Warsaw: Walking The Narrow Bridge of Life, Memory, and Light

Author's Note: I've been away from home for almost a week now, though it feels like a month, or a day, or a just a blur. I am tired and saturated. My feet really hurt. I think I pulled a muscled in my thigh somehow. Last night I drank four too many glasses of wine at our little Polish Halloween party. I have only gotten one solid night of sleep. I haven't been fully hydrated since getting off the plane. And I've spent most of my time engaging with some pretty heavy history. But I am so freaking grateful to be doing what I am doing. I have finally found a flow here and feel fairly settled. Yet tomorrow I leave Warsaw on a train to Krakow. I am excited for a new city, but I want to write about my time here before I go. I am not sure it is possible to adequately translate the pain and beauty I have experienced so far, but I am going to try. 
 
~~~

I have been walking these streets for five days now, clapping my too-big boots against brick and stone, learning to navigate this place by foot, bus, train, tram. I've been wandering, getting lost, walking and walking in circles and lines, finding my way, seeking monuments, chasing ghosts.

I am finding it more and more curious that I ended up in Warsaw this week--during the season of the ancestors and the dead; All Hallows' Eve, All Saints Day, All Souls Day. This is a time where the veil is thin and the ancestors are believed to most available. And here I am, looking for mine. I didn't consciously plan for my "Bearing Witness/Ancestry Trip" to have this timing. I didn't even make the connection until I was on my way out of Port Townsend, heading to SeaTac in the back of Laurence and Deanna's car. We passed The Red Men Cemetery and there were a uniquely large number of people tending to the graves of their loved ones. I realize I, too, am tending to the dead.

~~~

Fall of a few years ago was when I felt a strong tug to pay more attention to my heritage, lineage, ancestral past. It started at the table of Laurence and Deanna one early morning before dawn. We ate breakfast by candle light. It felt holy and evoked a distant memory, like a time before my time. This feeling was something our family's Hanukkah celebrations had suggested, but stronger.

Later that month at a grief ritual I got another taste. While grieving at the altar, my own personal pain bled into a broader pain, which bled in the pain of the Holocaust. I remembered things I had never seen. One of the "gates into grief" that we talk going through is "ancestral grief." I felt I had just tapped a solid spring of mine.

And around that same time, I attended an equinox ritual. As an invocation or blessing my friend sang and drummed a Jewish song that I had never heard. He sang in Hebrew, then in English:

"All of this world is a very narrow bridge
a very narrow bridge
a very narrow bridge.
All of this world is a very narrow bridge
a very narrow bridge."

Then the song opens up

"And the main thing
and the main thing is not to fear, no
not to fear at all
and the main thing
and the main thing is not to fear at all."

I was enraptured by the song. It evoked memory beyond my lifetime, older than my mind, as the candles had, as the grief had. It struck my very core and deeper. I wanted more. I begin spending more time by candle light--the flame dancing in the dark helping me drop me into deeper and deeper time.

~~~

Today is Wednesday, November 1st, 2017. All Saint's Day. My couch-surfing mom Agnieszka has made sure I know that everything will shut down: almost all the shops and restaurants will be closed, the museums will not open, school is out, and most people have the day off work. Basically the only thing that will be running are the transit lines. Everyone will spend this day visiting the graves of their ancestors. And I am determined to do the same.

The clouds and wind are back after a day-long reprieve, and I walk my usual route to my tram stop, taking the bridge over the freeway, walking past the giant-beaked crows and diseased black locust trees in the park, and passing under the absurd billboard where cartoon butts are battling hemorrhoids with swords. I get on the 24 train which will take me right to the Warsaw Rising Museum. I know the museum is closed today but I am desperately hoping the memorial courtyard will be open.

The symbol of the uprising.

I had spent all day Sunday inside the museum without realizing that what I was actually looking for was outside--a list of names of the people who had died in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. According to family history, my father's father's father (Jack Eisenberg) had at least two unnamed siblings who were trapped in the Warsaw Ghetto and fought in the resistance. I wanted to learn their names.

I had heard snippets of the ghetto and the resistance from my dad, but the museum gave me the story, the images, the faces. In Warsaw the ghetto was a large walled-off portion of the city center where the Jewish people who had not yet been killed or "relocated in the east" (a sick euphemism for "deported to a concentration or extermination camp") were held captive with little-to-no provisions for survival. The people of the ghetto were forced to build the wall around themselves, and then carry out other labors for the Nazis as prisoners, while they struggled to survive horrifying conditions. Over the years several branches of an underground resistance formed, and in late summer of 1944 a full-on uprising began. The heart of Warsaw was leveled in response to the insurgency--thousands (more) were killed. This museum is dedicated to the memory and efforts of those lost. If there was a place I would find the names of Great Grandpa Jack's siblings, it would probably be here.

On my way out of the museum Sunday night I noticed what I hadn't seen in my rush to get out of the rain earlier: at the back wall of the courtyard was a long marble monument listing the names of those lost. I approached but was ushered out the gates before I could even begin to look at the names. The ghosts I am chasing in this city are on my direct patrilineal ancestry, so the name I am looking for is clear, easy, mine: Eisenberg.

~~~

Today I get off the tram and walk along the museum wall. I know where I am going this time. I turn the corner and I see light casting on the ground where the shadow of the big metal door should be. It is open! I excitedly enter the courtyard, but when I reach the monument I realize the names aren't alphabetical. The wall spans a block at least so this is going to take a while. When I am skimming down column 5 of over 200 I back up to see a name more clearly and I bump into something. I turn to see it is a paper database of names, listed alphabetically. That will be quicker! I flip though to E. Nothing. To I. Nothing. To Y. To B. To other random letters. None of them are Eisenberg, and only two names even come close to sounding like it.

They aren't here...

I stay at the monument for a while--I need to let this disappointment sink in. I look around and take some photos while I beat myself up for not doing more research. Then I forgive myself. I suppose it was a narrow chance anyway. Of course not everyone was documented. Some people slipped through. I decide to do a ritual to honor my family anyway. I don't need their names to tend to them. I just need to remember. I find some roses that had been recently pruned off the stalk and dropped. I gather them, kneel in front of the monument, and pray. I sing: "all of this world is a very narrow bridge, a very narrow bridge...." I sing and sing until I feel a sense of connection, like a bridge to the
other world. I leave the roses in a bunch at the very end of the monument, in front of a slate of marble with no names carved in it. Then I walk the length of the monument toward the exit, skimming the names as I go and wondering how many more were unnamed, unknown, forgotten. I cry a few tears and I walk on.

~~~

The image of the world as a narrow bridge was what most captivated me when I first heard the song. It reminded me of a familiar and reoccurring sensation in my life of being stretched across a chasm of extremes, and also that of walking a thin line. So when I think of this narrow bridge I think of tension and tenuousness. I think of the miraculousness of living--the delicate balance that has made life possible at all and the fragile balances that allow it to continue. I think of the thin line we are always walking.

Jack Eisenberg had eight siblings in total--three sisters and five brothers. Only he and his youngest brother Max came to the United States before the war. The rest stayed behind, and were lost in one way or another to the holocaust. We don't know the rest of their names as far as I have found in family archives. Max Eisenberg had a family and lived through WWII as a combat fighter, but ended up surviving all of his children, ending his line. So the only line that remains of that branch of the family tree is Jack's, my father's father's, my father's, mine.

I realize lineage itself is thin line--a narrow bridge. Many do not make the crossing. The line breaks. People slip through the cracks. This is how much of a gift life is: for you reading this, and for me, all of our ancestors made the crossing at least long enough to create another who could continue the journey. And that next person made it long enough to do the same. And then the next. Any of them could have fallen--the line could have broken off as so many have. But here we are, you and I, walking.

~~~

Monday was spent at the POLIN Museum for the History of Polish Jews. Their core exhibit is an artfully crafted several-thousand-year history Jews in Poland beginning with their creation story, moving through the time of traveling merchants to the ages of kings and queens, then into the great wars, and through to today. It was like a semester of school in half a day, but with a format and framing that felt accessible and relevant. Obviously, with my focus for this trip being on the holocaust, I spent most of my time in the WWII stretch, and even though I had spent the previous day learning about the ghetto in the other museum that section in the POLIN exhibit brought me to my knees.

"The view" from the Ghetto Bridge
POLIN Museum exhibit

Of many sticking images and stories, one that stuck was learning about a bridge that was constructed between the large and small sections of the ghetto. Prior to the bridge there was a small, guarded and partitioned thoroughfare between the two. This was a crowded and necessary crossing where Jews would be heckled and threatened by the guards. As I understand it the bridge was built primarily for Nazi convenience, so that the non-ghetto road below would not get blocked so often. But the bridge had the interesting side-effect of giving the people of the ghetto a rare view of the world beyond the wall; of people; of the river flowing slowly to the sea; of freedom; and of the reality that the people outside the ghetto wall were more or less going about their lives, ignoring the living hell playing out on the inside. For these reasons, it was nick-named the Bridge of Sighs.

But it was a narrow bridge, and a busy one. It was built for efficiency, not dreaming. And the Jews were forbidden to stop, even to gaze at what the would never get back.

~~~

After my ritual at the Warsaw Rising Memorial, I am off to find the new-ish memorial for the Ghetto Bridge. It is near the museum but across the tracks, in a part of town I haven't been to yet. The further I get from the tracks once I've crossed them, the more this place looks like pictures from the old ghetto. Things are run down, dis-repaired, and discarded. I wonder if maybe it seems more abandoned today because everyone is at the cemeteries.

I find the street I am looking for: Chłodna. I duck into every alley on the street because I thought I'd read that the memorial was off the main road. The memorial for the bridge is not a bridge itself. It is a series of fiber optics strung across the street by two posts. The fibers light up at night and project the image of the bridge--a bridge of light. But in the day it must not be so obvious. I keep looking at power lines thinking I have found it. But I haven't.

I am turning into another alley and I hear some yelling behind me. I wonder if it is directed at me. The yelling continues. I turn another corner. Dead end both ways. I turn back. Sure enough the three men who had been walking toward me on the main street have turned into the alley too, and their yelling is directed at me. They quickly approach, and I tense. There is no one else around. They are blocking exit the street. Behind me are just walls. They are yelling in Polish. I am scared and I don't understand. "I don't understand" I say in English.

The big one in front is still approaching. I seem to decide confidence is the best tactic here so I walk toward him too, with my head high. I say again "I don't understand you" and he switches to English, lowering his voice. He says something with an edge of sarcasm about needing a phone for an emergency. His friends laugh. Is this a trick? He is really close now. What is about to happen? I am not thinking. I am just on autopilot: survival mode. Ready to fight. My hand is on my bag. I imagine smashing it in his face.

He keeps talking about his phone--he wants a charger. Trying to project ease I take his phone from his hands and look at the port. It is the same port I use except mine at the house in my backpack. I tell him I don't have it and he feigns disappointment and keeps engaging me. What is this really about? His drunk friends heckle me some more but now we are all walking out to the street. I feel safer now that the space between us that had been closed has opened up again. At the street turn the opposite direction as them and start walking away. Then I change my mind.

"Actually, can you help me?" I ask. This is the first time I have asked for help in a while, but I really want to find the bridge. I pull out my map. The men approach again. Er, is this a good idea? I ask "Do you know where this is? The Ghetto Bridge Memorial..." He doesn't, but he gets serious then. He also doesn't really know how to read a map, nor does he seem to actually know where we are. In fact, I am more oriented than any of them. But he tries. He rips my map up trying, but he genuinely makes the effort. He even gets angry at his friends who are still making fun of me in Polish. He tells them I am trying to find something important. They shut up and also get serious when he says what it is I am looking for.

After a while of this, I pretend I have it figured out and leave them. I walk around for another half hour, and never do find the memorial, but suddenly I feel arrived and grounded in a way I hadn't before, like I know where I am going.

~~~

There is a visceral gravity around this city's history that people not only carry, but seem to honor. And the memory is not sentimental or surface level, so it seems to me. I feel it embedded in the people who live here. Gravity has the same root as grief and as grave, gravis. It makes sense that the people who tend the graves of their loved ones with such dedication, would tend this history with the same seriousness. Of course, this is an outsiders perspective and maybe it is naive or romantic. I just wonder why else three drunk dudes on the street (who are clearly not paying their respects to any graves today) immediately stop their fuckery at mention of the ghetto. Or why the seemingly infinite war memorials that dot the city are almost all tended with flowers and lit candles.

Of course the city is diverse and complex. There is division and even conflict concerning the city's past, present, and future. I have seen this too. At our Halloween party yesterday there were five 10-year-old boys, two rowdy kittens, five boisterous Polish-speaking adults, and exhausted me. It was overwhelming--fun, but overwhelming (hence the abundance of wine). At one point the adults decided to speak in English for a while to include me. This was a relief after listening helplessly for a while. Upon finding out that this is my first time in Europe one of them asked: "So why Poland? And for that matter, why would you come to Warsaw? There are towns in Europe that are thousands of years old with intact history and architecture. Warsaw is only like 50..."

Obviously I have plenty of reasons I could have responded with, but I was left a little speechless and shocked by what he said. Even after all I had learned and seen I hadn't heard it put like that. In the POLIN Museum I learned distinctly that this place has been a city with a rich history and culture for thousands of years. This is that same land, so it is the same city...right? But his comment made me realize that in a lot of ways the answer is actually "no." Too much of the city was utterly demolished in the war. The population was reduced from 1,300,00 pre-war to less than a thousand after the Rising. It is not the same city. All that is left of the old town and ghetto are a few wall fragments hiding in alleys and courtyards. The bustling modern metropolis I have been wandering around is something almost completely new. It is painful to take in, but that realization makes the dedicated remembering of the past even more striking to me.

Memory, when so many people can be extinguished and so much history can crumble, is a very thin line, fragile and tenuous. Like lines of lineage, memory is easily broken and lost. And sometimes it is even intentionally buried.

~~~

After my failed attempt at finding the bridge memorial, I set off on a new endeavor to find my ancestors. My destination is the Jewish section of the large central cemetery. This, I learn, was somehow not lost to the war. A rare place in this city where pre-war memory is preserved.

Agnieszka suggested I walk there from my normal tram stop, but I am getting good at navigating beyond my main line, so I decide to try a new tram and give my aching feet a rest. It's nice to move fast for a bit. I get off where my intuition tells me and head in the direction the cemetery should be. It doesn't take long to find the wall that encircles the many-blocks of memorial. Now I just need to follow the wall in order to find the entrance. On my way I find a large monument that abuts the wall. There is Hebrew lettering on a plaque so I decide it is probably relevant. The monument is beautiful—a large obelisk situated at the end of a path that cuts downward from the courtyard, into
the earth. I read the English translation of a sign which rips my heart open.

During excavation for some new development on this land the workers came upon a large quantity of human remains. They moved them and kept working, but news of this got out. Groups of citizens fought for the rights to the land, and demanded the remains be returned and be given a proper burial. They wanted these souls to be honored and protected. All of this they managed to do. Until then I had been wondering what has been found during this city's redevelopment. What was found in the rubble and what was done with it? This monument is just one of those stories. And as many memorials as this city has created, I am quite certain that many other sites have just been paved over and forgotten. I begin to see the lines of memory did not just persist on their own. They have been maintained by those who fought hard to remember and honor that memory, and who are dedicated to reminding others; those who would refuse to forget, even if they could.

~~~

I reach the cemetery and enter. I am greeted by two women who are the kindest and most warm people I have met on this trip so far (though my first flight attendant was a sweetheart, and my host family is lovely). They give me beautiful pictures and info about the cemetery. I give them a small donation.

As I approach the beginning of the grave sites I am overcome with emotion. My breath is gone. The beauty before me is unspeakable. I will not try to speak it here. All I can say is I found what I was looking for, and it wasn't names. It was that feeling from the candlelit morning, but stronger. It was a presence and a knowing. I wandered the forest of graves and ghosts til after dark, infrequently greeted by candlelight, like the souls of the dead, awake, and dancing against ancient stone. 

~~~

The flickering candles on gravestones and being among the ancestors, brought me back to the beginning of my trip--my flight. If all I had experienced on this trip was the plane ride, it would have been enough. My experience was both horrifying and spectacular beyond imagination.

I had dreaded it and this was honestly one of the reasons I almost didn't come. I've avoided flying for 6 or more years (for environmental reasons mostly, but now I see it was also due to an extreme level of fear). But by the time we were taking off I felt surrendered to whatever was going to happen. It was out of my hands, and the beauty of the sun setting as we rose over Seattle put me at ease. Being on the right side of the plane going north, I got to see Mount Rainier, my beloved Mountain Si, Lake Washington, North Seattle. I thought of all the people I love who were living their lives in the landscape below. Twenty five folks had missed their connection onto this flight so I had two seats to myself. I sat on my knees and stretched my neck to peered across the two aisle and 5 rows of seats for a glimpse of the Olympics and the brilliant orange sunset. More loves living over there too.

I watched out my window in wonder as we flew over the immense North Cascades and, shortly after,
the even-more immense and unbelievable Canadian Rockies (I think). Darkness fell as passed the last of the peaks and I was soon instructed to close the window shutter. I decided to take advantage of the really fancy on-demand media system on the seat in front of me now that there was nothing more beautiful to look at (besides the henna on my hand, but that was gonna be there for a while). I watched a rom-com which I secretly enjoyed a lot and when it was finished I decided to break the rules and open the window shutter. It would just be a peek, in case there were city light below that I could gaze on. 

There were no lights below, but in the distance an alien green brightness caught my eye. I didn't understand what it was--feint like an apparition, or a ghost. It couldn't possibly be morning breaking already, I thought. When my eyes adjusted a bit I noticed the green had gotten brighter and was moving like a wave. It took me a few minutes to believe what I was seeing: the Aurora Borealis. And not only was I seeing it... I was practically flying through it. In all my longing to see this northern magic, I never could have hoped for this.

My timing had been perfect. The lights only brightened and grew nearer. Soon enough they were so close it I felt I could reach out and touch them. I pressed my face and hands against the window. The narrow lines of light shimmered alive, appeared and disappeared out of nowhere, always seeming to move toward me, dancing like a silken dress. Every time I thought it was over, that the best had passed a new wave would come, or a shooting star would soar behind them, punctuating the moment. The lights flickered wild like green flames across the star-scape. Columns of light, sleeves of light, bodies of light--each a god of form and formlessness, each an inimitable moment of pure divinity. They were undeniably alive. 

I watched them for an hour, it seemed, engulfed this time in memory older than time. I felt sure these were all our ancestors dancing; waves of time rippling across the sky; lines of lineage that led to me, to everything, to all of us; narrow fleeting bridges of life, memory, and light.