Terezin

Her name was Irene. She was a survivor of Terezin, one of the few who stayed there until the war was over. She was born in Bohemia in Poland, the 2nd biggest Jewish community in the country. Her family was very assimilated.

She went with her family on the train to Terezin, but no one knew where it was going. Can you imagine getting on a train with your family without a clue where it's going?

In Terezin, people were never alone. There was always someone on top of you, underneath you.

Her sister survived Bergen Belsen.

"It was very hard after the war. No country wanted us."

Now, Irene said, most people living in Terezin have no idea what happened there. She has visited several times. Once she asked a local if he had ever seen a Jew. He said no. Then she said, "I am one, and these women are all Jews." He said, "But they look like us."

Now Irene lives in Israel and identifies as Israeli. When a pilgrim asked Irene, "how old were you when you were brought here?" she said, "One doesn't ask a woman about her age."

After meeting Irene, and while walking through the museum, I wrote down these notes:

Why do we need to talk to survivors?

What does the art made in the ghetto express?

The secret art itself was a form of resistance.

Brundibar--Children's Theater

Religious life also endured; there were lectures, services, funerals, burials

Education and cultural events were escapes from the misery of every day life--the people were able to feel dignified.

They were determined, in all conditions, to live like humans.

Next, we walked into a small, hidden room. It was the synagogue. On the walls, prayers and songs were painted, many of which I knew well. "Know before whom you stand." "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand lose its cunning, let my mouth cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I do not put Jerusalem above my highest joy." "Our brothers, of the entire House of Israel, who find themselves in jeopardy or entrapped, whether on sea or land, may God have compassion upon them and bring them forth from trouble to relief, from gloom to light, and from tyranny to redemption, urgently, and let us say, amen."

"With all of this we have not forgotten your name and we hope you have not forgotten us."

The group broke spontaneously into song. I don't remember who started it, but we all joined in and sang the songs on the wall. I learned the same songs when I went on Pilgrimage myself in 2008. In 2008, we sang the songs with the captive soldiers in mind. When I went home to America, I sang the songs with Pilgrimage in mind. When I went on Nativ, I sang the songs with America in mind. When I came to Cornell, I sang the songs with Nativ in mind. And then I sang them in Terezin.

And I thought, every time I have sung these songs before in my life has been in preparation for this moment.

How could people have sustained their faith in Terezin? In that tiny synagogue? I hear this sentence in my head, "With all of this we have not forgotten your name and we hope you have not forgotten us," and I wonder how that is possible.

We cried. I saw our tour guide Shlomo tearing up, and I lost it. Sometimes it takes emotion from someone else to draw it out of myself. I thought about all the other places I had been with those songs, all the other people I had been with. I thought about the men who stood huddled in this room years before sining the same words.

It was the only time I really cried in Europe. There were a few times when my face got hot or my throat closed up or I managed to squeeze a tear from the corner of my eye, but this was everyone together, shaking.

The Terezin Cemetery:

It started raining a little bit during the ceremony, and I am chilly now but I don't mind. The rain and wind blew out the candle during Mourner's Kaddish. Everyone is crying. The cemetery didn't affect me like the synagogue did.