The Second Tenant: Bearing Witness (Part 2, Auschwitz 2: Listening to the Land at Birkenau)

Author's Note: It has taken me a long time and a lot of energy to process the trip as a whole. Writing about it is both exhausting and relieving, and I have been giving myself space to engage with this heavy information and experience at a pace that feels natural and not forced. I had to take a full month totally disengaged from thinking about it before I could even start this piece, and other things in life have taken precedent over me finishing it until now. But here it is--a labor of love. Thanks for your patience and presence for this and please continue tuning in as more reflection on this powerful journey finds its way to words. 

~~~

The Catholic Priest from The Center for Dialogue and Prayer speaks to the circle of us—a packed and diverse room of people: Buddhists and non-Buddhists, Jewish and German people, Polish, Finnish, Puerto Rican people; people from France, from the United States, from Russia; people of unspoken backgrounds and beliefs. We are all here to bear witness to the realities of Auschwitz. It is the first night of the retreat (after our long day at Auschwitz I) and the priest is speaking to us about, of all things, “listening to the soil.” His invitation for us is to get close to the Earth and actually listen to “Her," the land, as we explore Auschwitz II/Birkenau over the next four days.

I am honestly astonished by his words. All my life the implication of Catholicism has been that “the body" and "the body of the earth” are primarily sinful and that the goal of ascension to heaven is to eventually leave this place of sin. Catholicism and other agricultural religions, by my understanding, are foundational in the distancing of humanity from earth-based living. In my experience, Catholicism and Christianity have denounced the land, and have generally refused to act as if "it" has a voice, being, or life-force to listen to, let alone honor, at all. Largely because of these beliefs, our culture tends to treats the land as if “its” only purpose is to be owned, used (abused), and sold. This distancing of humanity from the land is what initially turned me away from the church at a young age, and it has kept me away.

But sure enough, here I am listening to a Catholic Priest and he is inviting me to listen to “Her," insisting that indeed the land, the soil, the earth is alive and has things to tell us. This perspective is my bread and butter, my basic belief system, my "religion." To listen deeply to the earth is something I strive for in my life, that I long to do better, and that I believe we actually must do if we are to heal the rift, the wound, the disconnect that has diseased our people, culture, lives, and planet. And thanks to this priest's invitation, this is what I decide I am going to do here at Auschwitz-Birkenau during this week of bearing witness.

~~~

Sitting on the ground near the rubble remainder of Crematorium III, I quietly cry, sing, and meditate on the reality of these death chambers. After a while of this, my sorrow and horror is suddenly distracted by two men working inside the remains of the so-called “dressing room” below me. This underground space was where victims of the gas chambers undressed for the last time before being poisoned to death in the now-collapsed rooms next door. With drills and screws and 2x4s, the two workers create a brace for the failing brick wall of the corridor, attempting to hold open this space—a space between life and death, where groups of hundreds of people at a time stood stuffed together naked, vulnerable and confused in their last minutes of breath.

Yesterday, during the guided tour of this camp, Auschwitz-Birkinau (the largest of the Auschwitz camps), we were told that all of the five crematoriums here were blown up prior to the liberation. The first was actually destroyed by a group of insurgents who were trying to slow the efficiency of the death machine so-called a “camp.” The other four: taken out when the Nazis realized the liberation front was coming. The Nazi's own destruction of the chambers seemed to be a coordinated effort to cover their tracks (though they left many others behind, and contrary to popular belief, the crimes there were committing were no big secret to the rest of the world). In any case, none of the original death chambers

The so-called "Dressing Room" at Crematorium III

still stand at Auschwitz I or II. And for this I am grateful. To me, it is as if the walls and gateways of the gas chambers were portals of death that—at long last—were closed to this world, never to be used again. Their collapse, to me, was a relief.

~~~

The sawing and drilling of the maintenance work grinds against my thoughts as these tender and horrific imaginings play out in my mind. I don't move away from their noisiness. The irritation of the machines is minimal compared to the agitation I am feeling otherwise, and I find myself as fascinated as I am frustrated with their activity, wondering curiously at their efforts to maintain this wall even as the earth tries to push it in toward the rest of the collapsed remains.

In my watching them, I am reminded that I've often thought of walls as witnesses. Sometimes, it seems, they are the only witnesses to what happens within them; hidden things, secret things, things that only play out behind closed doors in hushed voices or in muffled sobs and screams. I have written love notes to the walls of my teenage room, which witnessed my solitude, sorrow, and rage more than any human could or would, and which bore it all without collapsing against the weight. Walls offer privacy, for both beautiful acts unfolding without fanfare, and for heinous crimes thoughtfully concealed. In my mind, the walls see and know it all.

Walls, like bridges, are built to bear heavy loads. Perhaps that also includes the heaviness of bearing witness. If that's so, the walls of the crematorium are crumbling under the weight. To bear witness to years of abject horror is an unimaginable burden, and these walls undeniably bore their share, witnessing agonizing death after agonizing death. Maybe it's silly after everything that's happened

here, but I can't help but wonder if these walls deserve to collapse and return in their own slow way to the Earth. Because even if you are built to bear, there are some things are simply unbearable.

~~~

I watch the small work crew until they have secured their brace, packed their things, and faded out of my periphery. In the silence and stillness of my aloneness, I notice the other efforts that have been taken to preserve the rubble: bricks stacked and strategically placed to keep the precarious pieces of concrete balanced in their current configuration, other wood and steel braces push upward against a diagonal slab, and the lines of rope surrounding the “building” remind us to stay back and not disturb the scene.

There is, I suppose, a certain particularity to the shape of the rubble that is striking and powerful. Part of me understands the impulse to protect it. But I find myself increasingly skeptical about the efforts to preserve, so exactly, this place that understands so much about death and change.

So I return again to the question of what it means "to bear" and "to bear witness;" of the difference between collapsing or not collapsing under the weight of what you carry or have seen; of the meaning of falling to the ground in surrender and grief and embracing the weight, or of bracing oneself against the weight so as to remain upright and functional; of the conversation between the wild grief rituals of earth-based peoples, and the stoicism of modern Zen Buddhism; of how this is all playing out here, at this retreat, at home, in the world at large.

Having watched the workers prop up these walls, I wonder what truly honors this place and what happened here: to force these walls to stay standing and preserved, bearing boldly against time and forgetfulness; or to let them continue collapsing, crumbling, and being swallowed by the earth, where they may, perhaps, be metabolized into something new?

Powazki Cemetery in Warsaw, All Saints Day

Considering these questions, I am aware that I theoretically tend toward surrender, grief, and collapse, but at the same time I can't deny my own terror and resistance in the face of personal loss and change. The impulse to preserve “what is or what was” is as strong in me as anyone. I also can't wholeheartedly argue against the value of preserving the memory of these tragedies. Memory seems to be an innate part of being human. I think back to All Saints Day and All Souls Day a few weeks ago in Warsaw and the dedication of people to remembering and honoring their dead; how much beauty was created through these traditions of remembering the particulars of people and places that were lost. This is precious in a way, in a cultural climate of “replaceable and homogenized everything” where human memory seems as short as our sight. And I can see how perhaps preserving the walls, the buildings, and the barbed wire of Auschwitz could help us remember the human capacity for evil, in hopes this history does not repeat.

But then again, as far as I am concerned, this history is repeating. We replicate it to some extent in American prisons and the legacy of slavery, in the global refugee crisis, in genocide of the Palestinian people, in factory farms, in industrial mono-crop agriculture and our chemical warfare on weeds, in all the ways we mechanize the wholesale destruction of “the other.” And given all of that, I wonder: how long must we imprison this place, this land called Birkenau, in the memory of what it was once forced to be? When might we allow her to become something new?

At this point I notice the grasses and weeds growing up around and among the rubble, ignoring the signs to Keep Out, ignoring the efforts to preserve “what was.” They remind me briefly of the priest's invitation to listen to the soil, but when I close my eyes to listen closely all I hear is a lawn mower buzzing its way across this living landscape of death. And underneath that (I swear) muffled, distant screams.

~~~

Selection site at Birkenau

The next day I am standing in the middle of Birkenau, at the crossroads of life and death, where the red road to the gas chambers start and the railway ends; where the rail cars would come to a stop and unloaded thousands of human beings at (for most) their final destination and where the SS guards would sort these people into lines (men in one, women and children in another); where SS doctors would inspect the people and decide who was capable of working (older women and younger children were not inspected at all, nor were the majority of Jews); where those deemed capable of working were sent to the “sauna” for further stripping of dignity and identity, and the others were sent immediately to “the showers” (aka: the gas chambers) for their death; where many family members—mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, husbands, wives, lovers—saw each other for the last time.

This is where we pack up from our daily seated meditation, storing our cushions in a small cabin at this crossroads. There are already enough people helping with clean-up today, so I am taking the time to look at the informational placards nearby. They are all black with white text and sepia photographs of this very place years ago. I read through one of the placards and get dizzy. I have to sit down for a while to process it. When I get up I unthinkingly walk to the other placard. I read words about these crossroads, named “the selection site,” with the unrelenting queasiness that has taken up residence in my stomach over the past days. The feeling has become somewhat normalized like the dizziness—I just have to sit down every once in a while to cope.

I have read hundreds of such placards since arriving in Poland, at various museums and memorial sites. Many have had shocking information and images, many have made me cry. I have taken pictures of them, or occasionally written what they say in my journal if I want to remember. This one isn't particularly shocking. It doesn't say anything that I haven't already read, that I don't already “know.” But “knowing” here, at this unbelievable place, is slow—it comes in layers of realization over time. You can't take it all in at once.

Reading the words on this placard help me settle (for the hundredth time) into the reality of where I am and what happened here. And after reading, my eyes dart to the picture on the right: a group of women and children somewhat casually waiting by the tracks, right near where I stand. Women and children wouldn't be selected for work, so all of the people in these pictures are about to die. Some of them are facing the photographer. Most are facing away. But one, an old woman—shawl wrapping her head, wrinkled face poking between the other bodies—is staring straight at the camera.

I don't remember a sequence to what happens next. I just remember feeling her looking directly at me, through the crowd, through the camera, through the photographer, through time. Her eyes burn, knowingly, fearfully, sorrowfully, angrily, defiantly, all at the same time. I imagine her thinking, in this moment suspended in time: “I don't want to die here. I don't want my children to die here. Save me.” I respond in my head: “I wish I could.” And then, more distantly, I think “How could someone like this be seen as an enemy?” I remember tears running down my face. I remember imagining her life up to this moment—all the joy and hardship, all the love. I remember imagining her slow and painful dying in the chambers. I remember thinking: “How could someone with so much history, so much life, so much story, so much beauty, perish in such a way?” I multiply those thoughts about her—that sorrow, that rage—by a thousand, by a million, by all the images and all the faces of all the Holocaust victims I've seen. Now I have become the woman in the picture and I am shaking and mentally preparing myself to fight or die. Someone touches my shoulder—a guard, I think, moving me into line. I spin around ready to fight, but instead of a guard I see my friend Donna. Within the span of a second, I smile, laugh, start to speak, and then break into sobs.

Her startling touch was the last straw breaking me open, unleashing the rivers of grief that have been accumulating behind the dam of numbness and not-disturbing-other-people's-experiences of the past few days. Now I am wailing, loudly and uncontrollably in the middle of the camp. The grief is so intense it physically pulls me into myself. I double over, collapsed and sobbing, and eventually surrender myself to the ground.

Road toward death at the crossroads

My tears mix with red dirt and turn to mud on my face and the earth. My wrenching wails radiate across the open space. Groups of dozens of people like the ones I have been passing all week—school groups, religious groups, tourist groups, families—file passed right behind me. For a while I watch their feet move as I cry. I don't look up. I don't stifle my sounds. I imagine that I look a little crazy, but I don't care. I can't care and I can't stop. The grief has taken possession of my body like a ghost and I am at it's behest until it is done with me. Even though I am scared, it occurs to me that if there are any places on this planet that it is appropriate to unleash such sounds of anguish, one of them is right here; here where families were severed, where women and children were sent to be choked together into a heap of dead bodies on a cold concrete floor, where men were sentenced to a mostly lifeless existence of agony, deprivation, and cruelty under cruel hands, here where I am. So I cry, wail, and emanate gruesome sounds I didn't know I was capable of. I let it move through me however it needs to. I let it take as long as it wants. 

I don't know how long it takes, but as always the grief does move through. When finally my sobs have subsided and the weight on my heart and body has lifted, I sit up thinking I'd be surrounded by staring strangers or sympathetic friends. But everyone is gone—long gone. I am alone except one person. Donna.

Perhaps my emotions were just too disturbing for people to witness. Or maybe everyone just wanted to give me privacy, as seems to be the cultural norm for grieving people. I feel a sting of pain for this and in the moment I understand—better than I ever had—why traditional cultures grieve together, witnessing one another in their pain and sharing the collective weight and power of sorrow and grief. In grief rituals back home, I have grieved and raged wildly with friends and strangers singing at my back, holding me, and staying the course with me. Those experiences were enlivening and affirmative of my wholeness in a way I've never experienced elsewhere. To not have that here, where the grief is endless, where there is so much emotion to be felt and shared, feels like an acute loss to the world.

I decide then and there I want to bring grief ritual to Auschwitz. I don't know how or when, but I know it needs to happen. 

~~~

Donna and I walk toward the lunch spot, just outside the “gates of death,” in silence. We aren't supposed to eat or drink in the camp, as a way to honor the prisoners who worked and lived in hunger, so we step outside the gates to do so. I've personally decided to carry my water with me inside the gates, for self-care and health reasons (and I am finding that decision synonymous with my decision to carry and embrace my grief fully, even though I have been asked to do otherwise on both counts). But I steadfastly honor the food fast until I am outside the gates every day. 

On the outside I avoid people's eyes as I am served my ritual bowl of soup and bread roll—a nod to the meager meals of the prisoners—and, as usual, I eat alone. This time my aloneness is more acute and pointed, but feels right. I am breathing normally again, as I nurse my soup and stare into the camp through the barbed wire. I feel cathartic and a bit tender, but also refreshed and centered in the way I often do this side of deep emotional expressing.

I spend lunch meditating on what a freedom it is to sit on this side of the fence—to enter and leave this place at will. I think, too, about my freedom to collapse, to be hysterical, to match the horror of this place with my sorrow and rage, to not have to remain upright or stoic or accepting of the status quo for fear of being beaten or killed, as the prisoners must have. I feel grateful for these freedoms, and all the privileges I hold. I feel grateful for my personal capacity, to both embrace grief and move the pain of bearing witness through me. And I feel grateful for my capacity to stand (or collapse, as it were) alone.

My gratitude returns my attention to the present, and I notice the weeds along the fence, growing like rogues in this place that was dirt-ridden and deadened for so long. They again

remind me of the priest's invitation to listen to the land, and having just spent some time sobbing with my ear to the earth, I realize what I have heard.

~~~

If one of the languages of the earth is gravity, then it is the one she has been using to talk to me. Ever since arriving at Auschwitz I have been constantly been pulled downward, needing to sit often and, when seated, needing to surrender even closer to the earth. During seated meditations I've found myself on my stomach, face pressed into the dirt. During my walks I have found myself heavy and taking lots of breaks. My camera has primarily been pointed downward, toward the decaying, shifting ground, rather than upward, toward the iconic imagery, artificially preserved.

In a way it is almost like gravity itself is intensified here. And that makes sense to me. The word “gravity” shares the same root, gravis, with “grief." It was gravis that pulled me to the earth just now. Maybe it is gravis—the earth's language of gravity as the latent grief of this place—that is speaking through me, finally to be heard.

~~~

For the rest of my days at Birkenau I more intentionally honor the gravis of this place. I continue to get close to the land, paying attention to every plant I see that is choosing to grow from this earth. I stalk slowly and silently, watching every being that chooses to feed and feed from this land. I start to find that the more I listen, the more I am able hear. The buzzing mowers haven't stopped, but I can hear more voices--not screams, but whispers--underneath.

Yarrow on the fence-line

Some of the voices are plants, many of them I recognize as medicinal herbs: yarrow and plantain (to stop bleeding); ground ivy (to soothe mucus membranes); dandelion (to tonify the liver), buttercup (to treat colds, aches, and open wounds), wild strawberry (to sequester diarrhea & dysentery). Through my study of plants in the past, I know they often grow where they are needed, specifically on a soil-nutrient basis, but also in terms of other needs. Noticing the plants growing here, I can't help but wonder if they too are listening, and growing specifically here as the response to a thousand once-spoken needs on this land. And if nothing else, these weeds speak to the capacity to maintain a hold on life, even the most difficult conditions.

Lichen on the train tracks

Taking this macro view, I also see other wildlife: spiders, worms, crows, magpies, and unnamed little brown birds. I hear rumors of deer and jackrabbits, and follow their tracks down the red road toward Crematorium I and the so-called “Sauna.” I hear roosters on a nearby farm, and wild turkeys in the forest beyond the fences. All are signs of life stirring again toward this place that was once overwhelmed by death.

I find mushrooms and lichen near the train tracks—the presence of fungi hint at the underground networks of

mycelium, silently working its way under the barbed-wire fences (here, where the fence lines were supposedly uncrossable); and the presence of lichen defiantly signaling the miraculous success of symbiosis (here, where mixing and difference was abhorred, resisted, destroyed).

As I sit among the birches and find a quiet beauty, even as their roots drink deeply from the pond of ashes and bones. And as I sit, once more, by Crematorium III, I feel the earth pushing in on those walls even despite the braces the workers built. Across all the land, I see the weeds feeding from ash and rubble, and transforming it slowly into soil.

~~~

In listening to the land and soil at Auschwitz, I do hear a longing to remember the horrors that happened here. But in the whispers beneath, I also hear a longing to move beyond it. I see that despite the best efforts of the maintenance workers and the best intentions of the managers of this “museum,” the earth is going to move and the remaining walls will eventually collapse. The weeds will keep growing over and around them, tangling themselves in the barbed wire and taking hold amid the rubble. The birch forest will continue to grow. And despite my best efforts to remain stoic and to not disturb others' experiences, I am going to grieve and rage in the face of horror that I see; I am going to remember, I am going to feel, and I am going to express that which is longing to be expressed. 

Realizing this, I wonder: what if this wildness—suppressed by the buzzing mowers and whirring machines, by treatment and medication, by our shame and fear, by our discomfort with difference and derangement—is actually the salvation of this place? Wild things are often labeled as a “disturbance,” as “undesirable,” as “threatening.” They are cut down and down again. They are weeded out and thrown away. They are suppressed and killed with practically the same canisters of poison that the victims of the gas chamber were. But try as we might to get rid of them, they will persist. The persist because they must. They persist because the earth is longing for diversity and abundance. That is what I hear.

Existing woods at Birkenau

So what if instead of resisting the transformation, we collectively listened to this persistence, to the longing of this land to diversify and grow. And what if we embraced what we heard, allowing the collapse of “what was” in favor of what could be? What if we allowed succession to occur so what longs to live can live, in all its diversity and beauty and messiness? Is that not the most radical thing we could do to honor the millions of murdered people who longed to live and could not? What if, in this place where the “unwanted,” “undesirable,” “unworthy” people were sent to their deaths, we memorialized them, not by suppressing more life, but by creating a refuge—a refugium—for all those that are deemed “unwanted,” “undesirable,” “unworthy”? The plants we call weeds (which are actually medicine) could take root and grow wildly and reclaim their rightful place in the living world (in kind, helping us heal). And the emotions we call “negative,” “disturbing,” “dark” (also medicine) could have harbor for expression, release, and finally, relief, like the explosion of the gas chambers. And, of course, all the differences of people would be celebrated and welcomed here.

This place could become a refuge for feeling and for remembering—not just the horrors that happened here, but our capacity for empathy, emotion, expression, wildness, and our humanity itself. Perhaps, if we allowed it, this place could rise from the ashes of the dead and become a land of solace rather than just horror. Perhaps Birkenau—Land of the Birches—could grow again, and become a flourishing sanctuary for all expressions of life. 

~~~

It is the last day of the retreat and we are visiting Crematorium IV & V toward the end of our Closing Ceremony. I am resting against the ground on my knees and elbows, forehead touching the earth, as we listen to a story that is said to have happened right here:

It is a day like every other day at the camps--with groups getting off the trains and individuals being “selected” to live or die, and the working prisoners going about their labors. A group of women and children are waiting to enter the gas chambers at Crematorium IV. But on this day one of the workers (presumably also a prisoner who had been facilitating this process day in and day out for who knows how long) broke down and started crying wildly for all to see. He stopped working and just cried. Moved by this, a young girl in the group being ferried to their deaths, responded. She simply said: “At last! Someone who will cry for us!”

As the story closes I sit up and looked around, tears in my eyes, hoping to connect with someone. Most everyone is standing closer-in with their backs toward me, but several other people are on the ground near me, bent toward the earth like I am. Some are even crying. I feel connected. I feel moved to be surrounded by others more openly emoting as I have been longing for during most of the retreat. Appreciating this, I reflect again on the line of the little girl: "At last! Someone who will cry for us." And just at that moment, a tiny heart-shaped leaf, tugged by pull of gravis, flutters down from the trees and lands directly on my knee.

I dedicate this piece to Mireille Knoll, Jewish Holocaust Survivor who was killed last week in an anti-Semitic hate crime at the age of 85; to the 17 Palestinian people who most recently died as the result of ongoing attacks by Israel; and to all people who have lost their lives or live in fear due to the violence of hatred and intolerance. May we collectively find a different way forward, that honors and reveres all life.