9/16/02

A Day in Treblinka

Jacek looked up the trains and I was off in the am for my first camp site. The train ride was really cool. Travelling through Poland is wild. I have a few other friends who dig old, crumbly things, things that we see in Eastern European movies, and that's all over Poland. The train 'stations' were sometimes just these little wooden huts with rotting wood and signs to match. I'd see peasant-type people on the way. The train ride was nice, with the cars having these little rooms with sliding doors like in James Bond movies.

Treblinka is about 62 miles northeast of Warsaw. I saw the sign for Malkinia and jumped out into an old, crumbly weedy station. Luckily I had studied some Polish first and was able to ask for a taksowka (taxi) and found one. The driver knew NO ENGLISH but he understood 'Treblinka.' The ride there was wild. He rode FAST along these bumpy roads, and onto this teeny tiny little bridge that was actually crooked that had railway tracks on it. Only one car, or train, at a time, then through this little metal gate so big cars and trucks won't ruin the road more. We got neat the camp and the signs as I've seen them on the internet are all still there. We got to the parkway and the driver said he would wait. Or rather he said something, and I looked up 'to wait' in my polsku-angielsku dictionary.

The little teeny tiny wooden 'muzeum' hut had some postcards, a map to the various city stones in the camp site, a stapled book in Polish, and Samuel Willemburg's 'Revolt in Treblinka.' I videod the map on the way in, walked down the path, and found the stone railway, reconstructing the route the trains took into the camp. The large boulders showing the original borders of the camp (The camp was laid out in a trapezoidal rectangle 1,312 feet wide by 1,968 feet long) were off to the side of a giant concrete 'entranceway' into the camp. I jumped along the rail markers and up onto the reconstructed train platform. There was a mess of trees and I walked down looking in that direction and the monolith disclosed itself just past a grove of trees.

For someone like me who's been reading and watching all this Holocaust stuff, it was breathtaking to actually see it, to know I was actually here, that this is really where Treblinka happened. And there was the monolith. Wow. I dragged out my camera equipment but I think I missed getting this trees-to-monolith shot. Next time.

Treblinka opened for operations July 23, 1942, which was the same day that mass transports began out of the Warsaw Ghetto. They have a map up showing where all the stuff was from the chambers to the burning pyres to the zoo. The zoo was actually really small. I think just big enough to house a couple bears or deer or whatever and feed the animals in front of the prisoners. Those selected for immediate death never saw anything but the platform, the undressing room and the chambers themselves.

The Treblinka memorial is made up of the reconstructed railway markers, which are large heavy slabs of stone, including the spur into the camp, the platform, the monolith on top of where the gas chambers were, a big black melted wooden thing where they burned the corpses on pyres, and 17,000 stones arranged in a circle and around the monolith and all around the camp site, many with names of Polish towns where the Nazis liquidated the Jewish populations, along with Poles they wanted destroyed.

I walked through the stones for quite a while, every now and then pausing to look up at all the trees around the camp. I only saw two visitors heading down the Black Road to the Treblinka work camp (established before the extermination camp), and two Poles, I think father and son, and a young man and woman, maybe Pole also, entered the camp while I was there. A very calm, cool day at the Treblinka memorial.

Treblinka probably would’ve lasted longer if not for the August 2, 1943 uprising. The Germans began dismantling the camp soon after approximately 750 inmates escaped (the last transports arrived August 19, 1943), and most of those were hunted down and shot, with about 70 surviving until liberation. The entire establishment was demolished, trees were planted, and a farm was set up and a Ukrainian peasant family installed in the small house there. I think I read the owners set fire to this house in 1944.

The numbers of Jews estimated murdered at Treblinka from its opening of July 1942 to its closure in August 1943 is between 700,000 and 1,200,000, with most reporting 850,000 as the number.

I would’ve spent more time but Krzys thought there were only two trains coming back. Amazingly my cab driver had sat there the entire 2.5 hours I was in the camp, and he didn’t charge me a dime extra. But he probably made more in one day than he usually does all week (total cabs were about $25).

This whole trip really was just a feet-getting-wet sort of enterprise. Now I really want to study everything I know even more, maybe even go with a Polish guide, and maybe a car so I don’t have to worry about the train schedules (even though they run every hour). I really do like taking trains through Poland, at least when they have the comfy cushions and separate compartments.

I got off the train at Warszawa Wilenska instead of Centralna and Jacek and Krzys said they'd meet me there. I went outside to wait and there was a small crowd outside the mall that sits above the train station. The crowd started to run, which seemed peculiar, with two young men following them. Then CRACK! CRACK! two gunshots went off, the men landed on their faces, and the cops, with guns pointed up, arrested them both. Shoplifters I guess. Everything resumed to normal. Reminded me of the New York I barely got to know in 1991. Capitalism's been pushed onto Warsaw a bit quickly and the adjustment will take some time.

Foto Fun: Shade at Treblinka

Flight and Arrival in Warsaw

9/13-15/02

Wow! Off to Warsaw! The line at LOT at JFK was pretty long. Really quickly I saw how different everyone was. The faces were different. I was definitely in a line of Polish people. The line took about an hour to check in. All was cool and calm though. I didn’t notice people bitching. Everyone seemed like they just knew it took this long and this is how it is.

The flight was very comfortable. I was afraid of travelling for 8 hours but LOT’s flight crew are great and they served REAL FOOD. They also walk up and down with baskets of various rolls. I actually looked forward to my next flights with LOT just for the food. If I could pop onto a LOT airplane for dinner every night I’d be quite happy.

I barely noticed the 8 hours. I talked with a couple Poles, and the couple in front of me was on their way to Israel by way of Warsaw. The man mentioned Stephen King and it turned out that this man is a pilot for a personal air carrier and flies the writer around the country. Kinda fun. He also had his own World War II screenplay that he’s built a website for which I’ve of course forgotten. I got his card so I’ll probably post the URL later.

I noticed a lot of behavioral differences on the way, and the biggest was how if one person needed to go past another, they just went, without protest from the person being pushed past. There was no ‘how dare you!’ or ‘did you see what he did!’ They just went. It just felt like there was more of an understanding and acceptance of what’s needed to survive rather than feeling like you’re being usurped or pushed around. America is a different place.

The landing was greeted with applause and after passing through the passport check and going through the ‘nothing to declare’ customs line Jacek and Krzys greeted me and we called a cab service. Warsaw was gray and rainy that first day. I barely rested an hour at their flat before we went to the music school Krzys teaches at and I had my first REAL Polish kielbasy. Wow! I was able to cut right through it with a soft touch. It was unlike any sausage I had ever had before. And the beer! Warka! Tasted like fruit punch, like real grains. Incredible!

We had a short walk through Stare Miasto (Old Town) and then I crashed for the rest of the night. Sunday we went back to Stare Miasto, luckily with some sun in the air.

Pretty much the entire city of Warsaw was destroyed by the Nazis during World War II. Stare Miasto was rebuilt from old photographs and diagrams and walking through these narrow, bricked streets I had a better picture of Nazis rousting Jews and Poles from their homes. We ate an incredible meal with the best zurek I’ve ever had, served in hollowed-out bread as bowls. (Zurek is a sour cream soup made with hard-boiled egg and kielbasy). The entire meal for three people in this great place was around $15 US. Can’t beat that!

We also walked over the Umschlagplatz memorial, which is the actual location where the Jews would wait for hours, up to 6,000 Jews in this small area at a time, until the trains arrived to take them to Treblinka for ‘work.’ Treblinka was actually a death camp and most of the victims were immediately gassed upon arrival. We also walked past the Warsaw Ghetto Fighters Memorial which is right in the middle of a residential district, surrounded by a beautiful park with colorful flowers.

We then saw Roman Polanski’s new film ‘The Pianist.’ It was awesome seeing a few of the places just walking around Warsaw when we went. The Umschlagplatz buildings are still there and we took pics. I was very happy with the film Not ‘weird’ Polanski, that’s been gone for awhile, but some very Polanski moments, and a great straightforward telling of Szpilman’s intense book.

October 3, 2002

I meant to post here during my trip throughout Poland and to Paris, but I became quite overwhelmed with the whole experience, so the stories will come out in bits throughout the days. I'm still tired, readjusting to the US schedule.

Went to the Clive Barker signing last night at Barnes & Noble. He sure is a swell guy. His husband David and this icky publicist guy in a suit that looks like he has to pay to have sex hovered over the table. I'm surprised at Clive's memory because he remembers more of our quick meetings in the past than I do! Nice guy.

Tonight we're going to a DVD release party for our friend Doug Langway's Raising Heroes, a pretty cool ultra-low-budget movie starring his lover Henry White. Gay guys with guns, a fun concept.

I've been scanning the slides from the trip and will post some of those too. The whole thing was really smart and great to do. I'm really into the travelling thing now. I actually want to return to each of the places I went to in Poland, so I think next time a full two weeks there is needed. Even though I also want to go to Bratislava, Budapest, Belgrade, etc. etc.