To Poland with Love - Recalling the 1988 Mission during a Communist Era 17

 

Madjanek Concentration Camp Mausoleum - Lublin by Rev’d Paul Collings

Saturday Morning 17th September 1988

Face to Face with the Holocaust 

Following breakfast and morning prayers we left the Krakow Area of Lublin and headed towards the Majdanek concentration camp built by the Third Reich as a labour facility that later became the site of extermination. The camp had seven gas chambers, two wooden gallows, and some 227 structures in all, placing it among the largest of Nazi-run concentration camps and accounted for up to 300,000 persons who were inmates of the camp at one time or another.

Recent research indicates that the SS deported between 74,000 and 90,000 Jews to the Majdanek main camp (excluding subcamps). At least 56,500 were Polish Jews: 26,000 from Lublin District; 20,000 from the Warsaw ghetto, 6,500 from the Bialystok ghetto, and roughly 4,000 deported between November 1943 and May 1944 from other labour camps.

It is estimated that 17,500 came from other European countries: 8,500 from Slovakia; 3,000 from Bohemia and Moravia; 3,000 from Germany and Austria; 2,000 from France, Holland and Greece; and 1,000 Jews from countries other than Poland transferred to Majdanek after November 3, 1943.

At least 78,000 inmates where exterminated in the gas chamber. 

The somber weather was apt for our visit. Following the opportunity to view a film that highlighted the horror of that place, we where then guided around the camp, including the gas chambers, crematoria, and the prisoners huts. On entering one hut we had to mount 5 steps to a walk along a narrow walkway where we saw hundreds of thousands of adults shoes piled 5 foot high on either side. In silence we passed the length of the long hut measuring some 20 foot wide and 50 feet long. We then passed through a door at the end of the walkway into a similar room, only this time, piled high with children’s shoes.   I am not ashamed to say, my eyes filled with tears.

Following our tour, we returned to the coach near the entrance and formed up in the mist and marched in silence towards the huge domed Mausoleum in the middle of the Camp. The band came to a halt at the steps leading to up to the memorial. A lone cornet player played the last post and as the band played the hymn-tune St Theresa, associated with the words below, the Colonel and I mounted the steps to lay two wreaths at the memorial.

Let nothing disturb thee,

Nothing affright thee;

All things are passing,

God never changeth!

Patient endurance attaineth to all things;

Who God possesseth in nothing is wanting;

Alone God sufficeth. 

St Teresa of Avila 1515-1582

I can still recall my intake of breath on reaching the top of the stairs and saw the huge pile of human ashes. The mound was created in 1947. It was built from mixed-up ashes of the murdered found in 15 heaps located around the camp. In 1969, the ashes of Majdanek’s victims were placed in the Mausoleum. On the frieze of its dome, the creator of the monument, Wiktor Tołkin, engraved the message: "Let our fate be a warning to you."

The visit or should I say pilgrimage, is engraved upon my heart and mind, and often brought to mind.  I close today’s episode with El Male Rachamim (God full of compassion), a Jewish prayer for the departed that is recited at funeral services, on visiting the graves of relatives. In a sense, that day, I visited the resting place of my sisters and brothers; we who share the same Father.

O God, Who art full of compassion, who dwellest on high, grant perfect rest in Thy Divine Presence to all the souls of our holy and pure brethren whose blood was spilt by the murderers in Auschwitz, Belzec, Bergen Belsen, Dachau, Majdanek, Sobibor, Treblinka and other extermination camps in Europe; who were killed, strangled, burned and buried alive for the sanctification for Thy Name. For whose souls we now pray. May their resting place be in the Garden of Eden, may the Master of Mercy shelter them in the shadow of His wings for eternity; and may he bind their souls in the Bond of Live. Amen

Tomorrow - Witnessing with Lublin Christians.