The last few days have been tough. It started when we visited the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin and walked through the burial-size cement blocks of varying heights. The cement blocks stretch roughly 500x500 feet over descending and uneven ground. As you walk further into the memorial surrounded by looming cement blocks, you feel disconnected from the outside world -- alone. That aloneness turns terrible when you think about being Jewish under Nazi-rule facing the humiliation, the hunger, and the fact that any moment might be the moment that you are sent to a concentration camp to die.
Wilson and I have thought about death and suffering often in the past few days -- in addition to the Holocaust Memorial, we visited various parts of the remnants of the Berlin Wall and thought about those who died trying to escape the wall. And then we came to Krakow and it got worse. We've been to three museums in the past two days -- one museum showed modern human atrocities through photography (the Bunker Gallery), one museum expressed atrocities through contemporary art (MOCAK), and one museum discussed the atrocities of the Nazi occupation of Krakow from 1939-1945 within Schindler's factory (made famous by the movie Schindler's List).
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| The people that Schindler saved |
The Bunker Gallery displayed a powerful photo competition, World Press Photo, from the world's news and daily life of 2012. Some photos were so beautiful and uplifting: there were photos from daily life, the 2012 Olympics, and penguins magically propelling themselves up onto ice. But the photos of Syria were heartwrenching -- people fighting and dying in what used to be a Unesco World Heritage Site: Aleppo -- the pictures of the hurt and dead children left an anchor in my stomach. The Syria pictures were not the only pictures that made my heart wrench -- pictures told different stories of alzheimers, whale sharks inhaling plastic bags, a chained monkey with a doll head mask, an Iranian woman whose abusive husband had poured acid on her and their 3-year old daughter, and the Somalia national basketball woman's team struggling to play while receiving death threats from Muslim extremist groups. One of the groups proposed that the punishment for women playing sports is to cut off their left hand or right foot.
The day before the Bunker Gallery we went to Schindler's factory and learned how quickly Krakow was captured by the Nazis -- within two weeks of Hitler declaring war on Poland. At the time, Krakow's population was approximately 260,000 and more than a fourth of its population was Jewish (70,000). Krakow had many synagogues and was also home to Wawel Castle, the beautiful symbol of Polish heritage. So when the Nazis took over Krakow, they sought to appropriate the gorgeous city and destroy Polish heritage and academia while also exterminating the Jewish population. They forced the Jews into ghettos and then began sending them to concentration work camps and also Auschwitz, the death camp. By 1945, when the Nazis left Krakow, only 4282 Jews reappeared in the city. We go to Auschwitz tomorrow.
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| Wawel Castle Gate |
Next door to the Schindler Museum is Krakow's modern art museum, MOCAK. While we were there, it had an exhibition of 47 artists from 17 European countries about "Freedom". The exhibition begins by discussing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted in 1948 that recognizes the inalienable civil liberties of the individual. Much of the artwork in the exhibition causes reflection about the many ways that individuals suffer or an individual's civil liberties are infringed upon. One piece of artwork was a video of a 1000 faces played slowly and then so quickly that they blurred together. It spurred thought about how the massive deaths of individuals become an unrecognizably huge number like the number of individuals who have died in Syria over the past 30 months: more than 115,000 individuals or in the Congo's conflict since the mid 90s estimated to be from 3 million to 5.4 million individuals.
The genocide in Syria and the Congo are not as systematic as the Holocaust but they are also horrific and overwhelming. As one explanatory panel said in the MOCAK: "The suffering that people inflict on one another other is one of the most terrifying and overpowering experiences."
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| 2 exhibits from the Mocak |
In some ways, these past few days have felt hopeless but there are things to inspire hope. For example, 700 million less people live in extreme poverty than in 1990 and two billion more people have access to improved water sources than they did in 1990. I am really proud of my dad and stepmom for being part of a project that brought water to 260,000 people in the Congo and for everyone in our community who are doing so much good. Hopefully, when Wilson and I finish this "traveling dream", we will move to a larger dream of contributing to global success stories.
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