Jewish Poland 2nd day - Tykocin to Treblinka to Lublin - Tuesday 29 Nov 2016

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We woke up at 5.45 am as I had set the alarm but forgotten to change the timezone on my iPad. It had snowed overnight. Eventually we got a call at 6.45 am, davening at 7 am, breakfast and on the bus by 8 am was to be the schedule every day. Except today - the bus needed to be repaired. So we used our time to go round the breakfast table introducing ourselves. Of course this wasn’t all serious with lots of banter, so we started the day smiling - which was a good thing too as it was to be a hard day.

On the bus to Tykocin. Before the war Tykocin was a town with a very large Jewish community. We walked through the snow to the synagogue which is now a museum. Inside the synagogue Sara talked about the history of the town and how the Jews were taken away. The town had been established by King Władysław II Jagiełło because it is near a river and so transport was easy. Between the years of 1542 - 1941 were 400 years of continuity of Jews. Jews and Poles lived together harmoniously. In 1941 that ended when 3,000 Jews were rounded up and killed in 2 days.

Originally the synagogue and town's houses were made of wood. In 1642 the synagogue was rebuilt in concrete. During the war the Germans had pulled out all of the interior of the synagogue and used it as a storehouse. There are holes in the walls where they intended to insert explosives to blow up the building. It is interesting to notice how the interior seems very high, and this was an architectural achievement whilst keeping to the standard building restrictions which limited their height below that of the major churches or cathedrals.

Rav Zvi told us stories of the dilemmas on halachic issues which the rabbis had to contemplate during the war. For example should they blow shofar on Rosh Hashanah because the Jews had been ordered not to congregate. The interior walls were painted with verses of tehillim (psalms) and a verse of Lecho Dodi as sung on Friday night. The verses are depicted as torn pages from prayer books.

Rav Zvi started singing the tehillim and we all joined in with gusto. We ended up dancing and singing Am Yisroel Chai - the Nazis lost and the Jews ultimately survived. Some videos were recorded by members of our group, and one by Hilton D is included via Youtube.

We walked through the small square where 3,000 Jews were rounded up to be taken to the forest to be shot and buried in graves which they were made to dig themselves. We walked past a house with a stained glass window and a magen David - star of David. The square was where the Jewish market thrived on a Monday and Thursday. Today was Tuesday and a local market was being set up. We then drove to the Lopuchova forest to see the mass graves. The walk was down a slippery path and on the side of the road was an overturned car which had obviously taken the bend too fast and lost control. Don and I decided that I should stay on the bus to avoid the possibility of a similar accident. Don walked with the group and found the scene very unsettling.

Then we drove to Treblinka. En route the film "Escape from Sobibor" was played. I’m afraid that I can’t cope with these films and in order to retain my sanity I took to my knitting listening to Leonard Cohen songs. Treblinka functioned from 22 July 1941 to 1 August 1943 and exterminated 870,000 Jews there. Before we started our tour those who wished davened mincha whilst the others made loo stops. Loo stops grew to become a very important part of our tour. As one of our travellers remarked - when he drove through the US with his kids, he always refused to stop until the next scheduled stop. Now in 'later years' and the damp cold, he was very grateful for the stops! It was moments like these that eased the tension and helped us to get through the whole trip.

As we walked into Treblinka we saw a column of concrete blocks laid out flat over the old railway line like rail ties, and which also resembled a line of coffins. As we walked into the camp area we crossed the old railway line to a large field where there are 17,000 stones of all different shapes and sizes. 170 have the names of places engraved on them. The largest is the stone representing Warsaw because the largest number of Jews (300,000) came from there. One of the stones is unusual as it has the name of Janusz Korczak (see Day 1) an individual rather than a location. The camps at Treblinka, Sobibor and Belzek were all part of Operation Reinhardt, the secret Nazi plan to murder most of the Jews in occupied eastern Poland. We saw the cremation pits covered by stones made of basalt which look like burnt charcoal. Hardly anything of the extermination camp was preserved, save the railway unloading ramp where countless thousands of people disembarked each train and walked to their deaths.

We performed a tekes (ceremony) by the memorial erected in 1958 at the site of the former gas chambers. The memorial is a sculpture of a granite tower cracked down the middle and capped by a mushroom-like block carved with abstract reliefs and Jewish symbols. On one side are skulls and on the other side is engraved a Menorah which represents the Jews. Carrie read excerpts from her husband’s interview with his father and there were other readings of poems and the singing of songs and finally somebody recited kaddish.

Then, deep in thought, we went back on the bus. We drove to Lublin. Lublin was founded by Rabbi Meir Shapiro and became a centre of learning in Poland. Rav Zvi told us stories of the Yeshiva and Rabbi Shapiro. One of the things that Rabbi Shapiro initiated was Daf Yomi ie a page of Gomorrah a day. This started on Rosh Hashanah 1923. It takes 7.5 years to complete. Today it is studied not only by Rabbonim, yeshiva bokers and learned folks, but also by non Talmudic scholars, and (gasp, gasp) even women!!! Rabbi Shapiro wanted to build a “proper” Yeshiva where the boys could eat and sleep. The Yeshiva took six years to build and was finished in 1930. About 20,000 Jews went to the opening ceremony. Rabbi Shapiro died in 1934 from typhus at the age of 46. After davening aravit it was back on the road and another film I didn’t watch. As we were driving along I noticed a large villa-like building set back from the road. I thought that this building was totally out of character with the other houses. The bus did a U turn and we entered the grounds of this hotel. In fact this was the Luxor Hotel, our accommodation for the night. Here we ate our first meal catered by the local kosher caterer.

Then to bed - the end of a second full day.



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