I traveled to Poland to learn more about its history, to document my impressions, and to gain some answers. But the more I saw and the more I learned, the more I questioned.
The bus stopped at the outskirts of the village of Sztutowo, 65 kilometres east of Gdansk, three kilometres from the Baltic Sea. Getting off, I walked down a cobbled stone road. At the end, were the main gates of the Stutthof Museum. They were closed. Through the railing, I saw an expanse of land, barbed wire fencing, observation towers of dark wood, and a sizeable building of brick. More would be revealed in the next few days.
Stutthof started out as a Zivilgefangenenlager, or detainee camp for civilians, among them, the Polish intelligentsia. Teachers, professors, students, political activists, and clergy were rounded up by the Nazis and their collaborators, after the invasion of Poland through the Free City of Danzig, on September 1, 1939.
By 1942, Stutthof had evolved to a concentration camp for the rapidly increasing number of prisoners, among them, Soviet POWs and Jews. In its almost six years of operations, the camp received prisoners from over 25 countries. They faced, for the most part, unbearable conditions. More than 85,000 prisoners were directly and indirectly exterminated, and as many as 110,000 were deported.
Stutthof rarely gets much notice in the history annals from the West. I wondered why. Certainly the exhibits, which are not that badly presented, could be improved. They could also benefit from fewer religious symbols.
More Catholic symbols and shrines are present at Stutthof than what I encountered at the larger museums of Majdanek, Auschwitz and Birkenau. Could the Nazis have made more concessions to the belief systems of their prisoners at Stutthof? Or were more Catholic priests and nuns killed at Stutthof than at any other concentration camp in Poland?
The questions remain unanaswered. I can understand the need for religious symbols in a country where Catholicism is such a dominant force. But as a researcher and an historian, I found the overtness of the religious symbols at Stutthof to be distracting, if not overdone. I also thought the shrines overshadow the memory of those who held other beliefs.
How could this issue of religious partiality be solved in a Museum that represents so many beliefs? Could a Roman Catholic chapel be added to the exhibits at Stutthof, so that all the symbols pertaining to this religion be housed in one place? That might allow the non-Catholic viewer to concentrate on the historical aspects of the camp, without being duly influenced by the symbols of another religion. And what about the belief systems of the non-Catholic prisoner at Stutthof? Would these beliefs be represented in equal proportion?
Ecumenism in its broadest sense can be sticky for a museum that wishes to have a global presence.
Ecumenism can also be expensive. Consider the brick smokestack of the Museum's crematorium. At its back end, not visible by the general public, a cross appears in the brickwork. Did the Nazis really concede that much to Christianity while incinerating bodies? I hardly think so. It is likely that a well-intentioned soul, included in the reconstruction design of the death trap, several blonde bricks among the redder ones. The effect is an unmistakable cross.
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I walked beyond the crematorium towards the north end of the camp, past the barrack with the shoe exhibit to an outlying field, designated for expansion before the Soviet forces pushed west, in the face of disintegrating Hitlerian fantasy.
There, in the outlying field of sandy soil and coarse grass, I made the most astonishing discovery. At my feet were pieces of leather, once belonging to shoes, boots, slippers, and belts. The find shook me, more so, when I found a metal, stamped button, belonging to a Nazi uniform. How did I know it belonged to a Nazi uniform? It was on account of an exhibit I'd seen, days earlier, at the Imperial War Museum in London. There, buttons on the uniforms of two ranks of SS officers, drew my attention. A week later, at the Majdanek State Museum, I confirmed that the button I had photographed in the field at Stutthof belonged to a lower SS officer.
Confirming why the leather pieces were strewn on the field of the Stutthof Museum, would take a lot longer.
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Further south on a back country road, I came across an old church with some of its windows boarded up, others showing evidence of a charred interior. Was this the Lutheran church attended by the farmers and long-term neighbours of the 90-year old Polish Catholic who lives next door to me, today? The 'Evangelicals', as my neighbour would refer to these Poles of German extraction, were kind enough to take his family in. That is, when the Nazis ordered Poles to vacate their homes and lands. You see, ethnic Germans from further east were about to arrive. And these new immigrants, or Volksdeutsch, were taking hearty advantage of the Nazi policy for Lebensraum. As a result, they gained more room - land, homes, and businesses - at the expense of Catholic Poles and Jews, most of whom had nowhere else to go, many of whom suffered a dire fate.
After the war, when the Soviets took over Poland, the Volksdeutsch were ordered to leave, while those of German ancestry who had lived in Poland for generations, found life to be increasingly difficult. They, too, had to leave. Was the abandoned church a symbol of these later years?
Who caused the fire?
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Further west on that country road, I found a sign with two crosses pointing to the Białuty Forest. It reads:
"Place of mass murders in the years 1941-45
12000 persons from the camp in Działdowo
including 58 priests and 1500 Jews".
I wondered, where was the Star of David for the 1500 Jewish victims?
Entering the forest, I found the memorial to these victims of Hitler's travesty, along with an oversized cross, an open-air chapel of Catholic symbology, plus small flags, including those representing the Vatican. The representation for non-Catholic believers was nowhere to be found.
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On my return to Mława, where I was staying, I encountered a cemetery or Friedhof for German soldiers. A peaceful enclave of impressive design, the Friedhof displays tablets of granite about 2 metres high, each engraved with many names and vital statistics of soldiers killed during the Second World War. A large cross forms a focal point for the arranged tablets, while smaller crosses beyond symbolize those soldiers killed during the First World War.
The Friedhof was founded by the Wehrmacht, or German army, and built by Polish forced labour to bury and commemorate 1,300 German soldiers. Today, as a result of the efforts of the German Association of Carers of War Graves and the Polish Foundation Pamięć, the cemetery has been reconstructed to include the symbolic tombstones for about 12,000 soldiers, many corpses having been exhumed from other cemeteries.
Seeing so many German surnames on the tablets, I was curious. For I have 25 per cent German ancestry, and wondered if my surname was represented. The closest match was Felix Hedrich (1912-1944). And I remembered Rabbi Jacobson, a professor of Western Civilization who, in 1970, approached me after class to ask, "Are you Jewish?". It seems that members of his congregation shared my last name. I replied, "not to my knowledge." Later, my Dad mentioned that sometimes German names with one consonant are Jewish. With these long-ago conversations in mind, I wondered about Felix Hedrich. Was he Jewish? Certainly there were Jewish soldiers in the German army during the First World War, Anne Frank's father being one of these. And conceivably some of those Jewish soldiers might have been killed in Poland. So I wondered, why were there were no Stars of David at the Friedhof?
I sensed religious tension in other historical locations in Poland.
About 100 metres down from the main entrance to Birkenau - a horrifying extermination camp where Jews and Gypsies where particularly targeted as victims - stands a Carmelite convent with a very large cross, once used in an open-air Papal Mass. I couldn't help thinking that the oversized cross was somehow provocative. For I compared the convent's need to make its presence known to a more discrete retreat near Auschwitz I, the Centre for Dialogue and Prayer.
It was at the peaceful Centre for Dialogue and Prayer where I stayed for a few days, finding nowhere a need for overt advertising of its Catholicism. In fact, the Centre made every effort to embrace other faiths, as evidenced by Jewish religious literature at the front desk.
On its website, the Centre notes that the words 'dialogue' and 'prayer' may not be as appropriate as silence and the need to listen. For Auschwitz was a place where interpersonal relations were shattered by politics that sought to divide.
I wonder about silence in lieu of dialogue. Certainly silence is needed when reflecting on the testaments to the horrors of war, and when honouring the memory of millions of victims.
But don't we need more dialogue, rather than less, when discussing issues caused by subjective allegiances? Don't we more dialogue to ensure that religion be a private matter between a believer and his or her chosen system? Don't we need more dialogue to ensure that religious organizations be discrete in the way they conduct their business? Don't we need more dialogue to ensure that religious organizations educate their flock to be respectful of all faiths?
But how can dialogue be broached if there is so little trust, if the principal aim remains: that of gaining more converts by using emotional pitches that have long led to divisiveness, an 'us' versus 'them'?
Early one morning at the entrance to Birkenau, I witnessed a highly-charged emotional pitch being delivered to American youths. They were all wearing Israeli flags that fluttered in the wind. And one of their tour leaders was yelling through a loudspeaker that 'Birkenau was the only place designed to exterminate Jews'.
I thought, is this feverish pitch necessary by hallowed grounds?
Later in one of the barracks, I came across the same youths, listening to a second tour leader. His discourse seemed more reasonable as he proposed thoughts on moral choices of a universal nature. Yet the cumulative effect was weighing on a caped young woman who, outside the barrack, cried inconsolably to another. As the group left to continue their tour, I re-entered the barrack, finding on the walls, graffiti with names and years, such as 2004 and 2007, some with Stars of David. I do not imply that the group of youths I had come across that morning had engaged in this disrespect to the premises, and to the memories of so many more unfortunate than they. But the graffiti showed that there is a lack of supervision among some of the groups that pass through.
Later, I hired a private guide with a university degree in History, a normal qualification for museum guides throughout Europe. And near the end of the tour, I mentioned my concerns. Regarding the Carmelite convent, my guide mentioned that its presence was due to the canonization of Edith Stein who was born a Jew, converted to Catholicism in the early 1920's, became a Carmelite nun, and was killed by Nazis at Birkenau. I did not press on the issue of the large cross. Regarding the tour of Jewish youths, my guide lamented that these groups are not interested in hiring Museum guides, but rather, in bringing their own, and that the combination of horrific exhibits with the conveyed emotionalism causes many to have ongoing nightmares, as reported by their parents.
Because of the emotional turmoil and religious conflict that I saw or sensed, I came to the conclusion that the political use of religious symbols to convey the plight of millions is misguided. Likewise is the revisionism that occurs to present history to favour one side while omitting or rendering general and vague the reality of others.
I consider that concentration camps and their visitors should treat with the utmost respect the memories of ALL victims who suffered the worst indignities. And in so doing, we should deeply reflect on the nature and consequence of aggression and war, of conflict and intolerance. For if we fill our heads instead with partialities and conflict, how will we ever learn to reach out in peace?
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