Just now, we were on our bus with with two living historians, both eyewitnesses to the Holocaust.
We haven't yet heard Maud's story of survival, but our Polish tour guide manager's grandmother-in-law joined us in Warsaw. She is 90 and doesn't speak English.
On our way to Treblinka, Adam translated her story for us. At 16 (1939), Krystyna fled to Hungary to pursue a pharmaceutical career. Her family was living in Warsaw. When Poland and its capital became occupied, she decided to return to the center of trouble to join the underground movement. With her nursing background, she volunteered at a Malta hospital where Polish civilians and Germans alike were treated. On August 1, 1943 (1944?) when the uprising in Warsaw started, she went straight to the hospital. When the Nazis came by, she fled to join the rest of the underground movement members. There she worked with the resistance group. As artillery increased as punishment for their uprising, her resistance friends fled through the sewers. Captured along with them as members of the resistance, she was sent to Dachau. There, she ended up in Dachau treating the living victims.
She personally knew the commander and fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
History is not dead and when you walk on the grounds of these camps, you realize. Nature moves on: grass grows, birches whisper in the wind, grasshoppers rub out a tune on their wings, and birds chirp. But the stones and iron remain. The foundations of murder... Deception... Horror remain as remnants of the past. And right now, walking these fields and monuments are at least two eyewitnesses and survivors.
They are alive. They are telling their stories. They are sharing their history. Our history. The world's history. They walk amongst us. They speak different languages. They are such an important part of the world. Hearing Maud, Krystyna, and my friend Paul share reminds me what a responsibility we each have to keep history alive.
I started crying on the bus because I was in the midst of a miracle. The Final Solution didn't work. And all around me on this trip, there are signs. It was a very heavy moment for me. I wasn't feeling suffocated, but able to breath.
As we walked into Treblinka, an extermination camp that was purely designed for murder, a friend approached Krystyna. Her father was liberated from Dachau. What a once in a lifetime opportunity to have an opportunity to meet the woman who may have treated her father and helped him to survive.
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