Advertisement
Published: November 9th 2006
Its snowing here. I woke up to a coat of whiteness on all of the rooftops in Krakow. What a bizarre sight for this Texas girl in November!!! It solidified our decision to go to Berlin TODAY. The cheapest option is to go by bus for 11 hours from Krakow. It will be a long day. It did make me glad that we did Auschwitz and toured Krakow BEFORE the snow and that we came to Poland early in the trip.
Yesterday was a holiday throughout Poland-it was All Saints Day. It is similar to the Mexican holiday Dia de los Muertos, or day of the dead. EVERYTHING is closed except the flower shops. We had to go to the train station to find food! The Poles commemorate the dead by lighting candles and placing huge bunches of flowers on their relatives' graves. We took a walking tour though the largest cemetery in Krakow (where Pope John Paul's family is buried) at night and saw thousands of candles and flowers. The trash cans were overflowing with bags that the families had used to bring the candles in. Each grave had at least 5 candles on it and no grave
went unlighted. The scene at night was incredible.
It was the most amazing thing I had seen on our entire European journey.
I think it was the most amazing because it was something created by humans. It is incredible to see the Irish coast and the mountains in Scotland-but to see that every single person in the city had come to remember their families was far more moving than water and stone.
The headstones here have lists of names-because all of the bodies are buried above ground in vaults, on top of each other. Many of them were between 1942-1945 and say Auschwitz. It definitely brought home my experience at the concentration camp. Some friends from the hostel talked about a Jewish cemetery they went to who had no candles and was completely overgrown, because there was no one left after the Holocaust to take care of it. All of the Jews had moved out of the city or been killed.
The guide described to me what a massive undertaking it was to clean up the cemeteries-they start on the weekend and have massive plows that take the candles away. There was a statue
to commemorate the victims of communism. There were hundreds of candles there. The guide said that the groundskeepers probably had to take away half of them earlier in the day so that there could be walking room on the sidewalk.
Its such a collective effort on behalf of the Polish to remember their ancestors every single year, on the same day. My thoughts about death and how to remember are changing. I think that our American culture focuses on the wrong aspects-being stoic, wearing black, being somber and silently suffering and grieving a loved one. I think that we should look back with a celebration of life and we should come back year after year to commemorate and remember the life that they lived. We should express our feelings and actively participate in order to remember.
I like the Jewish tradition where they come back one year later and have the headstone unveiled. Every time someone visits the grave, they leave a smooth, polished rock. After some time, the gravestones have tons of rocks on them: a permanent testament to those who have come back to say hello.
I will try to put pictures up
when I have the capability. It was an incredible night and Im so glad I am able to share it with all of you (even if it is through the internet). Peace be with ya.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.178s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 12; qc: 71; dbt: 0.0822s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Stephanie Perry
non-member comment
How Beautiful
I can't wait to see those pics of the candles on the graves... you are such a wonderful writer Rachel...you should consider being an author.