Visit to Europe a trip into the human soul

Susan Levine

Jun. 27, 2004 12:00 AM

The first week of June, my husband, Bill, and I walked the paths of two profoundly different 60th anniversaries. In Normandy we stood on the beaches of Omaha, Utah and Juno on a damp, dreary day, and walked the rows of crosses and Stars of David in the American cemetery under the cold gray, rainy sky.

We toured the museums memorializing D-Day and watched the enormous effort being put forth to welcome the eyes and ears of the world to its 60th anniversary.

The Normandy invasion set into motion the campaign that would 11 months later bring an end to the brutal reign of Hitler's killing machine. There was frequent acknowledgement by locals and media of the significance of the 60th anniversary. The survivors are in their 80s and dying at the rate of more than 1,000 veterans a day, and likely will not be able to travel for the 80th anniversary.

And so there was a special mood of pride, of gratitude and reverence among those walking the beaches and graveyards where almost 40,000 fallen soldiers are buried. We heard a surviving veteran say later that he feels the hands of his lost companions reaching up for him saying, "never forget us, never forget us." The tragedy of the massive loss of all those young lives implores the witness to wonder did that have to be.

Three days later in a journey from Warsaw to Krakow to Belzec to Auschwitz, we walked the path that held the answer to the sad necessity for Normandy.

Our hosts in Poland, Miles and Chris Lerman, are Jewish survivors of the Nazi atrocity. In their 80s they have the grace and warmth of gentle grandparents satisfied with life. We had the privilege of accompanying their family, children and grandchildren, to listen and bear witness.

We went to the small town of Tomasz near Belzec, where Miles grew up, and on to the Belzec Death Camp, where Miles' family was murdered. Then we went to Auschwitz-Birkenow, where Chris and her two sisters were inmates for a year after their parents were killed. This month marks the 60th anniversary of their transport by boxcar and arrival at Auschwitz.

Belzec was constructed in 1942 by slave laborers who were later murdered. During its 10 months of operation, it was noteworthy as the most lethal of the six Nazi death camps in German occupied Poland. Between March and December, 500,000 Jews and a few thousand gypsies were murdered in the gas chambers and heaped into random mass graves.
Methodical murder
Murder was accomplished by pumping carbon monoxide into the chambers from diesel engines running outside the building. There was an initial setback when the first mass murders were attempted. The engines did not produce enough poisonous gas, and thousands of women, children and men were unable to move, or even fall down, for three days.

The machines reached full efficiency. Belzec is credited with being the first "efficient" killing camp, murdering on average 1,667 men, women and children a day. (That record would subsequently be outdone by Birkenow, which increased efficiency to several thousand murders daily).

When the Jews of the region were effectively annihilated, Belzec was given an order to wind down and close, abandoning the mass graves covering the site. Some months later bulldozers were brought in to dig up and burn the bodies. Massive bone crushers were used to hide the evidence of the 500,000 murders.

For the next 40-plus years the site went with no memorial, the mass graves unmarked. The names of the dead were hidden in archives, or worse, never recorded at all. Visitors reported walking through ash and occasionally finding bone fragments. Seeing beer cans and condoms and other litter mixed with the ash and bones, Miles, the unassuming grandfather, made up his mind to set at least this wrong right.

Fueled by his memories of slave labor in a work camp, escaping by "taking care of the guards with a pick axe" and living 23 months in the woods fighting in the resistance, he accomplished his goal. On the evening of June 2, 2004, Miles was honored at a ceremony at the Presidential Palace in Warsaw.

President Aleksander Kwasniewski bestowed on Miles the Commander's Cross with Star of the Order of Merit. At a small reception following, the prime minister praised Miles for forging the partnership with the Polish government and the American Jewish Committee to obtain the funds and complete the project of the "Cemetery Memorial to the Jewish victims of the Nazi Death Camp in Belzec."

On June 3, we all traveled to Belzec. The trip took us through rural Poland, where farmers were plowing fields with horses, and to an idyllic site that, as we approached, looked deceptively tranquil. When the SS bulldozed the site they planted a forest of trees to hide the crime.

The memorial covers a 15-acre site with a ring of trees that remain around an enormous expanse of gray and black - specially-treated crushed rock 2 feet thick to weigh down and protect the enormous mass graves below. A walkway cuts sharply into the earth, descending 60 feet with rugged ominous walls on both sides, the path narrowing perceptibly with descent.

The Vietnam Memorial comes to mind, except it affords the relief of space on one side. Here at Belzec there is no relief, only descent into the earth with a high granite wall at the end inscribed, "Earth do not cover my blood; Let there be no resting place for my outcry (Job 16:18)."

The opposite wall contains 1,400 names - derived by deduction based on Jewish people who were rounded up and transported from the region of Belzec's "catchment area." Uncharacteristically for the SS, poor records were kept at Belzec.

The president of Poland again spoke, as did the Israeli ambassador and assorted other dignitaries. Clergy of Jewish, Catholic and Protestant persuasion said prayers. Miles' words were the most memorable. He spoke from his heart of this motivation in providing this place to bear witness and to honor the martyred souls buried at Belzec.
Voices of the past
He read from a letter a little 9-year-old girl had written. As she and her parents were being transported to Belzec, her parents managed to pry open a window in the boxcar and push her out to a field. Farmers took the injured girl to a local convent and the nuns hid her, cared for her and nursed her. As her health returned, she couldn't bear her loss and one day left a note on her pillow and slipped away from the convent. "It is a bright day, but there is no sun around me and no warmth coming from me. I miss my Mommy and Daddy and my brother. I want to go where they are." She sneaked away and reported herself to the local Nazis, who put her on the next transport to Belzec.

Christopher Hill, the U.S. ambassador to Poland, read a letter from President Bush. Following were the Israeli and German ambassadors. Finally President Kwasniewski included in his comments a message from the Pope urging all to join hearts and hands to memorialize "the murdered souls at a place once sacred and cursed." He sent a strong message I pray is true: "We have not forgotten, we cannot forget. How could we?"

I loved the president of Poland's words and the tone of his message. He hugged Miles warmly and said, "Thank you for your contribution in building mutual relations in the spirit of tolerance, reconciliation and dialogue, and for seeking a better future for Polish-Jewish relations. May your vision of the world come true as it would certainly benefit the world."

Susan Levine is executive director of Hospice of the Valley.