella she joined her in 
     the line of life and the two of them remained alive. They 
     sheared everyone's hair . . . she remembers the screams when 
     they were sent to a shower that they thought would be gas and 
     there was a ``mistake'' and they remained alive. She 
     remembers the piles of bodies left in their clothes, a 
     Kappo's beating, the heads and the feet in the bunkers. She 
     remembers falling deathly ill from eating soup that had human 
     bones in the bowl.
       Auschwitz was not, for my mother, a final destination. She 
     was sent to the Stuttgart vicinity, to the Wehrmacht Fabrik, 
     where they worked as slave laborers at night and slept during 
     the day. When a Nazi asked her what her greatest wish was . . 
     . she was surprised to answer ``sleeping one night''. He put 
     her into the office to work with other women who knew 
     different languages. Eventually, she was liberated from a 
     sub-camp of Dachau, and took a train back to Prague. In the 
     days following her return, she and hundreds of others would 
     run to the train station whenever a new train pulled in, 
     desperately searching for family, friends, familiar faces. 
     But they were never there. And then she stopped running. For 
     two years or more thereafter, she would go to the basement 
     and cry until she couldn't cry anymore. She met my father in 
     post-war Prague and they soon married. Not long after I was 
     born, they traveled to America, sensing--correctly--that the 
     new Communist rulers would not be kind to the Jews.
       I knew all of this--the nightmares, the casual references 
     like ``They all died,'' the guilt in remaining a survivor, 
     the questions. I think again of the soil she wants me to 
     bring back. ``They have no graves,'' she told me. ``It would 
     have been better if the mothers were separated from the 
     children so they didn't have to see them murdered in front of 
     their eyes.'' So, I should have been prepared, no? I should 
     have been ready. Although we never talked in great detail 
     about the camps, I was totally aware. I always knew about my 
     background. I was always so aware of the Holocaust. I bear 
     some of the hidden scars of a survivor's child. And so, why 
     was I so shocked? Why? Why is the walk into Birkeneau so 
     terrifying? Let me take you with me.
       First, we crowd together as delegates for the most part, 
     others from the survivors community. I notice a group with a 
     banner that seemed odd. I ask Sigmund and he tells me that 
     this is the banner of ``Mengele's children,'' the survivors 
     of Mengele's experiments--his ``children'' and ``children's 
     children.'' Then Sigmund shows me where Mengele had stood to 
     make his selection. He shows me the women's and men's 
     barracks. We keep walking forward. The ``survivor'' in me 
     stands in awe of what kind of world my parents had lived 
     through.
       I have arrived at a different planet. This is not the moon. 
     The moon has been explored. This is a distant planet and 
     those who journeyed there for the entire trip are now dead 
     ashes near the crematoria. The others had to repress, to 
     black out, to forget, in order to go on. This planet is one 
     of surrealistic impressions. The smoke stacks. The endless 
     fields with numbered barracks. The latrine house with round 
     holes for toilets in two rows, each nearly touching the other 
     but with enough space for a sadistic Kappo to walk down the 
     middle and whip the women who took too long to defecate. The 
     bunks with beds . . . eight or nine in each small slab. And 
     we continue to walk.
       I feel the people around me, walking down this frightful 
     road. The American Ambassador to Poland had chosen to walk 
     with us for this ``unofficial'' event. The American in me, 
     yearning to believe and hope that the world will stand united 
     against cruelty of this proportion. The Jew in me, fearful of 
     the repetitions of history . . . the Israeli flag . . . a 
     refuge . . . a homeland. . . . The wife of a United States 
     Senator, proud to be part of the American delegation, led by 
     Elie Wiesel, bearing witness to history.
       We continue our walk until we arrive at the crematoria. 
     What can I say? I hold Sigmund's arm tightly. What can I say? 
     I 

[[Page S12108]]
     came unequipped to the planet of death, of torture, of ``endless 
     nights'' as our delegation leader describes it. Everything in 
     front of me told me you could never believe anything after 
     this place. ``Where was God?'' I remember my father asking. 
     ``Where was God?'' and he, a Rabbi, believed deeply in Him. 
     How could you ever believe again? ``Faith was the cornerstone 
     of our existence,'' he wrote in his memoirs. ``It was 
     inconceivable to us that a merciful father could ignore the 
     pitiful pleas of his children. When we were delivered to the 
     Nazis and the redemption did not occur, we fell into despair; 
     life lost meaning . . . We became an orphan people without a 
     heavenly father.''
       All of these people around me walk with us in silence. The 
     program takes place, people speak, people shout. Kaddish is 
     said and we think perhaps it would have been better to keep 
     our silence--just Kaddish and no words. But then we sing 
     Hatikvah and march back to the buses.
       Auschwitz is next. A tour of one hour. I find a stone for 
     Dad's grave. I decide not to bring the soil back with me. I 
     had brought a plastic bag, thinking I might. But I decide no. 
     I will not bring soil from the planet of death. Several 
     people tell me about the bones found in the soil 50 years 
     later, some of them the bones of babies. If one is a 
     believer, then the souls have ascended to heaven and what is 
     left should be left behind in peace on Earth. These people, 
     the unsuspecting, the victims, the K'doshim (the holy) were 
     not left behind in peace. I will not take their soil. I don't 
     want any part of that soil.
       Yet a rock endures from the beginning. It waits silently, 
     protectively, coldly. The rock was there before, and the rock 
     is there after and the rock bears witness. This egg-shaped 
     rock will go on my father's grave. It is small, Daddy, but it 
     is tough, like you. It survives. And remember, in your 
     memoirs, when you asked ``who should say the mourner's 
     Kaddish?'' Daddy, we said Kaddish as we stood at Birkeneau * 
     * * our voices, the young, the old, the victims, the 
     onlookers stood together.
       Elie Wiesel's friend, Pierre of France goes with me to 
     Auschwitz. A burly large man, somewhat irreverent, quite 
     cynical and sarcastic, takes me to his father's place at 
     Auschwitz. Block 11--the death bunker was the destination of 
     his father who knew 12 languages and served as schreiber 
     (translator) for the place. He tells me about his father's 
     story. When his Hungarian father was in Auschwitz, a young 
     beautiful woman was brought in. He helped her for the night. 
     Somehow they managed to fall in love and as she left she told 
     him where she was from in Paris and that she would meet him 
     in Paris after the war. When he survived he went to the 
     address. She was there, they met, they married.
       Short stories, sweet stories, bitter and unreal. We are 
     shown an enormous room filed with suitcases that are all 
     labeled with the names of the people to whom they once 
     belonged. We see piles of hair. Eyeglasses. Wooden legs. 
     Prayer shawls. It reminds me of the United States Holocaust 
     Memorial Museum in Washington, where similar exhibits exist. 
     I would wonder from time to time why Washington should be the 
     site for such a museum? What is appropriate about the 
     nation's capital? But here in Auschwitz, I see the answer. I 
     understand the importance of keeping evidence of the evil on 
     display, and I also understand that there is a better chance 
     of such a museum remaining open in Washington than in almost 
     any other place in the world. Who knows what will happen here 
     at Auschwitz in years to come? We already know how the 
     Communists kept a lid on the enormity of crimes against the 
     Jews. We do not know what the future will hold, and so it is 
     right for us to have a museum of the Holocaust at the center 
     of the world's oldest, greatest, strongest democracy.
       Thursday night, we are taken to a concert at the Slowacki 
     Theater in Krakow, where we hear an orchestral piece written 
     in Poland for the occasion. It is so jagged and jarring--
     deliberately created so, because it was about the camps--that 
     I want to get out of there. I had gotten through the day but 
     now I need to run. It's so stifling. Finally, it's over, and 
     we think, ``oh God, let's just sit down and have some life.'' 
     So we go to the Ariel Cafe. Let me sit here and be part of 
     life again. Elie Wiesel is here and I recall how often he 
     talks about night, and now we're in the land of night and we 
     have to keep a certain part of ourselves in the night so that 
     we don't lost it. Elie writes from that darkness, yet wants 
     us to hope for the future, for our children. Surrounded by 
     the light and life and sights and sounds of the Ariel Cafe, I 
     want to be lively and have hope, but it is so hard.


                     Friday, January 27: Auschwitz

       On Friday we take buses that go directly to the crematoria 
     area at Auschwitz. I see Vaclav Havel on my bus. When we 
     arrive, there are so many people packed together, walking 
     forward, that it's hard to stand without being pushed. I 
     think to myself, irreverently, that after 50 years, people 
     are still pushing to get to the front of the line! I think, 
     too, that we could have been those people 50 years ago, told 
     to undress and have our hair cut! They were people like us 
     who walked into this camp.
       I see all the world's media gathered together, pushing for 
     position, for the best views, wanting to hear every word, and 
     I think, ``where were you 50 years ago when you were truly 
     needed?'' How different things might have been had videotapes 
     been smuggled out and played on television screens around the 
     world!
       After a few minutes, the crowd settles in. I stand near 
     Richard Holbrooke and Jan Nowak. The program features 
     representatives from many delegations and religions, 
     including our own delegation leader, Elie Wiesel. I am moved 
     when I hear the ceremony begin--after all--with Kaddish and 
     another Hebrew prayer for the dead, El Maleh. It is a change 
     in the program resulting from a meeting Elie had with Polish 
     President Lech Walesa the day before, as was a reference to 
     Jewish deaths in Walesa's speech.
       The formal tribute begins in the growing cold air. A 
     poignant moment occurs when the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of 
     Poland walk around to give the people hot coffee. The 
     elderly, in particular, reach out for cups. Watching these 
     very young children working so charitably 50 years after the 
     Holocaust gives us a warm feeling about the present and the 
     future, even as it conjures up memories of all the other 
     young children, in different kinds of uniforms, who died in 
     the past at this place. There was the story of the little boy 
     who jumped off a train bound for concentration camp with an 
     apple in his hand. The train was at a station, and the SS 
     caught him, took him by his legs and bashed him against the 
     train until he was dead. A few minutes later, one of the 
     murderers was seen casually eating the apple. And there was 
     the story my own father told me of the parents who tossed 
     their babies from the trains into the arms of strangers along 
     the side of the tracks hoping against hope that those 
     families would make a new home for their children.
       Tears come to my eyes as I contrast the moments. An 
     international display of solidarity, tribute, apology. Late, 
     painful and yet a moment of hope. Then, it is over, and 
     together we walk to our buses in the mud, past those in 
     prison uniforms, national costumes and mostly, plain street 
     clothes. All shoes and boots are covered with mud.


      Friday Night and Saturday, January 27 & 28: Shabbat, Krakow

       When I learned before the trip that I had to remain in 
     Poland for Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest, alone and far 
     from my family and synagogue, I worried about what I would 
     do. But I am not alone, and, as it turns out, staying in 
     Krakow becomes one of the most special Shabbats I have ever 
     experienced. After the marches, the ceremonies, the journey 
     to the other planet, to stop for Shabbat and to share the 
     special moment with people from all over the world gives 
     meaning to us all. And so we sit together on Friday night 
     with the chief rabbis of England, Poland, Ukraine, Italy, and 
     Jews from England, Germany, Krakow, Warsaw, Israel, America. 
     Rabbi Avi Weiss is with us, the activist who protested the 
     original plans for the ceremony and who has become so much of 
     a celebrity that when the police arrested him
      in Poland for tearing down a sign that said ``Protect the 
     cross against Jews and Masons,'' they asked to take his 
     picture and have his autograph!
       We all sing and pray together and tell stories. 
     Particularly poignant are the stories of the young Eastern 
     European Jews sitting around the tables. Since the fall of 
     Communism, they are learning of their Jewishness. Their 
     family trees are deeply fractured by the Holocaust; many have 
     no grandparents. Some were born to parents who were hidden 
     with Polish Catholic families when their parents were sent to 
     their death. Another learned just three years ago that he was 
     Jewish. Perhaps some of them are descended from the babies 
     tossed from the death trains. How ironic that Hitler's 
     criteria for determining who was Jewish--in some instances, 
     quite remote--is the same relationship many of these children 
     have to Judaism.
       The next day, on our way to services, I walk behind Rabbi 
     Weiss and see him with his prayer shawl over his jacket. 
     People along the way, not accustomed to seeing Jews, stop and 
     stare. Some take pictures. And I think, ``is it gaudy, is it 
     showy, is it obnoxious for our group to be so obvious in such 
     a place?'' That is my first reaction, but then I remember 
     Auschwitz and the hanging prayer shawls taken from the Jews 
     who were annihilated, and now the descendants are alive and 
     walking to the synagogue, and it seems right.
       Our Shabbot services in the hotel are, strangely enough, 
     joyous. We are all happy to be together, to be alive. We feel 
     the history of the tragedy in our depths. We share our common 
     history, common pain. We all have questions and no real 
     answers. As we call out in our prayers, rising above and 
     beyond the evil planet of Auschwitz and Birkeneau, the planet 
     that bears witness to our people's destruction, we all turn 
     to the very God that has not answered the prayers of our 
     parents and their parents as the crematoria burnt their 
     bodies into ashes.
       Nothing on that planet gives you faith, hope or answers. 
     Nothing there gives you hope for mankind. And yet, as I 
     walked with my fellow travellers that day, as I felt their 
     bodies near me, heard their feet in the mud and stone, 
     walking silently, I knew our walk was a prayer. Our walk 
     might defy--bear witness. Our walk might challenge any evils 
     as great as powerful as wicked, and so, on Friday night, we 
     all felt history around us. We were defying Hitler and his 
     henchmen. I 

[[Page S12109]]
     thought back to 1988, when I joined my husband on his first visit to 
     the historic chamber of the Senate, where the historian 
     lectured us about the famous figures in American history who 
     had occupied these seats. I looked at Joe and asked him what 
     he was thinking and he talked about how proud and honored he 
     was to be part of this rich history. ``What about you? What 
     are you thinking?'' he asked. ``About Hitler,'' I replied. 
     ``About how he tried to annihilate all the Jews, and here I 
     am on the floor of the Senate, the wife of a Senator. I am 
     thinking about throwing my fist up in the air in defiance of 
     Hitler.''
       That is the feeling I had again, more powerfully than ever 
     before, at Birkeneau and Auschwitz. We were rising above the 
     defiled and tortured and abandoned. We were free Jews singing 
     to God, responsible for one another.
       Am yisrael chai. The people of Israel live. The Israeli 
     flag was around us and we knew how great our need for a place 
     of refuge; wanting to trust, yet learning the bitter lessons 
     of history. We Americans know how special our country is, a 
     country where a Jew could become a Senator, and where his 
     wife, a survivor, can be chosen by the President to 
     participate in a commemoration of the liberation--the 
     destruction--of the planet of death.
       I had to go there. No matter how much you read, and how 
     much you hear about it, and how much you talk to your family 
     and parents--even if you are as close to the Holocaust as the 
     child of survivors--you have to go there and see this 
     horrendously evil, evil, evil place that stinks in its 
     profanity, that is so ugly it shakes your belief in 
     everything, your belief in mankind, your faith in God. You 
     will not understand. But you will know.
       Now, home with my family, I look forward to the day when I 
     will travel to my father's grave in New Jersey and place the 
     stone from Auschwitz on the ground that contains his earthly 
     remains, confident that this spirit survives in eternity, 
     never again to live on a planet of death. Never 
     again.
     

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