Recordin of one's life - or not

Would like to come back to writing.  My editor in Kobe told me a long time ago when I started my life as a wife of a diplomat that I need to write down everything I experienced and thought and felt in exotic places, otherwise everything will be forgotten.  Now I realized that it's true - I always thought of his advise, but many other things  - little distractions in my daily life - occupied my time and I never got to do the proper "recording".  I'm still torn between recording of my experience and my thought each moment of my life and other desire to let it go.   

keys and locks from the German border land

I watched an interview with a lock picker on BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14924443 and was very touched by his philosophical view of lock picking - as a key to unlock human history. And it reminded my experience at Silesian Museum in Goritz where I visited recently.

Gorlitz is a German city bordering Poland. The museum is devoted to the region called Silesia, a former German territory before the war. Silesia became a part of Poland after WWII when the borders were redrawn by the victors. All the Germans who inhabited Silesia were expelled and relocated in other parts of Germany or emigrated to other continents such as US and Canada. The Poles who were also expelled from their eastern territory - nowaday Ukraine, Lithuania and Belarus - moved in.

Goritz was a western edge of Silesia and remained in German territory (at that time it was Eastern Germany). The museum was established after the German Unification and tells the story of Silesia which is no longer German but ringers in memories of many people who left their land of ancestors.

One area of the exhibition especially caught my eyes - numerous keys and locks, which were donated by people who left their homes in Silesia in 1945. When they were expelled they thought it was temporary and that they would be moving back after the war ends. So they locked their houses and took keys with them while fleeing with nothing more than their suitcases and toys. A lock to a library of Breslau University was also exhibited. One of the university employee locked the library and took it with him upon evacuation. The cold war ended, and the border stayed the same. Silesians' dream of going home faded. The museum exhibition explains that when people were getting old and realized that they are no longer going back home, they brought those keys and locks to the museum and had a sense of relief and closure. I thought it was a sad but beautiful story.

If you look around the world, how many are those people with keys which don't unlock their houses anymore? The daily conflicts in many parts of the world keep producing such people yet still.

Busy Month September

We went to a city in the southwestern tip of Poland called Zgorzelec on Septermber 8 Thursday. It was a part of a German city called Gorlitz (Goelitz), but after 1945 it was divided in half, since the Nyse River which runs in the middle became the border. The western part belonged to DDR and the other Poland.

The western part has the old town, the main square, and old churches, while the Polish side is more residential and industrial. Zgorzelec also housed Stalag, prisoner-of-war camp during the WWII. Now these two cities are cooperating in many aspects. And people in both sides go to the other side freely, which was not imaginable until recently when Poland entered the Shengen area for EU citizens to cross borders without passport control.

CG Leipzig joined us and we did a joint visit of Gorlitz and Zgorzelec for three days. It was very interesting to see how the both cities, once a single city, now in different countries, but move forward in each way. Needless to say, Gorlitz side is inhabited by Germans and Zgorzelec by Polish population expelled from the former eastern territory of Poland of current Ukraine, Belorus, and Lithuania. The German side has a big concern of demography, since many young people left for the western part of Germany as is often the case in the depressed East. While the city itself was restored beautifully, the streets are rather empty.

Yesterday we attended the commemoration of 9/11 in Kielce. The city is known for Kielce Pogrom in 1946 and the current mayor who is in his third term is determined to come to term with the city's past and founded 9/11 monument pursuing the tolerance. That's why this monument stands there. Middle and high school students from all over Kielce gathered at the memorial site and brought candles with an individual's name perished in Ground Zero in New York, a total of 2600. Each student researched his/her victim's story and put the victim's name on the candle and carried to the monument. It was a very touching ceremony.

After visiting Auschwitz a friend from America mentioned that she felt that people should not dwell on these past issues and they should move on. I had been thinking about that. I came to think that in Poland those issues which happened during the WWII hadn't fully explained or reserached or discussed until quite recently. The communist government had its own interpretation of Nazism and the outcome of the war and even in Auschwitz the victims were never mentioned as Jews during the communist times. The very complex problems of Polish/Jewish history and interaction made it hard for the regime to look straight and tell what it really happened. The Auschwitz museum she visited is a new attempt and it only in 20 or so years of operation in this current form. Holocaust studies and Jewish studies were totally new topics here in Poland twenty years ago and they rapidly developed into the specialized field, which Poland attracts many scholars and reserchers. Poles are gradually allowed to examine and discuss things which had been taboo for such a long time, so it will take time for the not-so distant history's chapters to close.

Happy Birthday to Stella

A Holocaust survivor, Stella Muller-Madej was the 169th entry on Schindler's List. She became 80 years old, yesterday, on the 5th of February.

I went to her Birthday party in Stradomskie Centrum Dialogu , in Krakow's old Jewish quarter, where the mayor of Krakow, Jacek Majchrowski, awarded her a medal for her service to the city, where she lives. Many people, including the fellow Auschwitz survivors and people from Jewish community were there to celebrate with bouquets of flowers.

Stella was seated on a chair along with Dr. Skotnicki, who wrote a book called Oskar Schindler : In the Eyes of Cracowian Jews Rescued by Him(2008). Stella had knee operation recently and stayed seated for the entire ceremony.

But she looked very youthful and healthy. She had a bright make-up emphasizing her round eyes and full body of brown hair. She was dressed in elegant black pants suits, looking energetic and ready for action. But her friend, Niusia Horowitz (105th entry), who was also there, whispered to me that she is actually not in a good health. Nuisia said she is two years younger than Stella. She, too, was beautifully dressed with white blouse and jewelry, nicely coiffed jet-black hair. I thought these ladies were looking great.

When I mentioned that impression of mine to the center director, Ewa, she lowered her voice and told me that survivors always try to look youthful and healthy, since they had to do the same when they were in the concentration camps for fear of being selected out to death. I remember in Steven Spielberg's film Schindler's List, a woman pricks her finger tip to squeeze blood to smear it on her pale cheek so that she looks healthy. Ewa said that Stella actually encountered Dr. Mengele, a notorious Nazi doctor in Auschwitz, and she is still afraid of doctor's white gowns.

I felt a chill in my spine. How many people in the world are living with such unspeakable experiences? Unfortunately many and probably still to come. I admire people who have courage to speak up and tell what they had been through.

Stella wrote a book called A Girl from Schindler's List in 1991 and the book was translated into ten languages including Japanese, titled「鳥のいない空」.

Day of Auschwitz

Attended an event at Krakowski Opera "Let My People Live" commemorating the 65th anniversary of liberation of Aucshwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.

Attendees among others; President of Poland, Lech Kaczyński, President of the European Parliament, Jerzy Buzek, President of World Jewish Congress, Ronald Lauder.

Was most touched by a speech by chief rabbi of Israel. He himself is a Holocaust survivor. His mother is from Krakow and father form Lwów. He was 7 years old when his family was moved from the ghetto in Piotrków Trybunarski for a trip to a camp. Nazi seperated men from women with small children. So he was with his mother. Right before they were being taken, his mother made a quick and difficult decision. She threw him to arms of his older brother, who was 18. She knew that weakers were to be sent to death. And she was right. He survived and now is standing in front of audience telling this story.

We were sitting on the first row in front of orchestra box. Being seated next to us were two Russian veterans with lots of medals on their uniform. They were complaining to organizers that their seats were not good by the exit door. It was true. These old Soviet soldiers should not be in a corner, while the rest of the dignitaries, presidents and rabbis, were seated in the middle of the hall, shaking hands, kissing each other, and sharing the spotlights and flash of TV cameras. They sat in the dark corner and didn't even know how to turn on the device to listen to Russian interpreter, while most of the speeches were given in English. A young Polish handler was not so helpful and left them with a gadget making a screeching sound.

I didn't know about who exactly they were until I saw AFP story and CNN website. Ivan Martynushkin, 86 and Yakov Vinnochenko 83. Accroding to CNN, Martynushkin got special medal from Vladimir Putin five years ago at the Auschwitz ceremony.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/europe/Survivors-liberators-gather-for-Auschwitz-commemoration-with-Israel-PM/articleshow/5505693.cms

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/01/26/auschwitz.liberator/index.html

They were sole survivors among who liberated the camp. I felt bad that these "Soviet heroes" didn't get VIP treatment in Poland, even though this might not be intentional. They might have known days when official ceremonies full of glories and respect, even though majority of ordinary Poles might have not perceived that way.

Poles came a long way to embrace Jews. This immensely difficult issue of Holocaust took place in their own land. Poles have difficult history and relationships with Jews existing within the communist regime and opposition as well after the war. Not to mention pogroms which drove out most of the Jewish population out of Poland.

So twenty years ago when we lived in Warsaw, this kind of close relationship was not thinkable.

With Russians the relations seem to have reversed.

It's understandable, if you think of Poles having suffered under the communism forced by the Soviets. Yet, it's a bitter lesson that beautiful words of cooperation and understanding sometimes sounding hollow. There is still a long way before these two countries will come to term with each other.